"I Felt My Heart Strangely Formed:" 

The Dynamic of Wesleyan Spirituality

Dr. J. Michael Walters

            To frame my presentation on Wesleyan spirituality, let me put a verse of scripture before you that, I believe, goes to the essence of what I’m about to say: In 1 Tim 1 Paul urges the young pastor Timothy to command certain men not to teach false doctrine and to stop devoting themselves to matters which only lead to controversy in the church, and then in verse five, he makes this interesting comment: “The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”   The goal is love.  The source of this love is a pure heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith.  

            Mention the phrase Wesleyan Spirituality, and nine times out of ten, someone will begin to relate the details of Wesley’s famous “Aldersgate” experience–that critical evening in 1738 where in the midst of reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans, John Wesley’s faith was ignited which he described with the words,  “I felt my heart strangely warmed.” Now, far be it from me, to minimize, in any way, the significance of that story.  It was surely a pivotal point in the spiritual journey of John Wesley.  But, even though this crisis proved to be extremely significant for Wesley personally, and the revival he led, to assume that the story of one faith crisis tells us the whole of Wesleyan spirituality is, in my opinion, a huge mistake.  It would be akin to saying that Luther’s act of nailing the ninety-five theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, tells us the whole story of the Reformation. Of course, it’s a whole lot more complicated and involved than that.

            So, instead of taking Wesley’s words, “I felt my heart strangely warmed” as the essence of Wesleyan spirituality, allow me to manipulate this phrase a bit enabling me to speak of the dynamic of Wesleyan spirituality. . “I felt my heart strangely formed.” F-O-R-M-E-D. This little phrase enables me to get at what I consider to be the hallmarks of our spiritual tradition. 

            Now, it has been called to my attention that the term “Wesleyan” has a way of being interpreted fairly narrowly.  I would caution against that.  To speak of the Wesleyan Spiritual tradition is NOT to speak of a particular denomination any more so than to speak of the Walters’ family tradition is a reference only to my household on Fancher Heights.  No, we are an extended family, spread over 4 or 5 different states.  The Wesleyan tradition is an extended family as well.

            This is a spirituality that encompasses groups like the United Methodists, the Nazarenes, the Free Methodists, The Salvation Army, the Church of God, The Evangelical Church of North America; along with others; and it is a spiritual tradition that has had great influence on groups like the CM&A, various Brethren groups and even certain Societies of Friends or Quakers.  Please understand this when I use the term Wesleyan tradition.

            I would also have to confess that there would be people within all those churches mentioned above, including The Wesleyan Church, of which I am a member, who would cite emphases that I have omitted, or challenge in some way what I contend about this tradition.  This is, after all, mission impossible!

            Finally, by way of introduction, I would want to emphasize that most, if not all, of the tenets of this spirituality are shared by many others, including most of the people sitting in this chapel.  This spiritual tradition has had a very broad appeal across the years, evidenced by the fact that at almost no time in the modern history of Houghton have “Wesleyans” ever been in the majority here.  So, the claims I make are not intended to be exclusive, but simply descriptive of a particular faith tradition.

            Using the phrase, “I felt my heart strangely formed,” let me point out, briefly, five characteristics of Wesleyan Spirituality: 

I.  Wesleyan Spirituality is profoundly personal.   I felt my heart . . .     The Enlightenment/Reformation emphasis on the significance of the individual brought with it a concomitant interest in personal religious experience.  Like the wider stream of so-called “free church” spirituality which has always influenced this tradition, Wesleyan spirituality has from the beginning, been intensely personal.  The modern evangelical emphasis upon making personal decisions regarding God, etc., are very much a part of the Wesleyan spiritual tradition as well. 

This has sometimes led to a kind of detached pietism which has been roundly criticized, and in most cases, I think rightly so.  But Wesley and those who followed this tradition most clearly were anything but mere pietists.  Their personal apprehension of grace led to monumental works of social justice and righteousness.  Social holiness was always the preferred antidote to pietism.

            Making spirituality intensely personal was always seen as the best means of motivating people beyond religious escapism.  As my colleague Rich Perkins has reminded me often, “Christian faith must be personal, but is must never be individualistic.”  Clearly, the emphasis upon the personal elements of salvation always brings with it the dangers of individualism, and surely there is plenty of evidence to support the contention that Wesleyans have often struggled to keep the necessarily personal dimension of salvation free from the kind of rugged individualism that holds an almost virtue-like status in American life.  But even with the inherent dangers of individualism, Wesleyan spirituality has consistently stressed the personal nature of God’s design in salvation.  This is grace is for “ME,” personally. I must do something about this. 

II. Because of the emphasis upon a personal faith journey, Wesleyanism is a spirituality that takes seriously the element of experience.  I FELT my heart strangely formed.  My tradition has always been comfortable talking about what God is doing in MY life, right here, right now.  And that typically referred to some appeal to personal experience. 

            At different points during this heritage series, you have heard of the infamous “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” which purports to guide our epistemology.  This quadrilateral appeals to Scripture, Tradition, Reason, AND Experience. 

            It is, perhaps, in the doctrine of the witness of the Spirit, where we most clearly confront the profound and critical role of religious experience in Christian faith.  Not only do we become God’s children through our adoption into His family, but we can KNOW that we are His children through the auspices of the Spirit at work in OUR experience.

            Needless to say, there is much potential for abuse here.  And, I would confess that I struggled greatly with this dimension growing up in the Holiness tradition.  It wasn’t always clear to me and, I’ve since learned, it wasn’t clear to many others as well, just exactly WHAT I’m supposed to experience!  I grew up hearing people make some rather unbelievable claims, all rooted in their “experience.”  It was often very confusing.  Human experience in general, and as William James reminded us, religious experience in particular, is extremely varied.  So, this is part of the tradition that truly needs to pay attention to those other guideposts of Scripture, reason, and tradition.

            While Wesley saw the dangers inherent in using experience by itself, he also felt that no religious teaching means very much unless its claims are experientially validated.  The way he avoided a dangerous slide into subjectivism, what he termed “enthusiasm,” was by his insistence that one should be extremely suspect of any religious claim or experience of the Spirit apart from the accompanying fruit of the Spirit.  My claim of a vital experience of God is validated by the presence of the fruit that always is the result of God dwelling anywhere.

III.  “I felt my HEART strangely formed.  Wesleyanism is a spirituality of the heart. It sees the work of God in redemption, primarily, and necessarily, rooted in the will.   The human heart is the playing field upon which spirituality expresses itself. 

            While prevenient grace drew us towards God, it was not in itself, sufficient.  We must respond.  Prevenient grace only serves to stir us to repentance, which to Wesley was merely the porch of salvation.  God wants to inhabit the entire house and that entails the surrender of the will to allow Him entry.  And because the human will is multi-layered, or at least, extremely complicated, Wesleyan spirituality has maintained that the question of the will is not generally settled in one moment of crisis.  As Jeremiah warned us, the human heart is desperately wicked; it is very complicated and depraved.  Luther recognized as much when he said, “while the old Adam is drowned in the waters of baptism, we must never forget that he’s a very good swimmer.”

            Spiritual formation is as much a battle as it is anything else, and that battle is centered in the heart, or the will.  This understanding of the heart, or the will, is what gave rise to the emphasis upon “deeper life experiences,” or talk of a “second blessing.”  Unfortunately, in my opinion, this became THE central issue in Wesleyan spirituality for the better part of a century in this country, and we lost, mostly by neglect, some absolutely critical emphases that are clearly seen in Wesley–progressive sanctification, the role of the classic means of grace, and spiritual disciplines come immediately to mind.

            As I mentioned above, this is not exclusively a Wesleyan domain.  Theresa of Avila, in The Interior Castle. Thomas A’Kempis, in The Imitation of Christ; The anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing; Francis DeSales, William Law, and again, Luther himself, all rightly saw the human heart as the focus of this conflict between God and the sinful self.  It follows then that the locus of the journey we call spiritual formation is primarily a journey of the will, or the heart.

IV.   “I found my heart STRANGELY formed.”  This word, “strangely,” reminds me that Wesleyan spirituality has always been decidedly counter-cultural.  To say that Wesleyans are strange is to open this presentation up to an interesting and amusing, or embarrassing journey into some of the netherworlds of the holiness sub-culture.  That is not my task.  By “strange,” I do not so much mean “odd” although as I stated, there is an element there that we must realistically consider.  But I speak of “strange” in the sense in which Peter uses it in his First epistle.  People whose lives are a bit out of sync with the regnant culture.  People who clearly march to a different drummer in terms of values, lifestyle choices, etc.

            The idea of “holy” in terms of being set apart, different, comes out here. To live as a stranger, an alien in this world, is to face the prospect of being branded as “odd” or “different” or as some kind of “holy roller.”

            The best and the worst of the Holiness tradition tended to be expressed at this point.  All of us who grew up in the holiness tradition and are over the age of, say, forty, have memories of plainly dressed people who didn’t seem to smile much, and women with hair piled up on their heads in ways that absolutely defied the laws of physics.  We can likely remember guilt- inducing sermons on the evils of television, rock n roll, and movies.  There was certainly a counter-cultural “strangeness” that accompanied this tradition.

            But much more importantly, in my opinion, was the call to what Wesley called, “social holiness:” To only see Wesleyans as a bunch of odd-looking, odd-acting ducks was to miss the point.  Wesley figured out that if the Holy Spirit of God was dwelling in the hearts of men and women, that this was a force that could literally transform society, and transform it, it did.  You have heard throughout this year, the stories of Wesleyans throwing themselves into the abolition of slavery, the rights of women, public education, prison reform, and any aspect of human experience that affected the well being of people.  That kind of commitment to society is part and parcel of Wesleyan spirituality regardless of how little we see it manifested today.

            I have long believed that were Wesley to suddenly reappear today and look for his people, he would most likely find them wearing the uniforms of the Salvation Army.  Now, those are “strange” people in the eyes of many, but they are incarnating the best of this spiritual tradition.

V.  Finally, “I felt my heart strangely FORMED.”  Wesleyan spirituality is teleological and progressive.  The word teleological reminds us that this is an outcomes based spirituality.  It seeks to focus on the goal, or the end, of salvation.  The word progressive, reminds us that Wesleyan spirituality is dynamic, that is to say, it is a journey, a lifetime undertaking.

            The creation of humankind, “in God’s image” was a matter of great import to Wesley and his followers.  From the sermon, “Justification by Faith,” comes the following lines:     “In the image of God was man made; holy as He that created Him is holy; merciful as the Author of all that is merciful; perfect as his Father in heaven is perfect.  As God is love, so man, dwelling in love, dwelt in God, and God in him.  God made him to be an ‘image of His own eternity,’ an incorruptible picture of the God of glory.  He was accordingly pure, as God is pure, from every spot of sin.  He knew not evil in any kind or degree, but was inwardly and outwardly sinless and undefiled.  He ‘loved the Lord his God with all his heart and with all his mind, and soul, and strength.’”

            To Wesley, the thing that separated humans from the beasts was this moral potential to restore human beings to the image of God Himself.  That is the goal, the end, of spirituality.  This potential for restoration is seen in the oft-cited phrase,  “the optimism of grace.”  Paul’s words, “where sin abounded, grace did much more abound,” were taken by Wesley and his followers to mean that sin has not done anything to the human heart that grace cannot conquer. And that is precisely the agenda of God’s grace working in our lives.  Grace is free to accomplish in us, all that God intends; namely, our full salvation consummated in what this tradition has called,  “entire sanctification and Christian perfection.” 

Lovett Weems, the president of St. Paul’s School of Theology has written, “Wesleyans insist that justification is not a state but a moment by moment relationship of faith and response.  Justification is the beginning of the Christian life, and no matter how glorious, dramatic, or life-changing it is, it still remains a beginning.  Justification represents the door of true religion.  Wesley fully expected believers to walk through that door.”  But, as was stated above, Wesley was acutely aware that God desires to inhabit the entire house! This focus on the end or goal of salvation profoundly shapes the course of Wesleyan spirituality.  This ongoing work of grace in the formation of our lives is what led to the emphasis upon the means of grace.  And this, in turn, meant a vital connection to the community of faith.  Wesleyan spirituality thus is rooted in ecclesiology.

            Wesley said that, “converts without nurture are like stillborn babies.”     Regarding the vulnerability of new born converts, he writes in his Journal,  “I was more convinced than ever that the preaching like an Apostle, without joining together those that are awakened and training them up to the ways of God, is only begetting children for the murderer.”  It is out of this deep conviction regarding the nurture of believers that the famous “class meetings” became a staple of Wesleyan spiritual formation.  Weekly meeting aimed at fostering confession, accountability, encouragement and the constant monitoring of one’s relationship with God.

            To rightly appreciate Wesleyan Spirituality, one must ask the question, “So what?”  What’s the point?  For what purpose has God forgiven us and redeemed us?  If the answer is solely so that we might avoid hell and experience eternity in heaven, then Wesleyan spirituality has little, if anything, to add to the discussion.  But if the answer to that question involves the actual transformation of human life into something patterned after the life of Jesus Christ, that’s another story.

            The dynamic progression of the spiritual life is why it is such a huge mistake to simply view Wesleyan Spirituality through the lens of Aldersgate.  To divorce Wesleyan Spirituality from its roots in classic spiritual formation is to end up with a caricature of the tradition, one which, unfortunately, is perpetuated and replicated even today.  

            The tendency in what I term,  “popular Wesleyanism,” of adopting an exclusive fixation upon “crisis” had led to a lot of problems and often sent precisely the opposite message of what this spiritual tradition wants to send.  Instead of “seeking the blessing,” Wesley and those who correctly follow his model, insist that we seek love.  More love.  Aim at anything else and you miss the mark.  Remember 1 Timothy1:5   “The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”  Ultimately, it’s all about love.

            Speaking of love.  On Friday, June 7^th 1974, I walked into Estes Chapel on the campus of Asbury Theological Seminary to get myself married.  About an hour after it started, that ceremony ended and I walked out–married.  Legally in the eyes of God, in the eyes of the state of Kentucky, and in the eyes of a couple of hundred people who witnessed that ceremony, I was married.  In terms of my legal status, you can’t be any MORE married than what I was in that moment.  No doubt about it, I was married, for the rest of my life.  No one could deny it. 

            At that point, I suppose I could have looked at my new bride, wished her well and hopped into the car with my buddies and headed off to have some fun.  I mean, I AM married, after all.  And I’ll be married for the rest of my life.  It’s a legal slam-dunk.  Regardless of whether I actually SEE my wife, or spend any time with her, legally, technically, I’m married.

            Of course, I didn’t do that.  For several reasons.  For one thing, I wasn’t about to lose my deposit at the Holiday Inn! Read into that whatever you like.  For another thing, I have seven sisters.  Do you have any idea what they would have done to me if I’d left my new wife at the church? 

            But mostly, I didn’t do that, because the whole reason I got married in the first place was because I’d decided that there was one person on this earth with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life.  I just didn’t want a legal status called marriage; I wanted a real relationship.  And I have to tell you that actually being in this relationship has done more to form my life than anything else I have done over the past twenty-eight years. The point of being married isn’t so you can tell everyone you are married in the eyes of the law.  The point of being married is so that you can cultivate a life with another person that ends up transforming you into an entirely different person.