War and Peace and The Wesleyan Church

Dr. Daniel R. Chamberlain

    This year the Houghton College faculty has been examining various aspects of our Wesleyan Heritage.  Dr. Tyson introduced the series at our faculty retreat with an exceptional overview of the work and ministry of John and Charles Wesley.  Dr. Lyon subsequently shared current and historical concerns for ministries of compassion and Dr. Schultz made an excellent presentation to the faculty about Wesleyan hermeneutics.

   Today I want to talk about war and peace … an important life and death issue.  The issue is always important, but our discussions are usually postponed until an emergency arises such as the current crisis created by terrorist attacks two months ago.  A time of crises is not a good time to develop moral positions because in such times we tend to react, or overreact, in emotional or knee-jerk fashion.  In fact, waiting until we face any major moral issue to determine appropriate attitudes and actions is rather like waiting to plug in our electric clock until we need to know what time it is.  But your college years do present an ideal time for building moral positions that are truly your own by examining issues carefully and critically and then sharing, discussing, defending and refining your conclusions.

   Permit me a few introductory generalizations about the larger Wesleyan family and tradition before I focus specifically on the historical attitudes of The Wesleyan Church toward war and peace.  Those of you who are Wesleyan scholars or apologists will know that the Wesleyan movement has historically accepted a quadrilateral basis of authority:  Scripture; Tradition; Experience; and Reason.  Someone has suggested that these four principles may be seen as analogous to scoring a run in baseball … obviously Wesley didn’t use this analogy since Abner Doubleday didn’t create baseball until long after Wesley was safe at home.  Home base is Scripture; a principle or application from Scripture may be advanced to first base by tradition; Experience can support progress to second base, and Reason can get you to third, but you don’t score a run until you get back to home plate or back to Scripture.  Stated differently, Wesleyans believe that while tradition, experience and reason are very useful and even necessary in interpreting and applying Scripture, they must never contradict biblical authority.

   John Wesley did not see himself as an innovator in theology.  In fact, he once stated that if a theological concept were new, it was probably not true; and if it were true, it was probably not new.  One of the biblical truths John Wesley rediscovered and emphasized was God’s prevenient grace … the concept captured in that wonderful poem “The Hound of Heaven.”  God’s grace first pursues us and then draws us to Himself.  Prevenient grace protects us from many unseen dangers and snares.  Wesley thus accepted Luther’s conclusion that we are saved by grace through faith, but Wesley recognized God’s grace working in our lives even before we were saved by faith.  Wesley also taught that besides dealing with the effects or results of sin in forgiveness, God’s grace can deal with the cause of sins … our sinful nature or original sin.  This theological tenet leads to an optimism about a state of grace, and growth in grace that is missing from many systems of Christian theology.

   Wesley also believed, taught, and exemplified the biblical principle that salvation is wholistic in that it is concerned with all of life; it provides both personal and social redemption and righteousness.  Thus Wesley’s concern for the poor and the oppressed was more than theological noblesse oblige.  He believed God wanted to transform individuals and societies.  He believed that inwardly we should be motivated by God’s love, or as he often put it, by perfect love; and that if we were so motivated and empowered, our lives would be characterized by works of justice, love, and mercy, especially for the powerless and poor among us.  Wesleyans have not always been faithful to this biblical principle as understood and applied by the Wesleys.  In fact, for the past 100 years, the Salvation Army has probably maintained this emphasis upon both the personal and social dimensions of the gospel better than most other denominations in the Wesleyan tradition.  I include in that tradition the Methodist movement and many of its later off-shoots including Nazarenes, Free Methodists, Primitive Methodists, Evangelical Congregationalists, the Salvation Army, and many others.

   Permit me now to move from this generic focus to examine a specific brand name of Wesleyans … that denomination we know today as The Wesleyan Church.  As you know, Houghton College was founded by The Wesleyan Church in 1883 and that denomination continues to support and nourish the college in many ways.  I will further narrow the topic to look at The Wesleyan Church’s position on war and peace at the time the denomination was founded nearly 160 years ago and for several subsequent decades.  In this brief examination of one aspect of the history of The Wesleyan Church, my purpose is not to convince present Wesleyans that they are wrong and that the original Wesleyans were right (though they had compelling reasons for their beliefs).  Rather, I believe we need to deal with questions of history, to understand our heritage and to ask ourselves when should we call for faithfulness to our founders and when should we accept change because an earlier position was flawed or without sufficient basis in Scripture.

   John Wesley addressed the issue of peace on numerous occasions; several times his purpose was to condemn the War of Rebellion by American colonists … of course we know it as the Revolutionary War.  In his sermon on “Original Sin,” Wesley used war as evidence of the fallen condition of the human race.  Listen to this excerpt from that sermon:

    But, whatever be the cause, let us calmly and impartially consider war itself.  Here are forty thousand men gathered together on this plain.  What are they going to do?  See, there are thirty or forty thousand more at a little distance.  And these are going to shoot them through the head or body, to stab them, or split their skulls, and send most of their souls into everlasting fire, as fast as they possibly can.  Why so?  What harm have they done to them?  O none at all!  They do not so much as know them.  But a man, who is King of France, has a quarrel with another man, who is King of England.  So these Frenchmen are to kill as many of these Englishmen as they can, to prove the King of France is in the right.  Now, what an argument is this!  What a method of proof!  What an amazing way of deciding controversies!  What must mankind be, before such a thing as war could ever be known or thought of upon earth?  How shocking, how inconceivable a want must there have been of common understanding, as well as common humanity, before any two Governors, or any two nations in the universe, could once think of such a method of decision?

   Here Wesley used reason to condemn war as evidence of original sin and he believed that in salvation, God dealt with original sin.  However, he did not follow that premise to the conclusion that individuals and denominations should oppose war as a matter of doctrine and practice.  In its founding, The Wesleyan Methodist Church, one of the forerunners of today’s Wesleyan Church, included a doctrinal statement entitled, “On Peace.”  It tacitly accepted the underlying principle that holy living is to the individual what peace would be for society and that we should accept God’s goal for transformed individuals and for transformed society when we establish a body of doctrine.

   While the living Church of Christ includes believers from all ages and in all nations, specific expressions of that church, or denominations, often have their origins because of certain historical facts and forces.  The Wesleyan Church is no exception.  It was born out of a serious conflict … a conflict of conscience over the issues of slavery and the role of the Methodist Episcopal Church in terminating human bondage.  Generally the ME Church counseled containment, appeasement, and reluctant tolerance of slavery, which it regarded primarily as a political and economic issue.

   Those who founded the Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America (later The Wesleyan Church) believed the issue involved such profound biblical and moral principles that individuals as well as the corporate church should cry out against the evil and press for abolition through acts of legislation, if possible, and civil disobedience, if necessary.  Many stations of the Underground Railroad went right through this part of New York and Wesleyan pastors and parishioners alike provided cover and transportation to fugitive slaves on their way to Canada.  These were acts of civil disobedience and those who committed these acts were prepared to suffer the legal penalties for their actions if they were apprehended.  They took the position that in breaking the law of the land they were being obedient to the higher law of God.

   This conflict of conscience produced its first major withdrawal of congregations from the Methodist Episcopal Church in Michigan on May 13, 1841.  Later, a similar withdrawal of abolitionists from the Methodist Episcopal Church occurred in New England and New York, when these groups held a Wesleyan Anti-Slavery Convention in Andover, Massachusetts.  Six months later (May 31) they held a Wesleyan General Convention in Utica, New York to form a new denomination opposed to slavery.

   The 1842 Wesleyan Anti-Slavery Convention not only organized a new denomination, it also authorized the publication of a weekly church periodical titled The True Wesleyan.  The first edition was printed on January 7, 1843 and carried the motto:  “First Pure, Then Peaceful.”  A week later, on January 14, 1843, the motto was modified to read:  “First Pure, Then Peaceable” (an obvious reference to James 3:17) and those words appeared on every subsequent weekly edition until well into the twentieth century.  Evidence suggests that this motto was a very careful and deliberate choice which was intended to express both the position and the spirit of the new church.

   The primary task of the first General Conference in 1844 was the preparation and approval of its Discipline of Doctrine and Governance.  The theological part of this discipline was similar in its content to that of the Methodist Episcopal Church; in fact, most of the articles of religion were essentially the same.  However, the Wesleyan Discipline differed dramatically from its parent body on the issue of war and peace.  The singular reference to war, peace, or the military in the Methodist Episcopal Discipline of 1840 and 1844 was to include military chaplains in the list of those ministers exempt from the maximum two-year ministerial appointments.  By contrast, the organizers of the Wesleyan Methodist Church appointed a Committee on Peace to present a report which was entitled “The Duty of Christians on the Subject of Peace.”  This document accepted and supported an important principle enunciated and modeled by our Lord:  specifically, Christians should have noble ends, but they should pursue those ends in just and appropriate ways.  Stated negately, good ends never justify bad means.

   This committee report stated:  Christian duty can only be determined by an appeal to the law and to the testimony.  Other standards are assumed, however, by many.  The right to decide our duty by the circumstances of the case, or the supposed results of action, has been argued by the learned and wise men.  The consequence is the justification of actions which debase and destroy mankind and dishonor God.  Among these wicked acts is the practice of war.

   Duty on this question is clearly set forth in the laws of Christianity, as the following extracts will show.  ‘Love your enemies.  Bless them that curse you.  Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use and persecute you.  See that none render evil for evil to any man.  Recompense to no man evil for evil, but overcome evil with good.  Lay aside all malice.  Be gentle, showing all meekness to all men.  But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you.  Forgive, if ye have ought against any.  God has called us to peace.  Live in peace.’ – Here we see the appeal to Scripture as the ultimate source for deciding issues of belief and practice.

   The committee report continued:  It need only be observed, on these provisions of Christian law, that the observance of them would prevent, not only the practice of offensive and defensive war, but it would prevent those dispositions of the mind and those customs which tend to foster and perpetuate the war spirit.  (Such is our opinion of Christian character, that we believe the practice of war in any of its forms, or those customs which tend to foster and perpetuate the war spirit, should disqualify any person for membership in the Christian Church.

   The General Conference directed the Committee on Revisals to develop specific language for including this principle in the Discipline of 1844.  The result was Article XXXII entitled “On Peace.”  That Article read:  We believe the Gospel of Christ to be every way opposed to the practice of war, in all its forms; and those customs which tend to foster and perpetuate the war spirit to be consistent with the benevolent designs of the Christian religion.

   This denominational position remained unchanged until the General Conference of 1864.  While the position was not as strong as the Committee on Peace had desired or recommended, it did align the Wesleyan Methodist Church with the peace movement and helps to account for the many articles, letters, and editorials on the subject which appeared in The True Wesleyan from 1843 until 1862.  These articles most frequently appealed to scriptural authority for their opposition to war though references to the leaders of the first two centuries of the Christian Church were also common.  These biblical and historical foundations led the Wesleyan Church to express strong anti-war sentiments and positions during the Mexican War from 1846-1848.  The following samples are typical of articles appearing in The True Wesleyan during this period:

   How fearful the thought, that in the nineteenth century, in ‘the most enlightened and Christian nation on earth,’ where there are thousands of men employed from year to year to instruct the people in the religion of Christ, the Prince of Peace, that men should still be found, who are willing for the paltry sum of three shillings per day, to hire themselves as wholesale butchers of their race – to murder, burn, maim, and destroy all that comes within their reach.  When, oh when will men beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks?

I BELIEVE ALL war, for any and every purpose wrong:  wrong in its beginning; wrong in its progress; wrong in its results.  If I look to Jesus, He is all peace and tenderness; if I look to His true disciples, I see the reflection of His image … Instead of that, we have slaughtered husbands, murdered sons, heartbroken wives, polluted daughters, burning cities, ruined commerce, devastated fields, and damned spirits, to say nothing of the baneful influence on morals at home – far from the seat of war …   Let the language of every Christian be, when drafted or otherwise, that of the time-honored Maximillian “I am a Christian and cannot fight.’  

A Wesleyan woman wrote, How perverted must public sentiment be, to illuminate and rejoice at the horrors of war.  Many thousands have been slain on the field of battle; hundreds are still in the agonies of death, and we rejoice!  Many are lingering in hospitals, maimed and wounded, and we rejoice!  How many widows and orphans are deprived of husband and father, and thrown on the cold charities of the world, and we rejoice!  Cities are ravaged and desolated; men, women and children are slain and we rejoice! … How unlike the peaceable gospel of our Saviour, which was heralded by the angels, peace on earth, goodwill to men!  What a fearful retribution awaits that so-called Christian nation, who wages an unjust war, on a feeble, half-distracted sister republic.  Surely the demons themselves cannot be actuated by worse principles and feelings, than the leaders and the abettors of this unholy and cruel war.

During the first eight months of 1847, no less than seven articles appeared in The True Wesleyan opposing war and urging Wesleyans to promote their peace position in their churches and with government officials.

   In 1849 Wesleyans were urged to circulate, sign, and mail to their congressman and representatives a Petition for Peace.  On other occasions, The True Wesleyan reported on various state, national, and international peace conferences.  In February of 1851 Wesleyans were urged to participate in the next Peace Congress scheduled to be held at London in July of that same year.  In 1853 The Wesleyan Methodist Church changed the name of its periodical from The True Wesleyan to The Wesleyan.  Later still, it became The American Wesleyan.  The first edition to bear this new title summarizes the purposes and beliefs of the Wesleyan Church and its periodical.  Included in that summary was the statement the gospel of Christ is opposed to war in all its forms, and the duty of refraining from those customs which tend to foster and perpetuate the war spirit.  The editorial goes on to comment:  Christianity has suffered sadly in the world’s esteem from the bad conduct of the church … the church early in its history forfeited its hold on the sympathies and affections of the masses by its glaring violation of the law of love.

    The peace position of The Wesleyan Church was not limited to its periodical and General Conferences.  At least some district conferences of the Wesleyan Church included peace studies in the preparation of their ministers.  In a letter to the editor, an Ohio pastor wrote, Dear Brother Lee, Among the books the annual conference required me to study was the Bible and J. Dymond on war.  The following are some of the things I have learned from some of these books:  Of all the Christian writers of the second century, there is not one who notices the subject (of war) who does not hold it to be unlawful for a Christian to bear arms.  It was not until Christianity became corrupt that the Christians became soldiers.  There are more quotations in the apostolic fathers which relate to these points (on war and peace) than of any others; and to what did they apply these specific precepts of the New Testament which had been delivered?  They applied them to war.  They were assured that the precept absolutely forbade it. - Here we see an appeal to the earliest history and traditions of the Christian church to support opposition to war.

   While the Mexican War (1846-1848) had produced special outrage and opposition among Wesleyans, their periodical continued to print many peace-related articles in the following years.  Such items appeared every month or two, thus keeping the issue and the Wesleyan position on peach before the church and its wider readership.

   But it was not editorials nor biblical and theological debates which dramatically changed the position and practice of The Wesleyan Church on the issue of peace.  Rather, it was that watershed of American history, the Civil War.  As early as April 24, 1861 The American Wesleyan carried a quotation from another periodical, The Independent, Fort Sumter scattered to the winds the theories of the Peace Society.  From that moment war became a duty, a necessity.  The same article went on to assert, God may be answering the prayers of the past 20 years … let our motto be:  ‘Justice and Liberty, God and Country!’  

    The same paper carried an editorial entitled The Great Crisis – “War Is Upon Us.”  It begins:

   Events have culminated; and as we have expected hostilities have commenced.  The mad rebels of the south have put in deadly activity the engines of war – a war that is the most causeless and unprovoked that ever stained the history of human civilization against the best government, all things considered, that ever existed…

   Notice that war rhetoric is surprisingly consistent!

   For the next 16 months The American Wesleyan devoted more space to the Civil War than to any other topic or issue.  An overwhelming majority of these items endorsed the war and rejoiced whenever the North won victories.  A few objections were received; one asked:  Would any person reading The American Wesleyan have the least idea that it was the organ of a denomination having following language in their book of Discipline:  We believe the Gospel of Christ to be every way opposed to the practice of war in all its forms, etc…

   The editor responded with a strong defense of the Civil War as well as the policies of The American Wesleyan in supporting it.  Using some facile reasoning or some obscure definitions, he asserted, We are not now in the practice of war, nor are we employed in fostering the war spirit by any means.  The whole North and West aroused up as by a magic baptism from on high to put down treason and rebellion.

   Another wrote:  One of our distinguishing features before the world was, opposition to war.  We have reiterated a thousand and a thousand times until the world was well nigh ready to believe that we were not only anti-slavery but anti-war.

   Such comprehensive coverage eventually led the editor to produce a brief editorial in 1862 which stated, We are receiving strong remonstrances to further controversy upon the war question in the present state of public affairs.  When the Rebellion is put down and peace is restored then if it would be thought necessary, brethren may use our columns to debate the question.

   At the next General Conference in 1864 enough delegates were uncomfortable with the article on peace which appeared in the Discipline, that it was changed to read as follows:  We believe the Gospel of Christ to be intended to extirpate the practice of war and hence we cannot but deprecate those customs which needlessly foster and perpetuate the war spirit.  We will not cease to pray and labor that the period may soon arrive, when ‘Nations shall learn war no more.’  (This modified section remained unchanged until the General Conference of 1935.)

   The new statement lacked the clarity and the power of the one it replaced and the promise to renew the discussion of the peace issue after the Civil War was never kept.  Instead it became the practice and the policy of the Wesleyan Methodist Church to make participation in war a matter of individual conscience instead of denominational directive.

   The early passion for peace did find its way into some well-loved hymns which we continue to sing.  Listen carefully to this verse:

          Lead on, O King Eternal, till sin’s fierce war shall cease,

          And holiness shall whisper the sweet A-men of peace;

          For not with swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums;

          With deeds of love and mercy, the heavenly kingdom comes.

   Since opposition to human bondage had been the major factor in the formation of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, it is probably not surprising that a war to eliminate this evil quickly gained wide support among the leaders and members of the denomination.  A majority of Wesleyans seemed to support the idea that purity required purging the nation of the evil of slavery by any, or all means necessary, including war.  As a result “first pure” took precedence in principle and in practice over “peaceable.”  This is perhaps the first issue on which the Wesleyan Church modified a strong conviction to become more like the evangelical mainstream of America.  That leaves us with the important question:  Was this a compromise of convenience and an accommodation to “reality” and do subsequent changes reflect a similar response?