I finished before our trip a wonderful unpublished dissertation by Geordan Hammond on John Wesley during his time in Georgia (1735-37): Restoring Primitive Christianity: John Wesley and Georgia, 1735-37 (PhD Dissertation, University of Manchester, 2008). Several points of the dissertation mention merit, and I hope to blog through the work over the week. I think that it is a very important work for a retrieval of Wesley outside the strictures of modernistic Protestant pietisms in their liberal and conservative forms that have come to dominate those who look to Wesley for guidance.

The main thesis, ably sustained, is "that the ideal of restoring primitive Christianity was at the forefront of Wesley’s thinking and is crucial to interpreting the Georgia mission" (p. 16). Three subthemes seem significant to me: "First, an aim of this study is to analyze Wesley in context as an Anglican clergyman rather than interpreting his Georgia sojourn as a ‘preface to victory’. Secondly, when possible, the connection between Wesley’s reading and practice of primitive Christianity will be illustrated. Thirdly, a fresh perspective on his interaction . . . will be given by interpreting these relationships within the context of Wesley’s goal of renewing primitive Chrsianity in the Georgia wilderness" (p. 16).

I think that hammond makes several points in the first chapter that persist throughout Wesley's life, and are crucial to repetitions within the Methodist tradition. Wesley's concern to return to primitive Christianity was to achieve a unity between academic study of Christianity and a purity of its practice with an ascetic discipline found characteristic of "primitive Christianity." An ecclesiology underlies Wesley's emerging practice: (1) the church exists independent of the state -- an emphasis, according to Hammond, that arises from second generation nonjuror emphasis, but could be called "non-Constantinian" at its core; (2) the primitive church witnesses to the norm of visible Christian unity that has been lost, but thereby also witnesses to its possibility through a "return" or "ressourcement" through adoption of its practices. Wesley's concern was always to recovery the visible unity of the church through a return to the pre-Constantinian church.

To this end, Hammond both quotes and summarizes from A Collection of Forms of Prayer for Every Day in the Week that Wesley published in 1733:

“May the Church, the Catholick Seminary of divine Love, be protected from all the Powers of Darkness.’ The desire for Christian unity is seen in the following prayer: ‘bless thy holy Catholick Church, and fill it with Truth and Grace; where it is corrupt, purge it; where it is in Error, rectify it; where it is right, confirm it; where it is divided and rent asunder, heal the Breaches thereof.’ In accordance with the High Church/Nonjuring tradition, Wesley called for unity through a return to the primitive church: “Lord, let it be they good Pleasure to restore to the Church Catholick, primitive Peace and Purity’; endow the clergy with ‘apostolical Graces’; and ‘restore to her her ancient Discipline.’ (pp. 43-44)

According to Hammond, "Wesley shared the view of contemporary High Churchmen that four steps were required to revive catholic unity. Dissenters must conform to the Church of England; Rome must be reformed from her corruptions; the German Protestant Churches must revive episcopacy; and the Church of England must re-impose her authority and discipline" (p. 44). It seems to me of these four requirements, only "Rome" has made any progress from the 18th century. Obviously Wesley's heirs have largely become more deeply embedded in dissent and moved deeply away from "primitive Christian" practices, and become more deeply embedded in mediating forms of "Protestantism"; the Church of England's authority and discipline have devolved remarkably; I can't say much about what he means by "German Protestant churches" as the phrase is too vague.

Here is a project worthy of retrieval and repetition. Hammond's work details specifics of Wesley as a High Church Anglican interested in the catholicity of pre-Constantinian Christianity as he was embedded in currents within the 18th century Church of England. Tomorrow I hope to blog on the Eucharistic implications of this that Hammond documents.