CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THE WESLEYAN MODE

by
Wesley Tracy

The flower bouncing in the breeze atop the stem of the "I Gotta Be Me" plant which has flourished like Jack's beanstalk for the last decade or two is the idea that to be free I must choose my own self-description. Group identity must be transcended, and family history must be shut out of the mind. No matter how strong the temptation to savor the flavor of a sense of history or to hum the song of a "heritage" it must be resisted in favor of intoxication with the perfume of the "I Gotta Be Me" plant.

Of course some, for better or worse, are not affected by that plant. For example, when a citizen of the Lone Star state tells you he is from Texas he is not telling you his address or simply where he comes from. He is telling you something of his heritage, his world view, a life style that has had a great influence on who he is as a person. Being a Texan presents many problems, "but at least the Texan does not have the illusion he is a person without a history."' The Texan's personal story, his heritage, not only organizes his life in certain ways; it supplies for him a way to form the future. It pushes him toward making his actions consistent with his identity.

I sometimes wish Wesleyans were more like Texans. I wish our heritage were more clearly understood, and more eagerly owned. I wish it were set free to help form our identity, to take us by the hand and lead us down the path of self-discovery and to whisper to us in still moments who we are. I wish it could push us towards consistency of action and identity and toward future-forming.

When some people mention their Wesleyan-heritage church they are merely telling you what church building they go to on Christmas, Easter, and Rally Day. Some Wesleyan educational workers do not even know that when they identify themselves as "Wesleyan" they should be saying some- thing definite about the philosophy, learning theory, curriculum materials, theology and methodology employed under their supervision. To other "Wesleyan" means loyalty oaths regarding "holiness shibboleths."

But being a Wesleyan is understanding, liking, appreciating, and being who we are. I guess I am saying that my purpose in this paper is to urge Wesleyans to be more like Texans. At least it is to explore our heritage in educational matters and make hints as to how this should illumine our educational philosophy, theology of Christian education, learning theory and our basis for authority in faith and practice.

Many moderns are too soon outraged by John Wesley's educational eccentricities. Today's permissive educators dealing primarily in "warm fuzzies" and "sloppy agape" turn tears and run at the first mention of Wesley's infamous "will-breaking" passage. Or escaping that they might bump into a procession of young children from a Methodist school on a field trip to see a dead body and hear an "exhortation on how death, sin, and hell all go together. Sooner or later they are almost sure to run into Charles Wesley's insipid hymn for children called "On Hell" which describes with sensuous vividness, the fate of impenitent children in the land of the damned.

Again, a devout young Wesleyan majoring in developmental psychology may be hopelessly bent out of shape browsing through the Journals and reading Wesley's accounts of the piety of children under three years of age. Let a Wesleyan whose children are attending a Montessori school read that at Kingswood school no time, ever, was to be spent in play and we have yet another casualty. The jolt of these aforementioned eccentricities is something like what a 10-year-old Texas lad experiences when he reads the rest of the history book and discovers that the South after all did lose the Civil War.

But if we can negotiate these "sandbars" and "rocks" we can bring our ship of education safely into harbor and discover a rich Wesleyan heritage. It is futile to pretend the sandbars and rocks aren't there, or to try to explain them away. An interesting exercise is to note the contortions of twentieth century biographers trying to explain the ways of Wesley to Wesleyans. We learn, for example, that what Wesley really meant in proscribing play at Kingswood was that there would be no bear-baiting, cock- fighting, or crap shooting on campus. Let us plainly admit that Wesley's eccentricities were sometimes laughable. Perhaps then we can come to an appreciation of the man, who did more for education than any other person in the eighteenth century, John Wesley.

Without trying to explain it away it is still helpful to have some notion of the character of the times if we are to understand Wesley's education 9ystem. England was in the greedy grip of a whirlwind now called the Industrial Revolution. That whirlwind blew humanity into the cities like maple leaves before a November wind. And it left them, like leaves, piled in random heaps. Housing conditions were outrageous. Ten persons per unfurnished room was common. Horse manure polluted the unpaved streets. It was sometimes piled 14 feet high on both sides of the street in London. Diseases like typhoid, smallpox, dysentery, and cholera ravaged almost unchecked. One fourth of the babies born died the first week of their lives. The whirlwind of industrialization blew in more people each day: disease, crime and malnutrition removed more and more each day. In many cities the graveyard operators maintained "poor holes"-large common graves left open until the daily flow of the corpses of nameless nobodies finally filled them up.

Crimes of the most violent sort were so common they were commonly ignored. Gambling and gin drinking became the national pastimes. For the children there were the streets or the sweat shops. Schools? Only one child in every 25 attended any school of any kind. Into this revolution-ripe setting John Wesley came stressing as antidotes for the diseases of the times-discipline, education, evangelism, religion, and love. Through these the Methodists helped these sorrowful victims of squalor see their essential dignity before God. Hear Adam Clarke preach in City Road Chapel "Show me . . . the vilest wretch in . . . London, and I say, that he has the same claim upon God's mercy as the apostles had, and may have as much mercy as they had . . . to qualify them for the kingdom of heaven."3

To reach the goals of saving this society required a thorough, multi- faceted scheme of Christian Education. Education was in no way secondary to evangelism for Wesley & Co. Education and evangelism were bound together with education frequently coming first, chronologically, in the lives of many. Wesley once said that he had spent more time on a single educational project (Kingswood) than on any other project in his life. We shall survey some of his educational projects giving special attention to the education of the young.

Education was a preacher's priority. The preacher himself was to teach the children and adults in the homes of his people. A preacher seeking admittance to the Conference was confronted with: "Will you diligently and earnestly instruct the children and visit from house to house?"4

Wesley counseled his preachers, "Let every Preacher, having a catalogue of those in each society go to each house. Deal gently with them.... Give the children the 'Instructions for Children' and encourage them to get them by heart.... Take each person singly into another room, where you may deal closely with him, about his sin, and misery, and duty."5

Wesley goes on and step by step tells the preachers how to conduct such a religious education session.

In 1766 he outlined the preacher's responsibility for the religious education of children.

One preacher objected, "But I have no gift for this." Wesley replied, "Gift or no gift, you are to do it; else you are not called to be a Methodist Preacher. "'

Again the Conference of 1768, legislating programs for religious education in the larger parishes, instructed the preachers to meet with the children an hour a week "whether you like or not."6 "For what avail preaching alone, though we could preach like angels?" Wesley asks. "We must, yea every travelling Preacher must, instruct them from house to house. "7

Of course, the preachers could not alone do the task of educating the young. Parents were strongly urged to carry on family education Repeatedly Wesley said to his people that the Methodist revival would dissipate in one generation without a vigorous program of Christian Education in the home. To neglect this was to prove Luther right, Wesley said, is his (Luther's) assertion that revivals of religion lasted only 30 years Wesley indeed evaded that pitfall-and largely because of his almost fanatic belief in education.

Wesley told the Methodists that their children were "immortal spirit whom God hath, for a time, entrusted to your care." And this He has don "that you may train them up in all holiness."10 Preaching from the text "a for me and my house we will serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:15) Wesley told parents they must restrain their yet-unconverted children through advice persuasion, and correction. Correction included corporal punishment an Wesley reminded them that this should be done only after all else fails- "and even then you should take the utmost care to avoid the very appearance of passion. Whatever is done should be done with mildness; nay indeed with kindness too."" He declared that those who tried to thrash the children in to heaven and out of hell should not think it strange "if religion stunk in the nostrils of those that were so educated. They will naturally look upon it as an austere, melancholy thing."12

To advice, persuasion and correction the Christian parent was to ad instruction. This instruction was to be done early, plainly, frequently, an patiently P3 Since "the corruption of nature is earlier than our instruction can be we should take all pains to counteract this corruption as early s possible."14 This project should start as soon as the child can begin to speak and understand, "because the bias of nature is set the wrong way; education is designed to set it right."15 Education aided "by the grace of God is turn the bias from self-will, pride, anger, revenge and love of the world Wesley goes on to say, "to resignation, lowliness, meekness, and the love of God."16

The parents were to see that each child took time "every day for reading, meditation, and prayer."17 Further family worship was to be "serious: and solemnly performed." Family worship was recommended for morning and evening and should include prayer, Bible reading and singing of Psalms. Lest some parents not know how to go about this and thus neglect it Wesley prepared an order of service. A short prayer was used to begin the proceedings Then the Bible was read and explained by a parent. Next children were then to explain in their own words what the scripture meant. A longer prayer followed. Then came a doxology or benediction after which each child was to ask for a blessing from the parents. Parents were never, under any circumstances, to deny this blessing.18

Besides this, Thursday evening was to be set aside for catechising the children. Saturday night was a special review time when each child recited what he had learned during the week.19

Besides these somewhat formal times of instruction the parents were to use whatever opportunities came from the routine of life. For example, an April morning bathed in sunshine and punctuated with rosebuds was not to be wasted on mere aesthetics. Wesley advised the hearers of his sermon "On Family Religion" to ask the little child to look around and then ask "What do you see there? The sun . . . feel how warm it is upon your hand! Look, how it makes the flowers to grow, and the trees and everything look green.... It is God who made the sun, and you, and me, and everything.... Think what he can do! He can do whatever he pleases.... He loves you; he loves to do you good. He loves to make you happy."20

Wesley made available to parents and preachers resources for the nurture of children. He published "Prayers for Families" and "Prayers for Children." Each of these contained morning and evening prayers for each day of the week. In addition "A Collection of Forms of Prayer" gave morning and evening prayers for private devotion and added questions for self-examination as well. Other materials included the Life of Philip Henry the father of Matthew Henry. The section on family worship in the Henry home was to be given special attention. In the early years Wesley recommended James Janeway's Tokens for Children. It was the collected testimonies of 13 dying children. Judiciously, Wesley never seems to mention it again after 1744.

Wesley himself prepared an important document for the education and spiritual nurture of children in the parish and in the home: Lessons for Children. It is a series of 200 Bible studies for children-all based on the Old Testament. In addition he edited a French document and called it "Instructions for Children.21 Its fifty-eight lessons are gathered under six sections and include these subjects.

Beyond the preceding exhortations and ample materials for the religious education and nurture of Methodists the organization of the Connexion held within it the seeds of its own perpetuation through the societies, classes, and bands. The society was "a company of men having the form and seeking the power of godliness, united in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love that they may help each other to work out their salvation."22 These societies were subdivided into classes of about 12 persons each. Each class had a Leader whose duties included seeing "each person in his class once a week at least, in order to inquire how their soul9 prosper; to advise, reprove, comfort, or exhort as occasion may require; and to receive what they were willing to give toward the relief of the poor."2l

The bands were small groups whose sharing, intimacy and achievement rivals the best of the small group explosion of the 60's and 70's. Their theme was "Confess your faults one to another, and pray for one another that ye may be healed." A part of every meeting was the sharing of one's answer to these questions:

The bands, classes, and societies deserve (and have indeed received in many places) additional attention but since the present exploration focuses primarily on education of the young we shall move on to the schools John Wesley established and operated.

The Foundery was the first school which Mr. Wesley started on his own. He and the Methodists bought an old foundary for 115 pounds and spent five times that much rebuilding it as a school and society meeting- house. It was located in a poor part of London where Wesley noted that the teeming offspring of the poor were given no schooling at all and so grew up "like the wild ass's colt."

One end of the Foundery had a long room some 20 feet wide and 80 feet long. One end was a bookstore or literature dispensary filled with Methodist literature. In 1740 the other end became a school for 60 ragamuffins from the London streets.

One of the early headmasters was Silas Todd who so cared for the down and out that he had served for 30 years as the unpaid chaplain to the condemned prisoners of Newgate. This man, hired for 26 pounds per year, was ideally suited to control Wesley's school for the poorest children in London. In addition to the teachers two Stewards were appointed. They were to see that the rules were observed, raise money for the schools and control expenditures. But they were also expected to talk with the teachers every Tuesday and to meet with the students twice each week about spiritual matters. Of particular importance were the Wednesday morning meetings in which the Stewards and teachers met with the parents of the scholars "and gave them advice as to how they might plan their home-life so that its influence on their children might assist the work of the school."25

The Foundery operated on six rules:

We know little about the success of the school, but A. H. Body assumes that since references to it in Wesley's Journal and Letters are few that the school pursued a course of reasonable success else Mr. Wesley would have bewailed its failures in the aforementioned documents.27 Some may argue that Wesley's Kingswood rule of not letting boarding students go home for even one day until they had finished the course of study came from sad experience of the Foundery scholars' day school education being ruined by ungodly homes at night. This is not likely; rather the rule of "no home visits" for boarding students come from John Milton's Tracate on Education which John Wesley read and liked.

The Kingswood School building was begun the same year that the Foundery became a school, 1740. George Whitefield had been "shamed" into preaching to the primitive and brutal inhabitants of the Kings Wood. They were coal miners, rough, sinful, ignorant. Whitefield preached and got many converted. They wanted a school for their children. Whitefield raised 60 pounds, held a "stone-laying" ceremony, knelt and prayed "that the gates of hell might not prevail against our design,"2~ and then announced that he only had time to "set it on foot," but he told them that he hoped that his "honoured friend" John Wesley would take it from there and bring the school to good effect.29

The school was located three miles from Bristol in a sort of national forest. It was an ideal site (except for the lack of a natural water supply) for Wesley's experiment. It would at least take the scholars away from the evil influence of the city streets.

The first building was completed in 1740. It consisted of a large central room with four smaller rooms on each end. The central part of the building still stands and is called Wesley's Chapel. For several years the coal miners and their children were taught to read and write and pray there. Then on April 7, 1746 the foundation stone for a building large enough to house boarders was laid. At that ceremony John Wesley preached from Isaiah 60:22 "A little one shall become a thousand and a small one a strong nation." The three-story building was completed in 1748 and on Friday June 24 the opening ceremonies for the New House were held. Kingswood the boarding school was on its way. Charles Wesley wrote a special hymn for the affair which poetically expressed the educational ideals of the Wesleys:

Besides Charles' hymn John delivered one of his most important sermons on education. Wesley's text was Proverbs 22:6. In the introduction he told the gathered teachers, scholars, parents, and guests that "education . . . is to be considered as reason borrowed at second-hand, which is as far as it can, to supply the loss of original [rational] perfection."31 The aim for Kingswood then is to teach children "how to think, and judge, and act according to the strictest rules of Christianity."32 Thus such virtues as abstinence, humility, sobriety, and devotion shall be "a hundred times more regarded than any or all things else."33

Just as "physic" is to restore physical health, Wesley told them, a Kingswood education was to restore spiritual health. The need was desperate because every one born of woman is infected by seven spiritual diseases. Now we are ready for the seven main points of the sermon.

Then follows one of the most frightening passages in Wesley:

It is the "part of all those to whom God has entrusted the education of children, to take all possible care . . . not to feed, any of these diseases; . . . and next, to use every possible means of healing them."42 He reminds the listening teachers and parents that in the end it is God, not man who is the physician of souls, that no man can "bring a clean thing out of an unclean." Only God can do that, "but it is generally his pleasure to work by his creatures: to help man by man."43 These tempering words were to stand the Kingswood people in good stead in the years to come.

Thus to the unbearable plight of children in 18th century England was brought to bear an experiment with discipline, education, religion, and love being the active agents in the test tubes.

The rules for the experiment to help stamp out the seven deadly sins were in harmony with the strictness of Wesley's opening sermon. The children were to come to Kingswood and not see their parents at home again until they finished the course of study. They were to rise at 4:00 a.m. for an hour of private devotions before an hour of public worship which gave way at 6:00 a.m. to an hour of work on the grounds at various chores until the 7:00 a.m. breakfast hour at which time they were served milk porridge or water gruel. Classes were then held until 11:00 o'clock. An hour of work or walking preceded the noon "dinner." Classes resumed at 1 p.m. and continued until five o'clock. At five another period of private prayer was observed followed by a "walking or working" session and supper of bread and cheese, or butter, and milk. At 7 p.m. there was public worship and at 8 p.m. the children went to bed "the youngest going first." Sunday was a day of rest for the children were allowed to sleep until six and then get up and go directly to breakfast. There were, however, even on Sunday several hours of class work and, of course, two public services.

No play was planned and none was to be allowed. Supervision by the school staff was to be constant — 24 hours per day.

During the school's history many kinds of education have been carried on. Within the first decade Wesley had several schools operating at Kingswood. There were the schools for boarding students, one for boys and one for girls. There was a day school for the coal miners' children. Further there was a school for adults which operated early in the morning and at night. A little later Kingswood admitted tuition free the children of the preachers, and adults who were called to the ministry, but had no learning.

Through the years of Wesley's life Kingswood was primarily a boarding school. When it was discovered that Kingswood boys were not being admitted to Oxford (because of their Methodist label) Wesley strengthened the curriculum and guaranteed that any graduate of Kingswood would be "a better scholar than nine in ten of the graduates at Oxford or Cambridge."44 To reach this degree of education the student entered Kingswood between the ages of six and twelve and pursued an eight-year course of study which began with the three "R's" and "Instructions for Children" and ended with advanced Greek and Hebrew. In between were language study (modern and ancient), philosophy, Biblical Studies, rhetoric, music, art, logic, the ancient classics, and the writings of some contemporary churchmen.

Wesley screened and edited all the textbooks. There are 1,729 printed pages in the texts Wesley himself prepared for use in the ordinary school course. In addition we must add the 50 volumes of the Christian Library most of which Wesley wrote at Kingswood between 1749 and 1755, as well as the Compendium of Logic, five grammar books (no one taught English in those days) and his four-volume The Concise History of England. Only then can we get a glimpse of the amount of John Wesley's life and energy that went into this one educational project. He once said that no other project had taken as much of his life as Kingswood.

Kingswood had a checkered career. Difficulties of all sorts came. Anyone with less vision and determination than Wesley would have given up. Even he had times when he said he would "kill or cure," "mend or end" it.

Of course Wesley and Co. had other educational projects. Time and space restrict treatment here of the orphanage in New Castle or the Lying-in Hospital in London. The latter was a place of refuge for destitute expectant mothers. During their stay the young women were not only cared for physically, they were given religious instruction and vocational training One year, for example, no fewer than 300 such women entered this institution. There is no time to show that there were Methodist Sunday schools at least a decade before Raikes' schools; or to show that Raikes produced his Sunday school only after Sophia Bradburn, a Methodist preacher's wife, suggested it to him.

The limitations of this project also prevent a tracing of the Methodist mania for education in the post-Wesley years. Methodists established elementary schools left and right. Hundreds of such schools were started in England, Ireland, and America. The Conference of 1840 for example records the twenty year plan to establish 700 new Methodist elementary schools in Britain. Historically the Wesleyans have been the most vigorous foe of sin, ignorance, and poverty which they have meant to overcome by Christian education, discipline and the Gospel of grace.

It remains now, after this ever so scanty survey of our Wesleyan heritage to ask ourselves, "What are we to do about all this?" Or, "How should our Wesleyan heritage inform our current practice of Christian education?" I propose to make four rather brief "starter statements" in pursuit of the implications of our rich Wesleyan heritage. They are, in outline:

If it is not already obvious that the early Wesleyans were ready to do whatever it took to provide Christian education, then nothing I could add would make it clearer. The question must be: was their enthusiasm misguided? Or was it, due to certain circumstances, more important then than now? My response is "no" to both questions. Some of their methods may be put to question but not their motives. Further I see nothing in our day that negates the need for thorough Christian education. The details of the situation change. The glut of notions and -isms in today's idea market provokes the same need for thorough Christian education that the vacuum of ideas and opportunities provoked on behalf of the poor of 18th century England. The call to literacy education may not be so great, in America at least, but this is replaced with a similar and equally urgent need for cross- cultured education. We are told that by the end of this decade 85% of the population of the Los Angeles basin will be made up of various minority groups-most will be Spanish speaking. Within 18 years Chicago will be a Spanish-speaking city as well. At this moment 43% of our total population is non-white. I think the educational and evangelistic challenge implicit in these facts would challenge the likes of John Wesley, Adam Clarke and Francis Asbury. Other such analogies could be drawn. But suffice it to say we have not outgrown our need to keep Christian education in the "primary" category for Wesleyans. Something seems strangely out of joint when one hears the anti-intellectual bellowings of certain theological descendants of those early Wesleyans. When American Methodist Bishop George F. Pierce, for example, opposed theological training as a threat to Methodism declaring "Had I a million, I would not give a dime for such an object"46 one wonders what has happened.

If you were an enemy of Mr. Wesley, you would think it fair to say that his philosophy of education was hodge-podge. If you were his friend, you might call it a lofty eclecticism. If you were just plain honest, you might call it something in between. His metaphysics and axiology were idealistic, his methodology behavioristic, his epistemology existentialist and essentialist. It appears that John Wesley, when trapped by the vision of educating his world parish, reviewed his theology and the Scriptures. Then, with these as back-drop, he went about to search out the best educational theories available. He consulted his mother-teacher of ten. He visited Jena and Hernnhut, the Moravian schools born of the insights of Comenius. He studied schools in Georgia and taught with Delamotte there. He read and liked Milton's writings on education, he read and disliked Locke's writings on education-but then copied some of them. In Plato's Republic he found advice on education. He studied the Port Royal schools and adopted some of their materials almost unchanged. He read Rousseau on education and dismissed him as useless. But the important point is that he critically studied the best writings and institutions available and selected what he thought to be the best suited to Wesleyan doctrine, and the mission of the church. Whether he made the best selections or not is somewhat beside the point-the point being that we are not disloyal to our heritage when after focusing on our theology and the Scriptures we critically select from the best theories and practices that which in our times is best suited to our "world parish" mission.

But can we not locate Wesley in the spectrum of educational philosophy, at least in terms of central tendency? I think that we can. Let us use for convenience Wayne Rood's philosophical categories. He oversimplifies and drags some theorists kicking and screaming into some categories which are a bit strange to them, but his system is quite manageable.47 Rood reduces the various educational doctrines to three: Personalism, Essentialism, Experimentalism. It would be worthwhile to review the metaphysics, epistemology, axiology, and ethics of each of the philosophies from which these doctrines spring, but foregoing this a simple description-sketch of each shall be given.

1. Idealism is the philosophy behind personalism.

2. Thomism, Neo-Thomism, Traditionalism, Realism and Neo- Scholasticism is the philosophical cluster Rood weds as the support group for the educational doctrine called essentialism.

3. Pragmatism is the philosophy behind experimentalism. The aim of experimentalism is to solve problems. Its curriculum is activity-centered. Its symbol is the laboratory. Its methodology is experimentation. The teacher skill required is project leading

Most of the educators who influenced Wesley are found in the Essentialism camp. This is to be expected. Most educators before Wesley were. Further the moment you announce that you are a Christian and that Christianity has something distinctive to say about man's meaning, existence and destiny which must be handed down to the next generation you have declared yourself, to a certain degree, to be an essentialist.

Milton whose educational ideas Wesley openly admired was strictly an essentialist. Instead of writing acres of deadly prose about education Milton could have simply said: give your children a classical education at a boarding school and make everything (even war games) like the schools of Greece and Rome. Many of the classics Milton recommended were included in the Kingswood curriculum. From Milton Wesley got the notion that the best schools were boarding schools into which the child disappeared never emerging until graduation. The purpose or aim of education Wesley adapts from Milton who wrote: "the end of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright." "Education," says Wesley, "is to be considered as reason borrowed at second hand, which is as far as it can, to supply the 1099 of original perfection."4# Of course two other instructors of Wesley made similar statements, William Law and Comenius.

Wesley was powerfully influenced by the essentialistic ideas of John Locke. Like Locke, Wesley opposed the notion of innate ideas probably because of its relation to the Socratic-Platonic idea of the pre-existence of the soul. The "blank sheet of paper" suited Locke's and Wesley's notion of the child better. Their methodology would betray such a presupposition even if it were not stated. Locke's "Essay on Human Understanding" was required reading at Kingswood. Wesley copied Locke's menu for his Kings- wood school. Further he paraphrased Locke's writing (giving no credit at all to his source) time and again. Note these examples:

But when you have cited Wesley's roots in rigid essentialism you have not said everything about Wesley's educational plan. There were other teachers of Wesley who accented a more personalistic dimension. Susanna Wesley strongly influenced John. She was a skilled educator. Her servants did the housework while she taught the ten children on a regular school day schedule. She wrote and edited her own textbooks. She ran a strict school, largely by essentialistic principles, but her education was laced with parental love, saturated with tears and prayers for salvation, and highlighted by individualized instruction. She devoted Thursday evenings to John. The boy was so impressed with these one-to-one teaching sessions that many years later when the "care of all the churches" weighed heavily upon him he pleaded with his mother to spend part of each Thursday evening praying for him. Such an upbringing helped humanize Wesley's educational work.

The "Little Schools" of Port Royal made their mark on Wesley as well. He translated his " Instructions for Children " from their works. The humanizing element appears when it is recognized that the personalistic love for the pupil was the bed-rock of the Port Royal discipline and teaching.51 This did not mean they were permissive-far from it. From them it may be that Wesley borrowed his view of 24-hour supervision. But in the Port Royal educators severity and love were admirably combined. In Wesley at his best we find the same thing.

The writings and schools of John Amos Comenius also humanized Wesleyan education. The Moravians brought Comenius to Wesley's attention. Wesley travelled to Germany and observed two Comenius-patterned schools in operation. The daily schedules for Jena and Herrnhut were copied almost verbatim by Wesley for the Kingswood schedule. There were two differences: Wesley's children had to rise an hour earlier for an extra period of private prayer, and when the Moravians had their two daily sessions of walking in the woods to "learn from nature" Wesley decided that his students could use that time to get acquainted with nature even better through work-so pulling weeds, cutting fire wood, and hoeing in the garden were prescribed. Other points at which Wesley seems to have been coached by Comenius, particularly The Great Didactic include:

1. Developmental concerns. Wesley scorched the English schools for ignoring any need for progression in difficulty of works assigned. We hear Wesley say "Carefully observe the few ideas which they have already, and endeavor to graft what you say upon them."51 Here and at other points Wesley is echoing the fifth, sixth, and seventh principles of Comenius. These principles teach orderly progression from the known to the unknown. Comenius taught that the teacher must grasp "the right occasion" to make learning effective. Here is the "teachable moment."

Wesley was insistent that the content be adapted to the child's level of thinking. Modeling his own advice he promised a group of clergymen whom he was correcting that he would preach to the children on a certain date and never use a word-even from Scripture-that had more than two syllables. He preached to 550 children and kept his word, and taught a lesson to his preachers.

2. Understanding versus memorizing. Comenius, who called the recitation-plagued schools of Europe the "slaughter house of the mind," insisted on understanding rather than memorization. Wesley did the same counseling parents and teachers to again and again stop and let the child explain meanings in his own words.

3. Knowledge, virtue, piety-these came in this order — and without knowledge neither virtue nor piety could happen. Wesley believed this.

4. Education must begin in pre-school years. Both Comenius and Wesley are urgent about teaching children at the very first sign of understanding.

5. "Amending" the will was Comenius' term-Wesley carried this quite a bit farther with his "will-breaking" doctrine.

6. Love in education. Comenius had been thrashed through school, so he established a school based on love. Wesley believed in love too, but held to severity much more than Comenius. Still, Wesley's love of children is well documented. He speaks of it often in word and deed. For example, when he had to order a carriage for a journey he frequently ordered it to arrive earlier than his appointed departure so he could give children a ride before having to leave.

7. Education of the poor was a keynote of both Comenius and Wesley. In fact the humanitarian tone of the Methodist revival gave somewhat of a humane tone to Methodist education.

8. The best education is pleasurable. Here Wesley seems to have rejected the then revolutionary idea of Comenius that the most effective learning occurs in an atmosphere of pleasant emotion. Wesley knew that education must be painful to be profitable. Wesley should have listened more closely to Comenius' first "promise" in chapter 12 of The Great Didactic: "The whole earth is being educated."

Wesley the synthesist, Wesley the ecclectic, studied the schools and educational literature available to him and critically selected what he considered to be the strengths of each. He devised a program that was primarily essentialistic, but was, at its best, tempered with personalistic concern. This is not a useless formula for today's religious educator.

I believe that our theology should critique every aspect of Christian education. But I shall limit my comments here to a few remarks about Wesleyan theology and learning theory.

Learning theories are commonly collected under three headings:

1. Personologism declares the human personality to be generative and active. It acts upon environment shaping it and follows its own ends in spite of environment.

2. Situationism declares the personality or intellect to be a passive lump upon which environment works with a free hand shaping and forming the person in its (environment's) own image.

3. Interactionism says that the person is indeed generative and active, but not impervious to environment.

A Wesleyan, being true to his theological heritage would at once disavow unwavering allegiance to Situationism for this denies the Wesleyan theological view of man (to say nothing of the Scriptural view of man) as free (by prevenient grace) and responsible. B. F. Skinner is probably the most popular situationist today. His brand of behaviorism declares "it is the environment which acts upon the perceiving person, not the perceiving person who acts upon the environment."52 Therefore, if we can control the environment we can shape and precisely predict behavior. Because human freedom is a mere myth anyway and always has been we can neither be blamed or credited for our behavior. Heroes and criminals are just alike-like all of us they were simply created by their environment. Before Skinner's technology of behavior human freedom falls. As Skinner writes:

What is being abolished is autonomous man-the inner man, the homunculus, the possessing demon, the man defended by the literatures of freedom and dignity.... Autonomous man is a device used to explain what we cannot explain in any other way. He has been constructed by our ignorance, and as our under- standing increases, the very stuff of which he is composed vanishes.... His abolition has been long overdue.53

It seems obvious that Skinnerianism in any of its derivatives bears careful scrutiny by Wesleyans who subscribe to what Susanna Wesley taught John at her knee, "The freedom of the will is necessary if there is to be moral responsibility."54

You would be correct of course to object that Wesley himself used behavioristic methodology. At Kingswood he acted in a manner almost as environment-conscious as Skinner. He planted the school in the woods, far from the corrupting influences of the wicked cities he arranged a constant religious atmosphere, he provided 24-hour supervision, censored textbooks, children could not go home for weekends or holidays lest wicked playmates or neglectful parents stain their souls. Any student who was deemed a bad influence on classmates was expelled immediately. In fact, I think a reasonable final examination subject would be "Discuss Kingswood School as Skinner box."

Nevertheless, in spite of his faith in the influence of environment, Wesley knew in the end human freedom enabled by grace would make the final choice. He warned in his introduction to the Lessons for Children to "Beware of that common, but accursed, way of making children parrots, instead of Christians."55 In his sermon "On Family Religion" after instructing parents to thoroughly teach and model Christianity he says, "Your son may nevertheless serve the devil if he will; but it is probable he will not."56 Wesleyans like Wesley's term "probable" much more than the behaviorists' "predictable" when it comes to individual response to education. In the sermon he used to open Kingswood school he said Proverbs 22:6 was a "general, though not universal promise" for some had been trained in the way they should go and "in the strength of their years, they did depart from it."57 He adds "some of the best parents have the worst children" in spite of education's lofty aim of drumming the "seven diseases" out of the child. So we see that when adopting behavioristic, even pragmatic, methodology Wesley is careful to maintain his belief in free moral agency. Wesley's descendants would do well to be careful at this point for some of our materials are generously sprinkled with activities which betray stimulus- response presuppositions.

But there is another force in learning theory today which is at once in conflict with Wesleyan thought. Humanistic education is a "growth industry" in today's pedagogical market. Today's humanistic educator is primarily a personologist. I believe that Locke Bowman was right when he said that the threshold question for Christian educators in the 80's is to decide their response to this two-question true-false test:

1. Human beings are functioning organisms, subject to forces from the outside that cause them to behave the way they do. 2. Human beings are uniquely persons with inner potential, each one with a dynamic self-concept that results in individual patterns of growth.58

The personologists have made a great impact on Christian education, much of it for the good, some of it otherwise. Such things as values clarification, moral development, sensitivity training, open-ended methods, and faith development all fall within this general stream of influence. At once the Wesleyans have grounds for dialog with these. For example, they don't have to fight for human freedom: the humanists make an issue of such. But right away we are in another jam-the structural developmentalists, the values clarification brokers, and the optimistic humanist practitioners have nothing whatever to say about sin-original or duplicated. And in dealing with human nature, its perfectibility, and its potential the Wesleyan starts with sin as a first consideration-to the humanists the doctrine of sin is a not-quite-funny non-sequitur.

Wesleyans can still dialog with these sunny folk better than Calvinists or Lutherans. Carl Rogers, a prominent humanist was raised a Calvinist, but on the basis of his counseling said the Calvinists were wrong in their insistence that man was totally depraved. He said that at the bottom of man's heart he found something positive that could be counted on to work toward healing. A point of dialog may be seen in Wesley's belief that there are some remains of the image of God in the worst of men. Again, James Fowler says that his system of faith development has no inevitable conflict with Christian theology unless you have a radical Calvinist or Lutheran doctrine of predestination or the Fall. He sees his system quite in harmony with the Wesleyan doctrine of sanctification.

I believe that Wesleyans should note the behaviorist-humanist extremes and search for a mediating view which not only retains a tolerable view of human freedom, environmental influence, the distorting reality of sin, but which also provides for prevenient saving, and sanctifying grace and the work of the Holy Spirit. In other words our stance should not be that of hovering outside the university lab to see what new infant theories the behaviorists or the humanist may send toddling forth for us to "scoop" and integrate into our curriculum before the Baptists or Episcopalians can. Rather, we should search for the identifying badges of theories thrust before us, understand their origins and assumptions, critically evaluate how, if at all, they can contribute to the mission of Wesleyan Christian education.

Subordinate Nature of the Authority of the Behavioral Sciences

I cite this from among other alternatives because I think it is a threshold issue for today. We have seen the behavioral sciences, particularly sociology and psychology, push theology off the throne and even make Biblical authority a mere footstool. This of course makes man the measure of things.

It is not merely the secularists who have championed this cause; religionists as well have turned to the behavioral sciences as the final authority for "faith and practice." Many examples might be cited, but let me here give just one-the 322-page study by the Catholic Theological Society of America called Human Sexuality: New Directions in American Catholic Thought.

A committee appointed by CTSA brought the fruit of several years of study to the 1977 meeting. The report was a plea for a new contextualism in Catholic sexual ethics. En route to establishing a more liberal view of homosexuality, premarital sex, extra-marital sex, and birth control they vigorously toppled three authorities. The theologians of the Roman church were disarmed because, after all, their task, as everyone knows, has been to concoct systems to accommodate the mandates made by theologically unsophisticated managers, kings, and popes. So why listen to their coaching on sexual ethics? Church tradition polluted by Greek philosophy and natural law ethics must also be discounted-the Church made early mistakes here and has rigidly repeated them. The third authority, and the one which concerns us here is the Bible. In fact, this is the first one to be rooted out by the probings of the CTSA report. The Old Testament teachings about homosexuality, adultery, incest, etc. are so culture-clad that they can give no firm guidance for today's Christian. Moreover, they declare "the motivation behind Old Testament legislation had nothing to do with sexuality itself. It stemmed rather from social and economic considerations."59 Further "the sayings of Jesus and the writings of the New Testament Church on sexuality are all occasional, conditioned by particular questions arising from particular circumstances."60 In addition the church's post-Easter impositions on the texts of the Gospels make it impossible to know what Jesus really said or believed about sex. Paul, intoxicated with Stoicism, wrote even more muddled instructions and what he did say clearly has been muddled and misunderstood.

With theology, tradition, and finally the Bible disposed of, the report hoists on its shoulders the new king and true authority-behavioral science. The bottom line, the final authority, is sociological and psychological studies and opinion polls. In a settling-the-issue section Kosnik and company declare:

"the behavioral sciences have not identified any sexual expression that can be empirically demonstrated to be, of itself . . . detrimental to full human existence.... The theorist who wishes to hold the view that acts of masturbation, pre- and extra-marital sex and homosexuality are absolutely inconsistent with healthy personality development or successful marriage relationships cannot presently look to empirical data."61

They add that in light of this recent discovery that "enlightened and well integrated individuals might well free themselves of conflict by simply reflecting on the relativity of their society's sexual ethic and proceed discreetly with their own sexual project."62

Pastors are then told that in their counseling and spiritual care they would do well to remember that pre-marital sex can be beautiful, that various kinds of extra-marital sex may represent "a truly Christian response to the problems and needs of particular groups."63 Further, in dealing with homosexuals rather than being a guilt doler they should "recommend close stable friendships between homosexuals not simply as a lesser or two evils but as positive good."64

I hope that the lurid content of this example does not detract from the point I am trying to make here. That point is the fact that the tone of the times is to measure man by man, to hail the behavioral sciences as Messiah. And this makes current experience the final judge and in the final analysis makes what is into what ought to be: "isness" becomes oughtness.

I raise the subject in this address on religious education because this fox is already in the Christian education's chicken coop. To treat the latest enthusiasm of religious education-stage theories of cognitive, moral, and faith development-uncritically is to take the muzzle off the fox.

I celebrate the insights that Piaget, Kohlberg, and Fowler have helped us to gain about structural developmentalism. We must study them, profit from their work all the while knowing that they are describing what is, not what ought to be.

We have been well warned by scholars like Donald Joy who has reminded us that "Kohlberg, with Piaget, easily identifies himself as a naturalist and a humanist."65 Joy sharply critiques the naturalistic errors in Kohlberg-his naturalistic fallacy, "one-handed empiricism" which ignores noumenal concern, and, the point which concerns us here, the is- equals-ought error.

It is not just eager and simple lay educators in the local church schools who make the leap from isness to oughtness-witness Lawrence Kohlberg's own arrogant article "From Is to Ought: How to Commit the Naturalistic Fallacy and Get Away With It."66 This is merely another example of how behavioral science researchers think that isness equals or at least prescribes oughtness. But we must remember that when the behavioral science workers studying global sexual preferences, or human ways of making meaning, have filed their most detailed empirical charts summarizing the isness of the issue they have yet to utter one syllable about oughtness.

It is at this point that our Wesleyan doctrine of Biblical authority stands us in good stead. Wesleyans have honored experience; so do the behavioral science high priests of today. The authority of Scripture for Wesleyans is an "experienced authority."67 Thus fully appreciating the importance of experience a Wesleyan will know of the greater authority of the Word.

Many quotations could here be marshalled to represent the Wesleyan heritage of a Biblical faith. But permit me to let Adam Clarke counsel us here. Clarke declared that the Bible should form the creed. Too many creed builders create their creeds according to their own biases, and then hunt up passages in the Bible "dismembered from their fellows"6~ to give a Biblical ring to their homemade creed. For Clarke all the winds of doctrine which howled through the winter of England's soul-deism, latitudinarianism, dead orthodoxy-were to be examined in light of the Bible in which Clarke said we "find the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."69 This was not a doctrine of verbal dictation for Clarke said that his doctrine was "not of such an inspiration as implies that even the words were dictated or their phrases suggested to them by the Holy Ghost.... They were hagiographers who were supposed to be left to their own words.70 For Clarke private experience could not outweigh the Bible. In his sermon "Apostolic Preaching" he declared "Suppose not one person could be found in all the churches of Christ whose heart was purified . . . who loved God and man with all his regenerated powers, yet the doctrine of Christian perfection would still be true."71 because it is in God's Word.

When his years were in the "yellow leaf" as Byron says, Clarke wrote to his friend James Everett and said:

I have lived more than three score years and ten; I have traveled a good deal, . . . I have conversed with and seen many people, in and from many different countries; I have studied all the principal religious systems in the world; I have read much, thought much, and reasoned much; and the result is, I am persuaded of the simple unadulterated truth of no book but the Bible.72

I have not covered every argument here. I neither tried to nor do I care to. I cite the representative quotations from Clarke simply to remind us of what we already know. That being that a Biblical faith is not merely the sauce which seasons Wesleyanism; it is the meat, the main course, the substance of Wesleyanism itself. This is an important fact to remember in these days of dictatorship by social sciences. You see, if we yield our Wesleyan awareness of Biblical authority to the prophets of "isness is oughtness " we will then join the ranks of those who preserve Christianity in the world by baptizing as Christian whatever they find thriving in the world, whether it be sexual revolution, empiricism, civil rights or even atheism itself. In this "post-Christian" era this temptation will appear like a subtle siren-song come to life. It will not come boldly forward in a recognize-at-one-glance uniform. Rather it will seep into our people's lives through the media and the market place. Then into religious journals and Christian curricula. It may look as gentle as a Star of Bethlehem flower, as healing as Gilead salve, as scientific as an equation, as reasonable as the Novum Organum and may even wear a gold cross around its neck by the time it gets to you, for whatever is popular in the world will soon dress up and come to church. But to yield our doctrine of Biblical authority in favor of isness equals oughtness is to baptize as Christian the fads of the moment.

These beginning guidelines for making Wesleyans more like Texans are really aimed at raising our consciousness of the value importance of Christian Education to Wesleyans and to some strategic ways in which this heritage informs our philosophy, learning theory, and concepts of authority. We need more holiness people who understand and treasure their Wesleyan heritage. May that heritage challenge us, inspire us, humble us. May we own it, incorporate it into our collective life and allow it to guide, and help shape our identity.

1 Stanley Hauerwas, "A Tale of Two Stories: On Being a Christian and a Texan," The Perkins Journal, Leroy T. Howe (ed.) Summer,1981, p. 4. I am indebted to Mr. Hauerwas not only for this quote but for the metaphor suggested in his title which I have adapted to being a Texan and a Wesleyan.

2 Paul Sangster, Pity My Simplicity (London: Epworth Press, 1963), p. 45.

3 Adam Clarke, "The Necessity of Christ's Atonement," Sermons 4:159, cited by Wesley Tracy, When Adam Clarke Preached-People Listened (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 1981), p. 184.

4 Minutes I, 52, 68 cited by John W. Prince, Wesley on Religious Education (New York: The Methodist Concern, 1926), p. 134.

5 The Works of John Wesley, 3rd ed., 14 vols. (Kansas City, Missouri: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1978, vol. VIII), p. 305.

6 Ibid, p. 316.

7 Ibid.

8 Minutes I, 81, cited by Prince, Wesley on Christian Education, p. 135.

9 Works, VIII, p. 302.

10 John Wesley, "On Family Religion," Works, Vol. VIII, p. 79.

11 Ibid., p. 80.

12 John Wesley, "A Thought on the Manner of Educating Children," Works, XIII, p. 476.

13 "0n Family Religion," Works, VII, p. 81.

14 "A Thought on the Manner of Educating Children." Works, XIII, p. 476.

15 Ibid

16 Ibid

17 Ibid

18 Minutes I, 4~Works, V, 194, cited by Prince, p. 133.

19 Ibid, p. 134.

20 Works, VII, p. 82.

21 The Instructions for Children i9 translated from Les Principes solides de la religion et de la uie Chretienne appliques a l'educateur des enfants by Abbe Fleury and M. Pierre Poirot. See Richard Green The Words of John and Charles Wesley (London, 1896), Nos. 62, 117, 118, 174.

22Works, VIII, p. 269.

23Ibid, p. 270.

24 Ibid, p. 273.

25 A. H. Body, John Wesley and Education (London: Epworth, 1936) p. 83.

26 Ibid, p. 80.

27 Ibid, p. 82.

28 Ibid, p. 73.

29 Ibid, p. 75.

30 Charles Wesley, Hymns for Children and Others of Riper Years, 35-36 cited by Prince, pp. 91-92.

31 "0n the Education of Children," Works, Vol. VII, p. 87.

32 Ibid, p. 88.

33 Ibid

34 Ibid, p. 92.

35 Ibid, p. 93

36 Ibid, p. 94.

37 Ibid

38 Ibid

39 Ibid

40 Ibid, p. 95.

41 Ibid, p. 97.

42 Ibid, p. 90.

43 Ibid

44 "A Short Account of the School in Kingswood near Bristol," Works XIII, p. 289.

45 A. H. Body, John Wesley and Education (London: Epworth Press 1936), p. 100.

46 John 0. Gross, John Wesley: Christian Educator (Nashville: The Board of Education, The Methodist Church, 1954), p. 28.

47 See Wayne Rood, Understanding Christian Education (New York: Abingdon, 1970).

48 Cited by Body, p. 34-

49 Ibid, pp. 56-57.

50 Works, VI, p. 593, cited by Prince.

51 Prince, p. 121.

52 B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York: Bantam/ Vintage Books, 1971), p. 179.

53 Ibid, p. 191.

54 From Mrs. Wesley's writings quoted by Adam Clarke in Susanna Wesley, p. 241.

55 Wesley, Lessons for Children, pp. 3-4, cited by Prince, p. 125.

56 Works, VII, p. 85.

57 "0n the Education of Children," Works, VII, p. 87.

58 Locke E. Bowman, Teaching Today (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1980), p. 22.

59 Anthony Kosnik, et al., Human Sexuality: New Directions in American Catholic Thought (New York: Paulist Press, 1977), p. 14.

60 Ibid, p. 17.

61 Ibid, p. 59.

62 Ibid, p. 56.

63 Ibid, p. 147.

64 Ibid, p. 219.

65 Donald M. Joy, "Kohlberg Revisited: An Evangelical Speaks His Mind," The Asbury Seminarian, Winter 1980, p. 8.

66 See Cognitive Development and Epistemology, T. Michael (ed.) (New York: Academic Press, 1971), pp. 151-284, cited by D. Joy.

67 See "John Wesley's Approach to Scripture in Historical Perspective," by R. Larry Shelton, WTJ, 14:1 (Spring 1981) and "Conservative Wesleyan Theology and the Challenge of Secular Humanism" by, Paul M. Bassett, WTJ, Spring 1973, pp. 74-75.

68 Wesley Tracy, op. cit., p. 55.

69 Ibid, p. 166.

70 Ibid, p. 56.

71 Ibid, p. 119

72 Ibid, p. 55.