REPLY TO CHARLES GOODWIN

REPLY TO CHARLES GOODWIN

Richard B. Steele

I welcome Charles Goodwin's article, "John Wesley: Revival and Revivalism, 1736-1768," and gratefully acknowledge the important corrective it provides to my own essay on Wesley's "synthesis" of the revival practices of Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and Nicholas Zinzendorf (Spring 1995 issue of this Journal, pp. 154-172).

Goodwin argues persuasively that a full account of Wesley's approach to revivalism must take his Epworth upbringing, Oxford education, and Georgia mission into consideration. And I cheerfully concede that the Anglican tradition and the customs of the primitive church both played a greater role in early Methodist piety and evangelistic methodology than I allowed for in my article. However, I would like to make three comments in reply to Goodwin's criticisms of my position.

First, I myself included a section on "John Wesley's Training in Piety" in the book to which I refer in note 3 of my article.[1] It does not appear from Goodwin's notes that he is acquainted with my book, and perhaps he would be pleased to know that I have given some attention to Wesley's Anglicanism in another place, even though I failed to do so in the controverted article.

Second, I would point out that, while rightly noting Wesley's use of Patristic and Anglican resources, Goodwin has not refuted my claim that Wesley also drew inspiration and concrete instruction from Edwards, Whitefield, and Zinzendorf. That many early Methodist practices had antecedents in the Fathers and the Church of England does not mean that Wesley was incapable of being influenced by other eighteenth-century revival movements-movements which themselves sometimes incorporated elements from Patristic, Anglican, and other older Christian sources.

Third, I am puzzled by Goodwin's animus against my claim that Wesley's methodology was "a hybrid, a synthesis of many divergent approaches" when he himself calls Wesley's methodology a "synthesis of high-church and charismatic revivalism." He and I may differ over the actual sources from which Wesley drew. But it appears to me that Goodwin actually confirms my essential thesis (even if he rightly modifies by argument by introducing important additional evidence). This thesis is that Wesley's genius lay in his catholic-spirited openness to many voices within the Christian tradition.

I never said that Wesley's revivalism was a "secondhand synthesis," as Goodwin charges, nor am I even sure what that expression is supposed to mean. My aim was to display several of the "models" of revivalism current in mid-eighteenth century North Atlantic society, and to demonstrate how Wesley both learned from them and yet developed something new, something different, and something of far greater and more enduring influence and longevity than any of them.

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