Education Methodist Methodism

Education in Methodism

CH 600-Dr. Robert Tuttle Jr.

Daniel Ivey

            The beginnings of Methodism started in the halls of education at Oxford in England with the holy club.  It is only right that this great movement which was started by the men with the highest level of education and possibly also the highest level of piety, would continue to emphasize the importance of education for all, as part of their mission to spread Scriptural holiness throughout the land.  Whether it was to refine the theology of the many preachers who were travelling Europe or America, or to offer a much needed service to the poor children and uneducated adults, Methodism has made its mark in the annuls of history as an educational force that must be recognized.  For John Wesley and the rest of the Methodists to follow, all people whether rich or poor were of invaluable worth and thus were deserving of education, the necessities of life, and the knowledge of the way to salvation.  From the old country Sunday School teacher to the professor of ancient languages at the Theological Seminary, attempts were being made to equip individuals with a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, and to produce persons who would be able to demonstrate and practice the knowledge they professed.  John Wesley who was a self described homo unus libre, (man of one book, and that the Bible) was also a man who appreciated and prescribed understanding into all the forms of knowledge from medical science to philosophy and all the subjects in-between.  All the Methodists who followed in his footsteps also took to the same appreciation, as even in the Sunday Schools, reading, arithmetic, and science were taught.  At all levels of scholarship, Methodism sought to educate individuals and society in the ways of God, and the ways of man through teachers in classrooms and society meetings, sermons, one on one discipleship, and of probably the greatest impact, through the multiple thousand published works it manifested.  John Wesley and Methodism were of the top producers of literature in the world through their printing presses, and published articles and pamphlets on a whole range of topics from home medicine, philosophy, teaching manuals, Biblical commentaries, abridged works, and religious instruction.  Though at times, Methodism was at odds with various forms of education, as a whole it has been one of the biggest and broadest sources of education in America and throughout the world through its instruction, writings, and the many primary and secondary schools, colleges, and seminaries.

            John Wesley was a man who was no stranger to education.  From homeschooled instruction from his mother Susanna to formal world class instruction at Oxford in England, John Wesley was a learned man.  But unlike most of his contemporaries at Oxford, as well as the majority of clergymen in the Church of England of which he was an ordained priest, Wesley zealously pursued vital piety with the love and fear of God as his center.  John Wesley was not sufficed to only know about God, but also wanted to have an experiential knowledge of God.  For Wesley, this experiential knowledge of God also necessitated that this knowledge would lead to performance.  The love of God would play itself out in the love of neighbor.  John Wesley knew no holiness but social holiness which meant faith working itself out in love and good works to his parish, the whole world.  Wesley took serious the tenants of John 3:16 that God truly loved the whole world and all who were in it, and this theological truth played itself out in John Wesley’s mission to minister to all people, as he viewed each person as one for whom Christ had died.

            Against the popular and widely accepted view of the poor in England in his day, Wesley believed that they were deserving of all the necessities of life, as well as the right to an education.  “Wesley was not satisfied with lamentation about deplorable conditions or accusations against the responsible agencies; instead, he committed himself to remedying the deficiency through the strenuous efforts of the Methodist communities.  To that end he employed repeated sermons and conversations on the education and training of children, regularly checked the schools he had founded, conducted conversations with children, gave hours of instruction himself, wrote his own school books, outlined instructional plans, counseled parents on questions of child-rearing, enlisted teachers, and regularly assisted with various emerging difficulties.” (Marquardt 53)  Wesley jumped right in to the situation and took action, taking seriously the words of Jesus in Matthew 25:31-46.  Simply put he saw his neighbors in need, and in Christian love he acted as best he could to meet that need by taking action himself and by rallying and employing the help of others.  Wesley viewed salvation in holistic terms, caring both for the spiritual and temporal needs of every person, and this meant clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, and healing the sick.  While the common view of the children of the poor in England at that time was that it was a waste of time for them to go to school and that they should as quickly as they can get to working, Wesley insisted that they should be afforded at least basic instructions in reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion. “Wesley’s chief motive for establishing such schools and developing them within his sphere of influence was primarily a religious and humanitarian one.”, but “above all else, they were meant to guide the children into basic Christian truths and lead them to a life in harmony with the will of God.” (Marquardt 52)

            John Wesley established several schools for the children and also helped to formulate the Sunday Schools to be implemented by his societies, but Wesley also had a concern for adult education.  One of Wesley’s most chief ways of educating the masses of uneducated adults, was through the printing press.  “The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries brought some revolutionary innovations in printing and publishing…(and) Wesley very quickly made use of these technological advances for a comprehensive and well-organized publishing program in order to supply “His” poor people with books.” (57)  But Wesley’s writings were not only to educate the poor adults and the children, he also sought to better educate the many preachers he had commissioned to preach the Gospel.  Since most of his preachers and class leaders were uneducated men and women, and the cost of books and education was too high for most of them, “Between 1749 and 1755, there emerged what is probably the most important of Wesley’s editorial achievements, the fifty-volume Christian Library, which was supposed to contain “all that is most valuable in the English tongue,… in order to provide a complete library for those who fear God.”” (58)  Wesley instructed his preachers to diligently read these materials, as well as to disseminate his other writings and make them readily available to all whom they ministered.  Wesley made his works available at the lowest prices possible. “Thanks to Wesley, the Methodist Societies became educational agencies with a systematic pursuit of reading.  Reading Christians were knowledgeable Christians; and the uneducated people, of all people, were not to be excluded from this opportunity.” (59)

            Through the many ways that John Wesley employed to bring not only the saving knowledge of Christ, but also instruction into the various other faculties of knowledge, Wesley made a great impact on England, which greatly attributed to the move for nationwide reform in education and the treatment of the poor, along with later child labor laws.  Through his extravagant philanthropy of his own time and money, his brilliant execution of organizing bands and societies which held Sunday Schools, his many writings of pamphlets, treatises, abridged works, sermons, and instruction, and his fervent circuit rider preachers who helped teach and distribute his message and writings, the establishing of many schools, and his uncanny ability to persuade the minds of the men and women all across England, Wesley effected great change in England and advanced many thousands of people who would have otherwise been left in poor conditions.  John Wesley’s effects are still felt today, and England has never been the same.  But now we will turn to look at the flames of reform and revival that swept over America through Methodism as John Wesley’s spirit was carried over into the newly found nation by other faithful men and women.

            Since the beginnings of the nation until the present day, Methodism has played a vital role in education in America.  Today the United Methodist Church boasts of having 13 Theological Seminaries, and is responsible for starting some of the nation’s best colleges including Vanderbilt, Duke, Emory, and Drew.  The Methodist church is also able to boast in being the first denomination to establish colleges for women and through the Wesleyan Female College in Macon, Georgia which was founded in 1836, is able to claim as their graduate the first female in the world to receive a B.A. degree. (Kingwood 117)  But though the first bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America were men of outstanding educational achievement in line with John Wesley, this church in America did not always embrace education as we know it does today.  But in regards to educating the poor, the children, and the masses, they continued in Wesley’s spirit and became a leading force in education for America.

            “Methodists were rather obviously behind many other denominations in their approach to the higher branches of education. (But) On the other hand, none could claim prompter attention to the needs of elementary education, religious and general.” (Norwood 217) “In 1790 the first recognition of Sunday-schools by an American Church was made by the vote of the Methodist Conferences, ordering their formation throughout the Church, and also the compilation of a book for them.” (Stevens 535)  This was only six years after the 1784 Christmas Conference when the newly formed American “Methodist Episcopal” Church was founded.  From the very beginning, education was a great priority.  By 1787, American Methodism’s first educational institution was already built and opened for school, named Cokesbury College after the first two bishops Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke.  In 1791, Bishop Asbury wrote a letter to the conferences instructing them to erect academies in their areas “to give the key of knowledge in a general way, to your children, and those of the poor in the vicinity of your small towns and villages.”, to nurture both mind and spirit, being free from “any restraints from refractory [perverse] men.” (Kinghorn 112)  Education of the youth was well on its way through the establishment of these academies and through the Sunday School system which Bishop Nolan Harmon calls “the mightiest of all church agencies.” (Harmon 143)  While the education of the youth was taking flight, and was ascending with great ease, reaching new heights, the impetus for the establishing of colleges performed poorly as it faced major setbacks such as the destruction of Cokesbury College shortly after its opening in 1795.  Then after reopening it in a house in Baltimore, the school again was destroyed by fire, which led Bishop Asbury to declare, “The Lord called not…the Methodists to build colleges.”  “With its ruin, the Methodist built no more colleges for three decades.” (Kinghorn 112)

            Just as in England, the newly formed American church championed their Sunday School system along with their academies that they were building. “The  Annual Report of 1816 reports on the improvement in the moral condition of the poor thus: “Multitudes of children brought up in a state of total ignorance have been sent to Sunday Schools for the habit of regularity and acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures which inculcate their various duties to God and man.”” (Heitzenrater 135-36)  By 1866 it was able to reported that, “The numbers of conversions among pupils of the schools, as reported for the last eighteen years, amount to more than 285,000, showing that much of the extraordinary growth of the Church is attributable to this might agency.” (Stevens 536)  Stevens also says that historically, “The Sunday-school system of the Church has been closely allied to its Book Concern.” (535)  About the great proliferation of the Book Concern and its printing presses, Stevens says in 1866 that, “If Methodism had made no other contribution to the progress of knowledge and civilization in the New World than that of this powerful institution, this alone would suffice to vindicate its claim to the respect of the enlightened world.” (534)  Although John Wesley had once warned, “Beware you be not swallowed up in books: an ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge,” he also later said, “Our little books you should spread wherever you go.  Reading Christians will be knowing Christians.” (Norwood 210)  The itinerate preachers and the leaders of classes were all encouraged to be avid readers of these materials, as well as be the chief salespeople of the materials to ensure that the Methodists were reading them.

            “In 1827 the church founded the Methodist Sunday School Union, which by 1830 listed more than 150,000 pupils in Methodist Sunday schools.” (Kinghorn 114)  The Sunday School teachers were aided by many printed tracts, pamphlets, and books directed at Christian education, all from the church’s printing press through the Book Concern.  In 1868, the church elected the “creative and indefatigable champion of the Sunday School”, John Heyl Vincent as the Secretary of the Sunday School Union, who would further aid the teachers of the Sunday School classes by establishing in 1874 the Chautauqua Assembly in New York for the training of the teachers.  Here the teachers could come and here lectures from experts on various subjects all aimed at inspiring each teacher to become motivated to study the Bible and be able to relate its teaching to all phases of their students lives. (Kinghorn 114-15)

            But as America continued to grow, so did the government’s involvement with education, and the beginnings of publicly funded education were underway.  “Methodism early on embraced with only minor quibbling, and has sustained, opposition to state support for sectarian schools on elementary and secondary levels.” (Campbell 181)  Fears began to arise out of many Methodists over their concern about what content would be taught to their sons and daughters with the minds in government making the decisions over the curriculum.  Bishop J.C. Kilgo publicly raised his concern on this issue when he said, “The issue is joined in the South…. We have got to answer for all time this supreme question, Shall Americans Christianize their Schools or shall the Schools paganize Americans?  This is no mere dream; it is the awfullest reality we have ever confronted in this country.” (Norwood 303-04)  Not only were there fears about the government’s hand being involved, but there was also great tension and rivalry against the Roman Catholic parochial schools.  In 1839, Reverend and later bishop Edmund S. Janes “vigorously argued public schools could never adequately implant Christina morality or introduce you to the truth of Scripture.  Furthermore, he asserted, “education has an important and necessary connection with our missionary work.”” (Campbell 186)  In an 1844 Episcopal address at the General Conference, the bishops asked “Methodists to use their influence to assure that the Bible “is universally introduced as a text-book in the common-school systems of education in this country.””(186) However, Christians were not all together on this front, as there was division between Protestants and Roman Catholics as to which translation of the Bible should be in the classroom.  Later there was a great push by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union for “scientific temperance” or prohibitionist ideology to be taught in the public schools, which was met with opposition by others who wanted the textbooks to include that moderate ingestions was acceptable.  However the WCTU was successful in requiring 34 states and territories to teach their prohibitionist ideology in the public schools. (190)  But as time passed on, and the Methodists along with the other leading denominations saw, it was not right nor plausible to champion certain denominational ideologies in the publicly funded school, and the government should not be allowed to champion one view above another.  As time went on, the issue of the Bible being read in public schools came all the way up to the Supreme Court.  In 1962, required Bible reading was barred from all public schools, and prayer was taken out as well. “United Methodists would come to agree with the court rulings on prayer and Bible reading, although that was not self-evident in the early 1960’s.” (194)  The Church had made sure all of those years that the State was not going to impose their will upon the Church, but the Church up to this point did not see (or at least chose not to see since it was in their favor) that they were imposing their will on the State in the public schools.  But today in the 2008 Book of Discipline in the section of Social Principles ¶164.c. it states, “The state should not use its authority to promote particular religious beliefs (including atheism), nor should it require prayer or worship in the public schools, but it should leave students free to practice their own religious convictions.  We believe that the state should not attempt to control the church, nor should the church seek to dominate the state.”  The tensions and concerns of United Methodists over the curriculum being taught in public schools still exists today, but the official stance of the UMC is that all people have the right to education and that the public schools are the best means for this to happen.  This does not however mean that the United Methodist do not still favor their educational institutions over the public school system, but that they are committed to seeing the right of education for all people to be realized.

            My last topic to deal with in regards to education within the church from John Wesley to the United Methodist Church is on the issue of the education of the preachers and the ordained.  Although John Wesley was a highly educated man, most of his preachers were not.  In the beginning of the Methodist movement, Wesley was not concerned with ordaining these preachers as priests, which in the Church of England did require formal education, but was only concerned with sending them forth to preach the message of salvation and to carry forth his other sermons.  Therefore, Wesley was not as concerned with the preacher’s formal education as he was in raising up several laborers for the harvest.  With the way Wesley had his movement set up with itinerate preachers, class leaders, and so forth, a disparity in the educational achievements of the various leaders was okay since they all had oversight from somebody else, all the way up to Wesley.  But when the Methodist movement in America was forced by the Revolutionary War and the Declaration of Independence to become separate from England, and thus was necessitated to become its own church with their own ordained priests, the question of the education of the ministers started to come into focus more.

            There existed for many years in the Methodist Church, a great paranoia of formal Theological training for preachers.  “Prior to the 1840s, at least two-thirds of Methodism’s preachers opposed theological schools.” (Kinghorn 119) “As late as 1866, Bishop George  Pierce, of the ME Church, South, asserted, “It is my opinion that every dollar invested in a theological school will be a danger to Methodism.  Had I am million dollars I would not give a dime for such an object.” (119)  “As late as 1890, the southern general conference was warned by the Board of Education itself that, though the church could take just pride in its educational institutions, there remained a danger that too much reliance on human intellect might prove disastrous.”  (Norwood 304)  It is strange to me to believe that the very people who trusted their leader John Wesley so much, and now their American Bishops who were also highly educated men, would have such a fear about what formal Theological Education would do to them.  Even in the later forming of Theological Seminaries such what is now Garret-Evangelical Theological Seminary, it was carefully labeled Garrett Biblical Institute when it started in 1855.

            The training of the ministers in the Methodist Church in America was derived from reading the Bible, along with being encouraged to read the works of Wesley and his recommended sources, being “discipled” by the presiding elder in the circuit, and from on the road experience. Though in the beginning, Coke and Asbury sought to start a college for training in 1787, the destructive fire of 1795 and the fire again in Baltimore put theological training on hold for the Methodist Episcopal preachers.  After all, they were winning souls and the church was growing, so there was not as much of a felt need for the preachers to gain any more instruction.  It wasn’t until 1816 that a Course of Study was talked about for the preachers to learn from as they were in ministry.  “A uniform program with formal listings was prepared for the M. E. Church in 1848 and for the M.E. Church, South, in 1878.” (Norwood 306)  In the first two decades in the 1800’s, Methodist people began to be more financially stable, and thus were able to send their children to college.  The 1820 General Conference responded to this need by calling all Annual Conferences to accordingly start building schools.  Thus as more and more Methodists went away to college and became better educated, they also became less sympathetic to the commonly poor grammar being employed by their uneducated ministers.  And when the powerful Methodist congregants begin to grumble and complain, the people in charge begin to listen.  Randolph S. Foster published a short book on the need of the training of ministers which received a good hearing.  By that time, with other developments preceding it such as the Methodist Academy’s Theological School in 1839, the church was ready to make the shift.

            In the 1856 General Conference, they began to make plans for the formation of Theological Seminaries.  John Dempster who would later be known as “The Father of Methodist Theological Education”, was one of the biggest movers and shakers in the development of the Methodist Seminaries.  He became the president of the Methodist Biblical Institute of Newbury, Vermont, which later would be known as Boston Theological Seminary.  Dempster later went on to help found the school, Garrett Biblical Institute, and became the first president of the school.  The Seminary system was able to be built up by the generous gifts of such people as Eliza Garrett and Daniel Drew to name a couple.  Their generous philanthropy to the cause of Theological Education is what made this endeavor possible.  But even as late as 1939, “More than half of Methodism’s ministers received their theological educations through the Course of Study.  Not until 1956 did General Conference make seminary education the norm for ministerial preparation.” (Kinghorn 112)

            The work of education in the history of the “People Called Methodist” is a fascinating thing.  From their great Book Concern and their publishing house putting out thousands upon thousands of books, pamphlets, treatises, and magazines, to the faithful Sunday School teachers, to the builders of the academies, to the professors of the Theological Seminaries, the Methodist Church has been hard at work in passing on the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, while remaining concerned for the temporal needs of the poor as well in their educational endeavors.  I believe that the educational ministry of the United Methodist Church will continue to serve the church well if they hold onto the roots of the movement, putting the Bible in its rightful place, and holding reason, tradition, and experience in their rightful places as well.  Philippians 3:10