British mark Charles Wesley’s birthday

Charles Wesley

United Methodist News Service
LONDON—Three hundred years to the day since prolific hymn writer Charles Wesley was born in England, worshipers gathered Dec. 18 at St. Marylebone Parish Church. They celebrated his life and 7,000-plus hymn legacy that has shaped Christian worship ever since.
Like his older brother, John Wesley, founder of the worldwide Methodist movement, Charles was ordained in the Church of England. He remained an Anglican all his life. When he died in 1788, he was buried in the St. Marylebone churchyard.
At the Dec. 18 evening service, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rt. Rev. Rowan Williams, and the president of the British Methodist Church, the Rev. Martyn Atkins, were among those who acknowledged Wesley’s substantial contributions to Christian worship.
“We thank God for the life and ministry of Charles Wesley, for his winsome, passionate, integrated and authentic faith, for his infectious love of Christ,” Atkins said during a sermon.
Atkins called Wesley a model Christian who shared his faith through songs that “touch eternity and the deepest place in our spirits.”
The service was jointly organized by both St. Marylebone and the Hinde Street Methodist Church. The two congregations recently signed a covenant agreeing to work together more closely.
The worship service closed a year of events honoring the tercentenary anniversary of Wesley’s birth, ranging from an ecumenical Evensong in Westminster Abbey and academic conferences to British Broadcasting Corp. radio and television programs about Wesley.
A series of Advent programs on the BBC’s Radio 4 network took its theme and title from the great Wesley hymn “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus.”
In October, the BBC-TV’s flagship religious program, Songs of Praise, aired two hourlong programs about Charles Wesley and his influence. Producer David Taviner noted that for a television series with a 46-year history of celebrating hymn singing, Wesley is a central figure.
“On Songs of Praise, hymns are our bread and butter,” he said, “so Charles Wesley is right up there for us.”
Taviner, a Methodist local preacher, said he wanted to make a program that helped a broad range of television viewers get to know the man who gave the world “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” “Oh, For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” and other beloved hymns.
“Three hundred years later, Charles Wesley’s impact is still felt worldwide,” Taviner said. “Brought up in rural Lincolnshire at the back end of nowhere, it’s amazing what (Charles and his brother, John) did during their lives and all those they have affected.”
One person interviewed for “Songs of Praise” was S T Kimbrough, an American scholar, musician and performer. With his one-man show “Sweet Singer,” Kimbrough has brought Charles Wesley to life for audiences around the world.
Wesley, he explained, was “a man who sought above all else to live in the presence of God every day of his life.”
Daily Bible study and prayer, meditation, fasting and taking part in the Eucharist were all part of the spiritual discipline that gave birth to Wesley’s prolific hymn-writing, Kimbrough said. Wesley understood that hymns establish bridges among people; that they could not only “convict but also bring people to Christ.”
What many don’t know is that Wesley didn’t confine his poetic skills to religious hymns and poems. Among his manuscripts is a poem written for his children about horseback riding and another about a cat called Grimalkin.
Kimbrough said it is in these bits of verse that “you can just see Charles Wesley the man, with a twinkle in his eye, entertaining his children.”
Regarding his relationship with his brother, Kimbrough added that although Charles and John were very different men, they complemented each other.
“Charles was the troubadour, and John is the guy carrying the bag of songs, editing them, collecting the tunes, doing all the organizational stuff,” he said. “Charles is curves and ellipses, while John is all straight lines and angles.”
Like Kimbrough, Donald Saliers, emeritus William Cannon professor of theology and worship at UM-related Emory University in Atlanta, believes that the two brothers really were “yin and yang” to each other; very contrasting in terms of their sensibilities.
“Charles’ hymns and poems are full of both great doctrinal integrity and biblical imagination but also great affection, emotional fervor and deep piety,” Saliers observed.
He said he believes Wesley’s greatest contribution is in his hymn texts that “awaken that lyrical side of faith and doctrine and make it accessible.”
Saliers cites the phrase “lost in wonder love and praise” from the last line of Wesley’s hymn “Love Divine All Loves Excelling” as an excellent example of his lyrical theological sensibilities at work. They are words that Saliers takes as a motto for his own personal vocation.
“Charles Wesley gave us a lyrical faith and doctrine and, above all else, a hidden imaginative force that is still carried in the body of the Methodist and Wesleyan family,” he said.
“If we can recover it and practice it, it will make all the difference in a time of literalism, dullness and cultural silliness.”