Radical Grace: Justice for the Poor and Marginalized—Charles Wesley's Views for the Twenty-First Century

It is often said that Methodists, who were ‘born in song’, sing their theology. In his book, Radical Grace: Justice for the Poor and Marginalized—Charles Wesley's Views for the Twenty-First Century, S. T. Kimbrough examines how the writings of one of Methodism's earliest hymn-writers, Charles Wesley, should shape its theology and actions in the twenty-first century.Kimbrough, a research fellow at Duke Divinity School and founder of the Charles Wesley Society, takes in turn Wesley's sermons, manuscript journal, and poetry and locates in them themes of poverty, justice, and mercy. He then uses these to construct a challenge to twenty-first-century Christianity, urging Methodists to recover ‘a memory of justice for the poor and marginalized’. He concludes the book by offering worship resources for a theology of radical grace, using Charles Wesley's poems, along with musical settings for contemporary congregational use.Kimbrough's thesis is that Charles Wesley's writings were underpinned by a commitment to the poor, something that he believes was largely edited out when selected hymns were later chosen for publication in Methodist hymn books. Wesley's theology of radical grace, Kimbrough argues, is based on a belief that the poor are Jesus' ‘bosom friends’ in whom God's divine love is revealed, flowing upwards, according to this verse by Wesley: Not from the greatest to the leastThe saving word shall move,The poor are chosen first and blestWith thine enriching love. Compassion is therefore the right response to the poor, not because Christians ought to, but because they want to. This is a compassion that is self-giving and costly, according to Wesley's verses, and requires the giver not only to give but to weep alongside those who suffer.Kimbrough describes this as a theology of radical grace: an experience of the love of God, which calls from those who receive it a desire to give and live as God does. He describes Wesley's radical edge as being one that tackled the status quo, and, instead of distancing and judging the poor, embraced them as friends and sources of the divine. His critique of those who called themselves God's priests is devastating, describing them as people who: in splendid ease and pleasures liveBy pillaging the poor. In recent years a number of writers (David Field, Andrew Thompson, Randy Maddox, and others) have examined the opinions on poverty of Charles's brother, John Wesley. Fewer have looked at the younger brother's views. Both brothers abhorred the poverty they saw around them and expected a sacrificial response from richer Christians. Both appear to have shared a theology of radical grace as described by Kimbrough. But it is not apparent from Charles's writings that his concern for the pastoral care of the poor and marginalized extended to the more structural causes of the poverty. Kimbrough's work suggests that Charles did not engage in what Theodore Jennings calls the ‘evangelical economics’ of his brother.The last third of the book consists of suggested liturgies for congregations to ‘help develop an ethic of service to the poor’. These comprise of collects, bible readings, and the poems of Charles Wesley set to music. These poems are, as Kimbrough describes, ‘didactic, inspirational and motivational’. Unfortunately, it is hard to imagine some of these verses being used by modern congregations. The first two verses of ‘Which of the Christians now’, for example, appear to be distinctly more sarcastic than Kimbrough allows. Sarcasm works well in a poem, less so in a hymn.In the concluding argument of the book, Kimbrough describes how he visited the New Room in Bristol, and found on the main door an inscribed metal plate urging people to give alms to the poor. The metal plate was so blackened, he says, that the inscription was illegible. He uses this as a metaphor: at the beginning of Methodism, care for the poor was central, yet now it is forgotten. He urges Methodists to recover the memory, to ‘polish the inscription’, and restore the responsibility to give to the poor. Yet on visiting the New Room last year, I saw this plaque. It is indeed now polished and legible, and the museum there includes a strong focus on compassion and justice for the poor. Perhaps this is a ‘memory of justice’ that many Methodists have already begun to recover.

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