I identify strongly with the Unitarian approach and usually enjoy the services here. Today the focus is on the abolitionist work of John Wesley who was born on 17 June 1703 ( 28 June in the modern calendar), the fifteenth of nineteen children born to Samuel Wesley, Rector of Epworth, and his wife Susanna. The Wesleys lived in an impoverished area and worked tirelessly for social justice. This puritan parental influence would be the inspiration for John Wesley’s work, and that of his brother Charles, both of whom who went on to found the Methodists. John, a graduate of Christchurch, Oxford, like his father, became a clergyman. He believed that Christian living depended on acts as well as faith. He was vocal about ordinary people being excluded from the church. And although he was always fiercely loyal to the established church he was often barred from the pulpit for his opinions. He therefore began to address the public in open areas, giving rise to ‘Field preaching’ as a feature of Methodism.
He is said to have preached 40,000 sermons and travelled 250,000 miles. John famously said "I look upon the whole world as my parish' Until his death in 1791 he continued to campaign on social issues such as prison reform and universal education.
In the 1730s he visited North America including Georgia, which was then a British colony, and there he came into contact with enslaved people. This experience left him with a loathing of slavery but at first he felt unable to act on this. His chance came when Granville Sharp contested the case of a runaway slave (James Somerset) in the courts. John Wesley was inspired by a text by the Philadelphia Quaker, Anthony Benezet.
Two years later, in 1774, he wrote a tract called "Thoughts on Slavery." In it, he attacked the Slave Trade and proposed a boycott of slave-produced sugar and rum. In August 1787, he wrote to the Abolition Committee to express his support. In 1788, when the abolition campaign was at its height, he preached a sermon in Bristol, one of the foremost slave trading ports. In those days, an anti-slavery sermon could not be preached without considerable personal risk to the preacher and a disturbance broke out.
He maintained an interest in the abolition movement until he died. Wesley also famously said: "Give liberty to whom liberty is due, that is, to every child of man, to every partaker of human nature. Let none serve you but by his own act and deed, by his own voluntary action. Away with all whips, all chains, all compulsion. Be gentle toward all men; and see that you invariably do with every one as you would he should do unto you'So......... after lunch at The Ashmolean I decide to see the exhibition 'Titian to Canaletto: Drawing in Venice, With a contemporary response by Jenny Saville' I prefer the latter; it is fantastic. The exhibition traces the role of drawing in Venice and its importance over three centuries, attempting to dispel the myth that Venetian artists, including their greatest painter, Titian, had no interest in drawing. In a parallel exhibition, Jenny Saville has produced new work on paper and canvas in response to the powerful qualities of Venetian drawing. She transcends the earlier work with themes around Femininity and Motherhood.
I end my day out with a walk back to the bus stop via Christchurch Meadows. Life continues.
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