Predicaments of Progressive Methodism
Christopher Oldstone-Moore
Hugh Price Hughes Lecture
In the great tradition of introductory apologetics, I thought it wise to say something exculpatory about myself and my efforts to write about Hugh Price Hughes. Poor Hughes got stuck with me. How strange that an American such as myself has taken up this project! An American who was raised Congregationalist and not even Methodist. Well, it is not really my fault. It would have been much better if his biography had been written before I came along, if for no other reason than because in 1979, while I was a 16-year-old attending Long Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge, the primary trove of Hughes's personal papers and letters was being tossed in the rubbish in St. John's Wood by relatives of the deceased roommate of his daughter Dorothea.
I dare say that for his
part, Hughes would not have been surprised to learn he was doomed to have an
American as a biographer. There was a
certain synergy between him and
I suppose it was more of this strange synergy that brought me to Hughes, and I am glad for it. I have enjoyed his company: he was charismatic, innovative and pugnacious--in other words just what Methodism needed. After the creative era under Wesley's direction, Methodism became quite proper and middle class--especially Wesleyanism. In other words, they became respectable. Who better than the Welshman Hughes to derespectablize Methodism? He was indeed another Wesley in his willingness to cast off the impediments of propriety and custom, and in his unquenchable faith in new and present possibilities. This talk tonight is my heartfelt farewell to the study of Hugh Price Hughes and of Methodist history. I have moved on to other things, and I hope that someone--perhaps someone here-- will carry on from here.
I do think that Hughes has
been misunderstood and wrongly neglected, especially by mainstream historians, and I hope that I
have played some small part in restoring him to visibility and to his rightful
place. The criticisms that Hughes was a
moral bankrupt (as John Kent believed) or that he was neither original nor
clear in his thinking, as several others have suggested, are really
mistaken, I think he was, if not an
intellectual, then certainly an influential thinker with a definite concept of
a new Methodism. His central quest was
to transform a Methodist sect into the Methodist church. It was to be Methodist in the sense that
preserving the evangelical faith of historic Methodism, but also a church in
the sense that the Church of England was a church, namely an organization which
nurtured the spiritual and moral conscience of the nation. Hughes's achievement was that he convinced so
many that the new
In the course of pursuing
that end, however, he faced a number of very serious predicaments which he
navigated with more or less success. For
the next several minutes, I propose to present a picture of Hughes's analysis
and course of action as he navigated these shoals. And because many of these same dilemmas face
the churches today, this discussion of Hughes's career may shed some light on
our own times as well. I promise to
conclude with a consideration of what lessons might be drawn from his life.
Tonight I intend to survey
three essential and related problems that Hughes confronted: one theological,
one political, and one ecclesiastical.
The first was theological; he sought to answer whether and how the
church could pursue both personal and social salvation. This had never been tried before. One might ask, and many did ask, had not
Methodism progressed for more than a century without a theology of social
salvation? He was convinced it could be
done, and, moreover, that a new Christian politics was an essential means to
accomplish social link personal faith with social renewal. This idea, however, introduced a second
critical predicament. How could the
church be both a church and a political force?
Again, he believed it could be both, but the church would need to be
reformed accordingly. But in this regard
Hughes faced a third key predicament:
would the church be more effective if it were
more open and democratic, or, on the other hand, would it be more effective if
its leaders had greater freedom and authority to act? Or, could one somehow do
both? Here, then, were three fundamental and
interconnected predicaments of progressive Methodism as Hughes conceived and
confronted them. His choices were to
guide the development of the Forward Movement and indicate a new path for Methodism
(and he hoped
Let us begin with the
predicament of social salvation. Hughes
was a child in
The answer to
"should" was yes, the answer to "could" less clear. He needed to learn how. During his first assignment, at
The movement to repeal the
CD Acts was the same thing, though obviously more political in nature. The Acts stipulated the medical examination
and treatment (forcibly if need be) of common prostitutes in garrison towns (of
which
The resolution to the
predicament of social salvation was a whole-hearted yes. Yes, it was untried, but yes, evangelical
faith should and could save society.
But this answer posed a whole range of difficulties. First, of course, temperance and CD repeal
did not amount to social salvation, and in any case, these causes were by no
means successful in the 1870s. Both
suffered repeated political failures.
The tears stirred by a passionate sense of calling in
The disappointments of his causes forced him to raise anew the question of how evangelical faith would change the world. In the course of this renewed quest he made an important discovery. He determined that his causes had not triumphed because heretofore he had viewed social problems as fundamentally moral in nature, whereas they were in fact structural at their core. He realized this when mulling a key dilemma in the CD repeal movement. Ought the movement focus on Parliamentary repeal, or on saving prostitutes from the Acts' effects? As editor of the Protest, the weekly newspaper (originally named Methodist Protest) dedicated to the cause, he had strongly affirmed the primacy of repealing the Acts, because the moral significance of the Acts was the key issue. In 1879, however, he reversed himself. Persuaded by advocates of rescue work, he recognized that prostitution was not caused by the CD Acts, and that even their removal would not end sin or sexual exploitation. He realized that sin was deeper; it was a matter of economic and social structures such as class and a culture of male promiscuity that encouraged or provided for sin. (The emerging Social Purity movement sought to address the latter issue.)
This dawning conception of
the structural reality of social evils was decisively affirmed by the
publication in 1883 of Congregationalist minister Andrew Mearns's
"The Bitter Cry of Outcast London."
This widely publicized pamphlet (even the Queen was said to have been
moved by it) argued that the moral depravity of the poor of
These were questions that
the West London Mission was meant to answer when it opened its doors in
1887. The mission was a more systematic,
institutional response to structures of poverty and depravity. Like
the Oxford University Settlement movement which preceded it by a few years, the
WLM would be a means to break down class barriers by bringing the middle class
to the working class, and by suffusing the working poor with moral influence of
the middle class. Unlike the settlements, the WLM added the power of women in its key
institution: the Sisters of the
People. Like other missions it would be a mechanism to link social service
with the gospel of personal conversion.
But unlike other missions,
the West London Mission added the dimension of politics to social service and
preaching. There was a reason Hughes
founded the
The theology that Hughes
formulated when he founded his mission is found in his published
sermons. Like the
The imperative of the church to become the conscience of the state --this sums up Hughes's answer to the theological question of how the church would pursue both personal and social salvation. The generation of political will was the expression of the this public Christian conscience. This introduces our second great predicament. Could a church be both a church and a political force? Hughes knew a church could not be a political party, but he was determined that it should nevertheless be politically effective. As was the case in his thinking about social salvation, he thought during the 1870s (and even into the early 1880s) that politics were essentially a matter of moral will. His key political concept was what he called “audacity.” Audacity was the expression of moral conviction and a fearless will that would awe opponents and attract allies. Audacity was the political analog of evangelical conversion--a decisive move of the will. It was particularly suited to the CD Repeal campaign in its intensely focused effort of political resistance. But the predicament is not resolved --resistance is merely negative. What would a positive and comprehensive Christian politics be? By the mid-1880s he was seeking out an institutional framework for Christian politics. The West London Mission was one part, but it was limited. He also sought to tap into the greater potential of the Liberal party.
In 1885, the year that
Hughes launched his own Methodist Times,
William Gladstone embarked upon his last and greatest moral campaign on behalf
of Victorian Liberalism --Irish Home Rule.
Hughes hitched his wagon to the star of the GOM, and declared it a
Christian's highest public duty to support Home Rule. He must have understood at some level this
Christian-Liberal connection raised new difficulties. The primary problem was not the angry outcry
of Irish Methodists against him (though that was a problem). Nor was the problem so much that he and the church had to avoid
outright commitment to a political party. The real problem was that the policies of the
Liberal Party were not truly Christian or even moral ones, and that the Liberal
party was not really a religious party at all.
Hughes had encountered this difficulty in 1874 in
Nevertheless, for a time,
Now, it is quite wrong to conclude from this episode, as several historians have carelessly suggested, that Hughes meant to sacrifice Home Rule. Not so; he sacrificed Parnell, but by so doing, believed (if wrongly) that he was saving Home Rule as well. The issue here really was not whether Hughes was being anti-Irish. The real point is that he was committed to an impossible notion of Christian politics; a politics that attempted to achieve secular ends through secular institutions without any compromise of moral principles to secular political realities. The real response to "What is morally wrong cannot be politically right" is "what is morally right may not be politically possible."
This is to say that Hughes had still failed to resolve the fundamental predicament of Christian politics. The Parnell case was another application of the politics of audacity--the negative politics of rejection. His politics could stop people like Parnell, and repeal acts like the CD Acts. But without compromise, without accommodation for competing economic and social interests, how could there be a positive, creative Christian politics? Once again, as in the case of social reform, Hughes was aware at some level that the answer must be institutional. This explains why, immediately after the Parnell affair, Hughes directed his energies towards the creation of the Free Church Congress--later the National Council of Evangelical Free Churches. The primary impetus of the Congress was to muster the moral resources and marshal the political power of the so-called "Nonconformist Conscience." Even so, the Congresses and later the National Council could not be themselves a political party, and Hughes was still forced to repose many of his hopes on the Liberals.
By 1893, however,
Hughes's position with
respect to imperialism and the Boer War has drawn a great deal of
criticism. It would appear that the
historian John Kent abandoned any interest in Hughes in revulsion over Hughes's
support for the war. While the morality
of this war was rather more complicated than
In sum, therefore,
Hughes's answer to the predicament of politics was only partly successful. His political agitations could succeed in
limited negative actions, but little was achieved at the institutional
level. Hughes understood this to a
degree, and so he did not place all his hopes with the Liberal party or the
When it came to the reform of Methodism, Hughes's top priority was to scrap the itinerancy. In this sense he wanted to follow the Anglican model rather than the Methodist. The itinerancy had hindered him personally until his permanent appointment to the West London Mission, and he believed it hindered the creation of effective leadership in the circuit ministry which was necessary if Methodism was to act as the conscience of the nation, and serve as a force for social reform. Simply put, he wanted every Methodist minister to do in every circuit in Methodism what he was able to do as the Superintendent of the West London Mission. Hughes exerted a great deal of his rather formidable influence in the 1890s on the effort to extend pastoral terms beyond the 3-year limit. At one point, he joined forces with the conservative leader James Rigg, to press for the creation of "separated chairmen," for the Districts. This would mean that the Chairmen would be freed from their circuit duties and devote themselves to being true leaders of their Districts. The lay leader Robert Perks (MP mentioned before), and usually a Hughes ally, led the opposition to what he called Methodist bishops. Perks did, however, support Hughes on the issue of increasing the length of pastoral appointments, that is, until 1897. In that year Perks and his law partner and fellow MP, Henry Fowler, concluded that the Wesleyan Conference was not to be trusted with determining the term of pastoral appointments; only a legally-mandated limit would protect the rights of the local circuits. Hughes's campaign to have a Parliamentary bill simply remove the 3-year limit was defeated. It would take years to determine what new Parliamentary arrangement might be made to safeguard lay interests.
Hughes lost because his efforts to strengthen the hand of the preachers clashed with an increasingly powerful laity, a trend that he greatly assisted. He allied himself with Perks and championed the alteration of the Methodist constitution to give more authority to the Representative (joint pastoral, lay representatives) Session, including the right to elect the president. Hughes was more than an ally; he was the true champion of the lay cause, and he openly worried about the lack of working-class delegates. In 1895, he stood in the forefront of those calling for the admission of women delegates. This effort failed, but in most ways Hughes succeeded in advancing the democratization of Methodism despite the strenuous and anguished cries of the senior pastors. In the final analysis, then, Hughes did help achieve a wider and more open participation of the laity in the institutions of the church, but for that very reason, was unable also to establish the conditions of stronger pastoral leadership.
One of his favorite metaphors for the church was an army. Ecumenism, whether it be Nonconformist or Protestant in scope, was to him the marshalling of larger, more united forces. The leaders--the generals-- were essential. They would study the enemy, inspire their troops and coordinate their assault. His key initiative as President of the Conference in 1898-99 was to organize special conventions of ordained and lay Methodist leaders in every district. These conferences were intended for Methodists to regroup their spiritual resources, or as he put it, "to recall our original vocation, which is to spread Scriptural holiness throughout the world" and then to consecrate themselves anew to their calling as Christians and Christian leaders. He proposed separate meetings for lay preachers, class leaders, stewards, Sunday-school teachers, and ministers to consider their unique tasks. In the case of the ministers, he proposed two sessions: one concerning "personal religion, our privileges in Christ, all that our divine Redeemer is able and willing to do for us here and now," and another "to consider together not merely our personal relation to Christ, but our official duties, responsibilities, privileges, and opportunities."
He was attempting to shape
the church in his own image. He knew
that more Hugh Price Hugheses must be raised up to
continue the effort of translating faith into national salvation, and Methodism
into the conscience of the state. At the
same time, Robert Perks, that self-styled lay leader of Methodism, had his own
plan to build up Methodism, the Twentieth Century Fund, which was would recruit
a million Methodists to donate a guinea each.
Perks envisioned it as a grass-roots movement of the Methodist masses to
demonstrate their power in grand fashion.
It was in some respects the counterpoint to Hughes’s effort to recruit
the resources and commitment of the leadership.
Hughes was, in fact, rather skeptical of the Fund, particularly the
idealism of restricting donations to one guinea, and his skepticism proved well
founded. The Fund did not reach its goal
until large donations were accepted, and even then until years after its
intended time of completion. The
troubles of the Twentieth-Century Fund confirmed for Hughes his conclusion that
the future depended much more upon the leaders--the generals, as it were, than
upon the ranks of army of the
Conclusions
Hughes's solutions to the
predicaments he faced might be summed up this way. He affirmed that the new Methodism would
pursue social salvation in conjunction with personal salvation, and that it
would do so by acting as the conscience of the state. The WLM would serve as a laboratory, model,
and platform for this new gospel of social reform. So far, so good. Hughes decided, moreover, that the church
must be politicized if it was to act as conscience of the state. When suitable Christian political
institutions proved lacking, the reform of the church became more urgent. Hughes could not ultimately decide,
however, whether stronger leadership or more open polity was the key to a more
effective church, and he tried to have it both ways. In the final analysis, then, Hughes had great
difficulty in finding suitable institutional forms for his social gospel
theology. The Forward Movement was at
the end of his life in 1902 still largely what it was in 1885--Hughes
himself. His enormous personality was
the primary means by which faith was transformed into social and political
action, and action retranslated back into faith. And it was not possible to institutionalize
this personality—to bottle, can, or freeze-dry Hugh Price Hughes for all
time. In fact I think Hughes tried. He attempted to replicate himself--through
his leadership conferences for example-- but to no avail. After 1902, and certainly after 1914, there
would never be another Hughes; there would never be another person who had such
an unshakable belief that the God of history was moving events rapidly forward;
that the transformation of an evangelical sect into a national church would
reveal in sudden glory the irresistible power of God working through Methodism;
and that the Kingdom of God on earth was at hand.
Lessons for today
If one were to be so bold
as to offer a summary of practical lessons to be drawn from Hughes’s career, I
would offer the following:
1. Hughes's concept of
leadership left something to be desired.
His metaphor
of the church as army had only limited value.
It was too great an issue for him to resolve. Indeed, the predicament of authority and
democracy still troubles the church.
Would it be helpful to adopt some form of bishops? Hughes thought so. He always thought of them as servants rather
than rulers. The question remains as to
how the church can speak with authority in a democratic, laissez faire age on
either its own or national affairs.
2. Christian politics
eluded Hughes because it is impossible.
I dare say there is no such thing as Christian politics (beyond a
limited scope). This lesson can be
observed in the attempts of American neo-evangelicals to politicize themselves
in the past generation. Their politics
is like Hughes’s early politics:
entirely negative. Compare the
attacks on
3. The predicament of
social salvation remains to this day. Protestantism is split over it--and the
personal salvationists are winning. The reasons can be found his Hughes's
career. His commitment to a social
gospel was fraught with difficulties.
Social reform, Hughes discovered, requires the development of
institutions, and it takes time. It did
not happen as quickly as Hughes thought it would. He was clearly too optimistic, for example,
that mission work would break the barriers of class. These problems had a theological dimension as
well. In the social gospel scheme,
delays in social redemption adversely effect the
spiritual life of the faithful. The
connection between personal and social redemption makes personal salvation more
problematic, less immediate, and more uncertain. Hughes was certain, and that meant a lot to
people around him, but when he was not present, the faith flagged. Circuit statistics show Hughes’ impact on
membership as a wave – filling when he was in the Circuit, receding when he
left to close to the figure before he came.
The fundamentalists who broke away from the mainline churches at the
beginning of the twentieth century rejected the social gospel, and affirmed the
certainty and immediacy of personal salvation.
Richard Helmstadter and others have denounced
Hughes and his generation for betraying evangelical faith. But these fundamentalist evangelicals have
gone too far themselves. Their
theological and political difficulties--as I have attempted to argue--are as bad or worse than those in Hughes's time. I believe we can say that after Hughes and
his generation, there really is no going back to ignorance of the social
dimensions of faith.
4. Hughes had great
trouble establishing his legacy. It is
worth considering why. One of the things
that surprised me greatly was how misunderstood Hughes was even by those who
knew him. Ernest Rattenbury
gave little heed or credit to Hughes's distinctive ideas, and Hughes's own
daughter was rather confused. Lidgett, Rattenbury, and others
of the next generation (and Donald Soper after them)
drew more inspiration from Anglican writers than from him. The reason is simple. You can't read Hughes. Several have tried unsuccessfully to
"read" him in his collected sermons.
But they have not been particularly successful. He was too busy to write. He did not consider the ages. He did not consider anything slow and
gradual. It was all the here and
now.
What is the lesson here? Learn from Hughes's mistakes. Expect a long, slow development towards the
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
QUESTIONS
Q1
You commented upon the breaking down of class barriers as one of the
motivations of Hughes’ setting up of the
It’s true I didn’t explore that in great detail
but the social history of the West London Mission could be a project for
someone to take on! I do know that the
main means by which this connection must have been made to me was: One the sisters of the people going out and establishing
institutions like mothers’ clubs and childrens’ clubs
and various other organisations to incorporate the working poor into the life
of the church. And this is striking too
and somewhat innovative, the Sisters of the People also did serve as lay-preachers,
and they did have their own societies that met, and many of these were the
women’s group for example, they would meet and they would also form from that
group a society. Some of the Sisters of
the People actually preached in the open air, that was
another innovation that evolved. That was one primary way. Another primary way was Hughes’ evening
popular evangelical sermons, that were designed to
bring in the masses. They provided
music, popular entertainment . They had a band that would play some songs,
and it would be festive, and that would attract people to come in and be a part
of the church that way. But there’s much
more to be said particularly about the lives of these various organisations
that the
Q2 As a Welshman myself, I was wondering
how he got on with Lloyd George in the Boer War, because Lloyd George opposed
the Boer War didn’t he? He wasn’t a
Liberal really was he as Lloyd George was.
Well actually a lot of Hughes’ best friends
opposed it. I would put Hughes in the
Liberal camp. He was a Liberal
Imperialist at this point. His best friends,
like Henry Lung for example, who was possibly the person that was the closest
friend in his life was an active member of the “Stop the War Committee”. In fact his daughter and wife I think had
anti-war sentiments. He was opposed to
everyone right around him, and everyone kind of stayed away from the great man
and didn’t confront him so much to his face, but he was a little bit outside
even his own group, which made it all the more striking and in the footnotes I
reproduce a long poem that was published in punch about Hughes and the war,
that mocked Hughes for being a Liberal who then supports this war of imperialising. So it was very strongly understood at the
time that this was a very surprising position for him to take, but I hope that
you can see from the way I describe it why he did that. Because he needed institutions to be
Christianized and sometimes I think his belief got ahead of the reality. He believed that Christian power was, and could be more Christian,
way ahead of what it really was.
Q3 What was his relationship with Mark Guy Pearse?
Very friendly. They worked together closely for
years. They divided up their tasks at
the
Q4 You didn’t comment about Hugh Price
Hughes’ attitude to children’s education, the Methodist tradition of schools,
and I wonder if he tried to introduce direction in that particular dimension.
Well, he believed that the Methodist school
system was inadequate. The Methodists
would never be able to create a school system big enough to comprehend even
half or even part of Methodism. As it
existed in his day it really was a series of schools pretty much for the well
healed and privileged members of the Methodist community. So his concern was
that we have a national non-denominational education system, because that’s the
only way in which Methodist would not be forced to go to Anglican schools! That was important to him and the
conservatives, that he always supported, really was very protective of the
Methodist school system small as it was, and so many of the elite Methodists
supported the Conservative Party in its efforts to channel tax money into
parochial schools., that’s what they’re called in the United States, private
church schools. He wanted to stop that,
that would have been a fourth or fifth one, because the problem there is that
there are a lot of people who also supported a national school system but
wanted it to be secular, but he didn’t want it to be secular. He wanted to create a school system which was
religious in an ecumenical sense. That
issue was just coming up when he died and he was just getting revved up. But Hughes was starting to gear up the forces
that eventually became the big 1903/1904 when the non-conformists actually went
into passive resistance, threatened to not pay taxes. I think Hughes would have been there. He would have been at the forefront of that
if he hadn’t died.
Q5 Hugh Price Hughes and his ecumenical leanings? Was he seeking to replace the Church of
England as the default Christianity in
He would change his policies from time to time,
but generally, at one point in his life he was working hard in the Grindlewald
Conferences to see if he could get Methodism to merge with Anglicanism. And he believed that if Methodists could be
brought up to the stage of wanting Bishops and the Anglicans could be brought
down to the stage of viewing those Bishops as merely appointees not as
specially ordained people, then you got it!
But neither happened! Neither the
Anglicans came down nor the Methodists went up, and that moment passed without
any success at all. Given the failure
there he did hope that at least the non-conformists would rise up to a level of
equality – he would always think anyway – if not superiority, to the Anglicans
so that they would negotiate on equal terms.
He was always very irritated by the presumption of superiority, and in
fact in many institutional terms the real superiority of the Church of England as
against the non-conformist. The
non-conformist council was going to unite, create institutions
, create forces that would at least level the playing field, and
re-negotiate that situation.
Q6. Thanks for this evening. There was two moments in Hughes life that I
think I’d like to hear you offer an opinion about. The first is his friendship with Henry Lung,
which almost saw Hughes himself resign from ministry, because when Lung was
prepared to criticise the most sacred
cow that Methodists had which was missionaries, and Lung had
disciplinary action brought against him, then of course Hughes in loyalty to
Lung stood by him and his own presidential chances were delayed as a result of
that, but the loyalty of the man, and his readiness actually to espouse really
the most radically unpopular causes within Methodism didn’t make it seem as if
he was the sort of person Methodism in general would want to follow. He was far too angular and critical and
radical in many ways. Then if I may just
add to that, you did mention the Methodist Times and you did suggest that he
should write. Well of course for 17
years he wrote his editorial in The Times and in a
very consistent and drip-feed way he shaped Methodist opinion and he was avidly
read, even by Gladstone and others, who turned to the Methodist Times almost
before anything else. Isn’t the tragedy
of Hughes - I’m sure you’re right in pointing to the inconsistencies in the
positions he adopted on many issues – but isn’t the tragedy of Hughes the
tragedy of all late Victorian thinkers that the First World War finished them
all off, because of them being wedded to this doctrine of progress, that was
such a 19C thing. I mean when we think
about it, the disciple for the next generation who followed Hughes was John
Scott-Lidgett, and John Scott-Lidgett
wrote, but who reads what he wrote?
I take your point very well. Maybe he couldn’t have written himself into
history. Given that fact I agree with
you whole heartedly, and I love your slow-drip metaphor I’m going to
incorporate that in anything else I say!
That’s quite right. But we cannot
read a summation of him because it’s a slow-drip form, and no person can be
forced to read 17 years of leader articles in newspapers. I do think though there were Anglicans who
were writing and they are still read even from this period, so there might be a
counter argument there. I mean Westcott
and
Q7
I think so many things I found quite amazing there. One is really just how much of that whole
situation that the late 19th Century has echoes today. One is on
this matter of leadership. I think we’ve
got an enormous problem in the church today with leadership, In that the church by and large, certainly in
the Methodist Church, sort of goes along with the general culture of levelling,
that leaders are not there to be followed, leaders are there to be blamed. We put them on a pedestal so that we can aim
at them better! So, you know, who wants to be a leader? I think that’s a real problem. Another one is this contrast between personal
conversion and social conversion, which I thought you explained brilliantly,
and I still see that as a very crucial matter, with all this discussion that we
have in the Methodist Church in Britain today about our calling and where on
earth are we going. It’s very difficult.
I wonder you know quite what we do about personal conversion in the
I think that’s true, and I wished I had answers
to it. I think as far as Hughes is
concerned the problem he didn’t think he had during his life was the
difficulties and the time involved, he thought - he was something of an
eschatological person – he believed that it was going to happen now, and that’s how the personal and
the social work together, because you have a personal conversion and then boom,
that becomes a social conversion, it all happens like an explosion of energy,
like he was, and when it didn’t happen then you’re stuck with where we are
today, but it’s not all going to fit together in one big explosion. Then the two separate themselves, and what am
I going to do for myself, and my faith in God? And what am I going to do over
here in my corner of the world? And the
two salvations are not the same, and so I’m afraid to say that Hughes doesn’t
have an answer for us there. His answer
was that they would happen together. So
we’re going to have to pick up from there.
As a scholar of Hughes rather than a minister of the Gospel I think I’d
better stop at that point. But you mentioning leadership reminded me that I
didn’t answer Leslie’s second question about Hughes’ angularity as a leader. And your mention of the missionary
controversy I had excised actually a little portion in the speech, where I
talked about the fact that that was his transition. He had been this kind of bomb thrower, and
that was his biggest bomb. And he took on the heart of the Methodist
tradition. He was almost defeated. After that he recognised that he mustn’t do
that any more. He mustn’t throw bombs
anymore, he must try a different approach, that’s when he became more of a
reformer, and he gradually became over the course of the 1890’s people developed
more trust in him as a more steady person, until he was finally elected in
1898, which was about as early as anyone could muster the desire to put him
into power. But by that time he’d been
stable for a good five or six years, and had proven that he wasn’t going to try
to change everything all at once and take on power. He was slowing down and acting in a more
deliberative way, but he still believed that we were right before the moment,
it was just going to be round the next
corner, no, no, round the next corner. I’m
glad he didn’t last until World War 1 because he would have been absolutely
destroyed by it.