NCNYUMC.ORG |

It is a matter of record that in the beginnings of the Methodist movement, some 250 years ago in England that the ruling class there was terribly upset with John and Charles Wesley, because they were the leaders of the Methodist movement.

Also for the record, the word “Methodist” was coined by the students of the university where young students studied. The word was intended as an insult, like “nigger”, or “polack” in our nation. Back of the coining of the word, and its usage lies one of the heritages of the Wesley brothers, and I hasten to add, their mother, who was the real founder of the movement.

The point was, as it is in our day, it was possible for the upper classes to go to college or university and breeze through without lifting an academic finger. In our day, we have Cliff Notes; in the Wesleyan day, they weren't to be found. Much drinking and carousing in general was the rule of that cadre of students.

At first, the use of the word Methodist was taken as an insult, but shortly after it appeared our students flipped the original meaning of the word, understanding it for what it really was: envy, and guilt. That is, the very presence of the Methodist kids triggered those feelings in those students who did not understand what was going on, but felt very uncomfortable at the successes the Methodist kids were having.

In a word, our students were “systematic” about their lives. Studies, above all, came first in their agendas, because that was the primary reason they were there. One has to get the tools mastered if one is to go out in the world and try to being Jesus to that world.

System gave birth to Methodist - an unlooked for development by the Wesley brothers.

Keeping the envy and guilt in mind, I ask the reader to shift gears for about 250 years to our present day. Many colleges and universities these days seem be more interested in sports and the moneys sports generate for the colleges and universities.

At the same time, those sports/students who really get themselves a sound, systematic education are increasingly difficult to find, if only because of the attraction they receive from professional sports. Millions and millions of dollars are there for the taking. To say nothing of the publicity the university reaps nationally if a team is doing well. One professional basketball player even went so far as not to go to college, leaping from being a high school graduate to the ranks of the NBA.

In four years, he is ranked the number one player in the NBA. Leading scorer, as a matter of fact. One student athlete recently left Syracuse University because he got a good offer for one of the professional basketball teams. He was a sophomore at the time.

So studies have once again become meaningless for large groups of students.

And where are the Methodists? Well, it turns out that in Wesley's day, there was another large issue: the treatment of the ordinary folks by the ruling class.

To put it mildly, the lower classes were illiterate, diseased, alcoholic and unable to be anything about their conditions. What work did get found usually involved working conditions that dramatically shortened the lives of the people and/or crippled those people so they were not able to make a living.

As the reader may imagine, government did nothing to ease the situation, nor did the Church of England.

Until the Wesley brothers came along. The ruling class was so upset with John Wesley that they forbade him the use of the pulpits of England to make his case. So he took to the streets, the farms, the mine pits, the slums - anywhere he could find to preach about Jesus Christ - and His concerns about the people who were downtrodden.

In our day, Wesley's efforts come under the heading of “Social Concerns.” That phrase is a twin to “Methodists, as a cuss word intended to put down those so involved. Social Concerns means that something must be done about the misery in which people were living. I'm a product of that time in that we were so poor we didn't know what it was not to be poor.

Health care was non-existent; food was contaminated; those who did work got 60 to 80 hours a week work without an increase in pay; living quarters were miserable. And on and on and on…

If the reader is stirring in discomfort with the above, it is only because our nation has returned to that state of being. The times have “changed”…for the worse.

And it's going to stay that way for a long time to come. Which brings me to what in our home as our daughters were growing up a standard table behavior. We talked about…social concerns, all the time.

Our oldest, Laurie Halse Anderson, now a world-famous author of novels for the young, put out a phrase about social concerns recently as we were discussing something of those days. Her way of saying it?

“We had cottage cheese along with our social concerns.”