"Then you will know the
truth and the truth will make you free." John 8:32
On November 8, 1842, five
ministers (Orange Scott, Jotham Horton, LaRoy Sunderland, Luther Lee, and
Lucius Matlack) announced that they were withdrawing from the Methodist Church
they had loved and faithfully served.
In his book explaining why
they were leaving Methodism, Orange Scott gave two main reasons: the evil of
slavery, and the oppressive hand of the bishops. There would be no
slave-holders in this new denomination…..and there would be no bishops, either!
To make sure their reasons
were clearly understood they named their new denominational magazine The True Wesleyan – intending their
emphasis on the TRUE.
This newly formed
denomination grew rapidly. Others were drawn by their passion for social
justice in the name of Christ and the Gospel. Scott said on one occasion, “We
are anti-slavery, anti-intemperance (anti-alcohol) and anti-everything wrong.”
They also boldly announced
their intention, as a denomination, to disobey the Fugitive Slave Law which
required an escaped slave, even in the North, to return him to his owner. This
was an early example of civil disobedience, and those who took part were
following in the footsteps of Peter and the apostles, who said to the
Sanhedrin: We must obey God rather than
men (Acts 5:29)
Orange Scott died of
tuberculosis and exhaustion in 1847, just four years into the life of the new
denomination he helped to establish. Not only the Church, but also the nation
lost one of its strongest anti-slavery voices. Historian Donald Mathews of
Princeton and the University of North Carolina paid him that tribute. At Scott’s
funeral, Luther Lee said, “He lived in advance of his age.” He gave his life to
persuade the nation of the evils of slavery. We, today, are a nation persuaded.
The place of Wesleyans in
the Abolitionist Movement was underscored in 2002, when the Oxford University
Press published an important legal reference entitled The Oxford Companion to American Law. On the cover, superimposed
over a view of the Supreme Court Building, is a painting that depicts one of
the most historic cases ever to come before that court. It was the trial of the
slaves on the Spanish ship Armistad, who
successfully rebelled against their captors but were then recaptured in
American waters. Should they be returned to their owners as property?
An American abolitionist,
Lewis Tappan, funded their legal defense, and former President of the United
States John Quincy Adams pled their cause in court. Lewis Tappen was a
colleague of LaRoy Sutherland, one of the founders of the Wesleyan Methodist
denomination. They were both named on a wanted poster in New Orleans, and the
price on their heads was $10,000. Their crime: being abolitionists. After the
trial the Armistad Defense Fund became the budget for the American Missionary Association, including Wesleyan pastors and their church members.
The Wesleyan Church from
its inception stood out from the Methodists and other mainline denominations
because of their stand against social evil and moral injustice. Because they
stood up they stood out.
God used this Wesleyan movement
we belong to rouse the moral conscience of our nation and caused it to right a
terrible wrong. God is calling Wesleyans today to stand for holiness and
righteousness and against the moral evils of our day. The time has come to
stand up so we can stand out.
