Dispatches from Ghana IV: Strangely Warmed
As a Methodist, I’ve always been equal parts amused and embarrassed at the words John Wesley used to describe his conversion experience, which happened in an extremely odd way. Following a failed experience as a missionary to the New World, during which he behaved abominably toward a woman who rejected his advances by denying her communion, Wesley had been sent home to England. His faith at a low ebb, he was wandering around town when he overheard a Bible study leader reading the preface to Martin Luther’s commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans, and dropped in. Something about Luther’s words affected him so that, as he put it in his writings, he felt his heart “strangely warmed.” This language never did much for me, though in retrospect, I realize Wesley was much like me: a scholar of religion who knew to much to be drawn in by simple appeals to emotion, whose critique of the Church of England—his mother church—had led to his expulsion from all its pulpits,...