Food and early Methodists

Rev. Charles Wallace
Oxford, UK
17 October 2012

This is Charlie Wallace.  Charlie is a former chaplain of Willamette University (Salem, OR) and is now associate professor of Religious Studies there, and is working on a book about early Methodists and food.  I met him at the Oxford Centre for Methodism, where this photo was taken.  Since food is a crucial part of health, I am including Charlie's research here.  Thanks to him for sharing it with us.

Susannah, John and Charles' mother, was very strict in her food practices.  She provided no snacks, the family had 3 meals a day, and much of it they had grown or provided themselves.  They lived with food insecurity, since Samuel was such a poor manager of the Epworth rectory lands.  Sometimes Susannah did not know where the next meal would come from, but she taught her children to be grateful when God provides food.  So this sets up two perspectives in the Wesley movement regarding food:
1.  Learning to live simply and on less
2.  Thankfulness and celebration the Christian rightly feels when food is provided by God.
Later John took more of the fasting side and Charles celebrated food in his hymns.  Charles' monthly expense records illustrate a most expansive middle class life than John's.

Early Methodists acted out both strands of thought.  Rev. John and Mary Fletcher, two core and crucial Methodists, were pretty restrained regarding food.  One of John's supporters wrote them asking them not to skimp on meals.  The opposite perspective was demonstrated by a prominent post-Wesleyan preacher named Charles Atmore, who was renowned among the other preachers for knowing when to show up at the houses of his congregants at dinner time.  He would then take the best cuts of meat and enjoy the food immensely (Wallace, Charles. "Antipast in Heaven: Eating and Drinking in Early Methodism," personal interview. (Oxford, UK) 17 October 2012).



Charlie researching at the
Oxford Centre for Methodism

John tried vegetarianism, encouraged by George Cheyne's teachings from The Natural Method of Curing Disease.  He avoided meat at his evening meal, but wasn't able to sustain being a vegetarian.  He stopped tea because it made him jittery.  He did drink a small amount of wine daily, which "far from doing me any hurt, it contributed much to the recovery of my strength." (Wesley, John.  "An Extract from Dr. Cadigan's Dissertation on the Gout and All Chronic Diseases," Works, XIV, 266, quoted in Ott, On Health, 202.)  John's primary concern was people's abuse of eating and drinking -- "It is not generally the quality, but the quantity, of what we eat which hurts." (Wesley, John. "Thoughts on Nervous Disorders," Works, XI, 518, quoted in Ott, On Health, 202.)  He believed in fasting for the soul's health and thus saving more money to give those who were poor (Wallace).