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John Wesley's Views on Science and Christianity: An Examination of the Charge of Antiscience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

J. W. Haas Jr
J. W. Haas Jr
Affiliation:
professor of chemistry at Gordon College, Wenham,Massachusetts.
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Extract

Traditional nineteenth-century views of the relationship between science and Christianity have seen the two in a mortal conflict from which science emerged victorious over an obscurantist theology which sought to dominate the thinking of the new scientific class. Andrew Dickson White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896) represented a high point in such battlefield historiography. Recent writers have found the relationship to be more complex and less militaristic as a result of examining more closely the context in which the alleged battles took place. This paper will examine the case of English evangelist John Wesley (1703–1791), long a scapegoat of the warfare model. Wesley was often tarred with antiintellectualism during his lifetime and, in the ensuing two centuries, this argument has focused on his attitudes toward natural science. The effect has been to cast a leading religious figure of eighteenth-century England in the antiscience mold.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , September 1994 , pp. 378 - 392
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1994

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References

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