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In John Wesley and Christian Antiquity Ted A. Campbell offers a new and critical way of understanding Wesley and the larger phenonmenon of the eighteenth-century evangelical revival. Campbell argues that Christian antiquity functined for Wesley as an alternative cultural vision for religious renewal, much in the same way that classical antiquity served as a cultural model for secular Enlightenment thinkers of the eighteenth century. Campbell examines the thought of John Wesley against the background of classical and Christian revivalism in the eighteenth century and shows how 'classical antiquity' had become a focus of controversy in British religious conflicts of the mid-seventeenth century, as well as a source of renewal for the Church in the latter seventeenth century. After examining the influence on and development of Wesley's vision of Christian antiquity, Campbell outlines Wesley's conception of early Christian history and exmines Wesley's uses of Christian antiquity as a pattern for individual and communal life. Avoiding coventional notions of cultural conservatism and radicalism, Campbell articulates a vision of Wesley as a complex figure who consciously sought for cultural change by appeal to his own cultrue's most distinctive roots. Ted A. Campbell is Assistant Professor of Church History, The Divinity School, Duke University.
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