Human Flower Project
Indoor-Outdoor Methodists
From the days of its early “field preachers,” Methodism advocated mixing up interiority with the great outdoors. A beautiful window in Oxford makes that luminously clear.
Detail from the Flower Window c. 1878
Wesley Memorial Methodist Church, Oxford
Photo: Brother Lawrence
In the tall, gleaming panels of church windows, one expects to see saints in heavy robes and Bible-toting evangelists. But this is Wesley Memorial Church in Oxford, England, and as with so much of Methodism the rules are gently broken.
Rather than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, we see lilies, grape vine, bull rushes and pomegranate (roses and camellias also). The Flower Window at the west end of the chapel is gorgeous and, we understand, completely original in design. One source says its theme is “flowers of the English countryside” but church secretary Dorothy Stepney says the sources are Biblical.
Perhaps there’s some influence of both. Methodism sprang up here in Oxford. A few university students in the early 17th century – including John Wesley, his younger brother Charles, and George Whitefield—formed a “Holy Club” and soon began their own ministry. Led by Whitefield’s then-radical example, they turned to “field-preaching.”
“I thought it might be doing the service of my Creator, who had a mountain for his pulpit and the heavens for a sounding board; and who, when his Gospel was refused by the Jews, sent his servants into the highways and hedges.” So Whitefield addressed 200 coal miners in February 1739, as in defiance of church convention, he preached in the open air of Kingswood.
John Wesley preaching on his father’s tomb
Epworth churchyard
Image: via Wesley Online Center
How daring was this in the 18th century?
Isaac Taylor, critic of the early Methodists, had to admit: “Ten thousand might more easily be found who would confront a battery than two who, with the sensitiveness of education about them, could mount a table by the roadside, give out a psalm, and gather a mob.”
First, they preached outside because the established churches would not have them, but soon only the out of doors would do— Whitefield and Wesley were drawing crowds too huge for any indoor venue.
The Wesley Memorial Methodist Church came about nearly a century later, but we think its floral window, along with the Bible references, strives to bring the outdoors in. (Recall that the arts and crafts movement, with its total immersion in naturalistic design was in full swing.) The window was created in the 1870s, to honor Rev. G. Maunder “whose energy and enthusiasm led to the building of the present church.” But we think the window also remembers the daring founders of the faith, their suspicion of organized religion, and dedication to “itinerancy.”
“Wesley Preaching Outdoors”
Guernsey Flower Arrangement Society
Forest United Methodist Church, July 2007
Photo: God and Marmalade
A mason “Mr. Symm” also carved flowers inside the church. Dorothy Stepney writes, “The carving in stone on the arcade capitals represent twelve different kinds of English plants. I am afraid that we do not know what the plants are.” Nor have we been able to locate a photograph with enough detail to help. We hope one day to visit Wesley Memorial ourselves and see the local plants carved in stone, but in the meantime, perhaps a gentle “itinerant” HFP reader/photographer will document this intriguing example of floral church art.
Many thanks to Dorothy Stepney for her kind correspondance about the church, its history and its ornamentation.
May 26-28th of last year, the Wesley Memorial Methodist Church in Epworth, North Lincolnshire, celebrated Charles Wesley with a special flower festival. Parishoners made flower arrangements based on Wesley’s hymns (“Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” and many more). And in July 2007, Forest United Methodist Church in Guernsey depicted moments in Charles Wesley’s life with flower arrangements.
We close with a verse from one of his hymns for Whitsuntide:
Impart the salutary pain,
The sudden soul-condemning power,
Blow on the goodliness of man,
Wither the grass, and blast the flower,
That when their works are all o’erthrown
The word of grace may stand alone.