One of Methodism’s great preachers

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34047, 10 January 1976, Page 8

One of Methodism’s great preachers

Leslie Weatherhead. By Kingsley Weatherhead. Hodder and Stoughton. 222 pp. N.Z. price $13.70. The pulpit in old-style Methodist churches dominates like'the bridge of a ship, witb a massive pipe organ completing the super-structure. Preaching on the Word of God has been a Methodist tradition and Dr Weatherhead preached for 45 years, mainly in two major posts. The first was in one of the largest churches in Britain — Brunswick. Leeds; then for 24 years he was at the City Temple. London, of the Congregational Union — a Free church established on a foundation laid more than 300 years ago by Thomas Goodwin, one of Cromwell’s chaplains Dr Weatherhead consistently attracted overflow congregations with visitors drawn by his renown from every part of the United Kingdom and the extremities of the English-speaking world. London. of course has always had something for all. and in the sphere of religious uplift, the Methodist “Big Three.’ Weatherhead, Sangster, Soper (now Lord Soper, a life peer) with separate but complementary incumbencies, were London institutions throughout more than three decades. Sangster was flamboyant, oratorical: Soper al ied the Kingdom of God with politics; Weatherhead was drawn to people in spiritual need through the relevance of his interpretations of the Word. From a sheltered nurturing in the Border country, his sensitive nature did not preclude combatant service with the Indian Army in the First World War. after which he had a term as a missionary based in Madras. He advanced rapidly and after becoming a national figure, public spokesman and communicator, he attracted prestigious supporters, as for instance, John D. Rockefeller. jun.. who, without importuning, provided the major funds required to restore City Teinpie after its destruction in the 1941 London blitz. What Sangster’s son did in a 1962 book on the subject of his father, one’ of Weatherhead's sons, who has an American university appointment, ha-

now produced what he regards as a “personal portrait” of his father. The contents should please church people though an irritation may arise through the omission of an index and the consequential difficulty of locating retrospectively. specific topics or details. There appear to be three areas of accomplishment in Dr Weatherhead’s service to God and men — preaching, psychological healing, and literary work. Factors analysed by the discerning son in, the father’s preaching included meticulous preparation (every weekday morning except Monday when he played golf), but ability to face and eye his congregations with a seeming manner of extempore delivery. He emphasised the humanity of Jesus rather than the divinity, and expounded on Christian religion as an immediate relationship with Christ. He had a gift of language but communicated with simplicity — as does still, the Anglican, Dean Martin Sullivan. Dr Weatherhead was foremost in the use of techniques of psychological healing through his belief that there were forces impinging upon people’s minds and hearts that neither science nor philosophy could define. He had a hypnotic, persuasive influence on people in distress, but advocated cooperative clinical work on patients, by clergy, psychologists, and doctors. The latter two groups required professional fees but Dr Weatherhead accepted none in spite of a very heavy "practice.” He did not claim to understand the processes of healing, suggesting only that they established in a patient, a receptive state of mind in which conventional treatment was more effective. Dr Weatherhead was author of at least 35 major books, and his scholarship which he himself regarded as deficient, resulted in a London Ph.D; an Edinburgh D.D: and an Oxford D. Litt. He wrote on the development of his personal spiritual experiences, and there was appropriate timing in some of the releases as when he gathered his beliefs at the

time of London’s greatest wartime suffering into the volume “This is the Victory.” The last of his books coincided with the onset of religious decline. “The Christian Agnostic” sold half a million copies within a short space of time. There was coolness among some of the orthodox on aspects of his writing and he was challenged for by-passing some traditional beliefs and interpretations. He faced inquiry and interrogation by the Faith and Order committee of his denomination but he prevailed and in 1955 presided with distinction over the Methodist Conference. By then he was a cleric in demand or on call for international church assignments. Absent from the book is evidence of a continuing ministry through the influence Dr Weatherhead should have had on younger men and women drawn by his influence to continue the task of saving the minds and souls of struggling humanity. There is, however, a sense of uplift throughout the book in its portrayal of such a capable, warm and influential guardian of spiritual welfare, and a protester against the powers of evil abroad in the life of his nation. Such people are second to no temporal leader, and Dr Weatherhead enjoyed the regard and confidence of his country’s eminent public figures. There is anticlimax in the concluding description of how he is now occupied in retirement. A lonely routine, taking scraps to the birds, sitting on a park bench — as his son writes, “a white-headed prophet left over from the old days, looking down on the incredible follies of a w’orld in which he feels he no longer has any part . . . .”

A significant book, happily compiled by the author, notwithstanding some pecular etymological foibles which should be tolerated in the over-all appreciation of church people, and perhaps of some agnostics that Leslie Weatherhead was one of the great men of his kind and time.