Wesley Bros: Bad Romance Epilogue
I have a confession to make: I actually really hate the musical Grease. It always bugged me that Sandy gave in to everyone around her, that she transformed from this innocent defender of her own values to someone who just caved into everyone else’s expectations. Still, it’s been fun reimagining John Wesley’s weird love affair with Sophia Hopkey through the lens of the musical, only in this story, nobody gives up their innocent values, and it ends in a total cluster cuss.
John loves Sophy. Sophy loves John. They make this abundantly clear to each other. John panics. John consults his Moravian friends, who think he should stay true to his earlier vows to lifelong celibacy. John breaks it off with Sophy. Sophy is heartbroken, but still determined to be married, apparently very concerned that she would die an old maid before she turned 20.
Sophy gets married to some schmuck that we’ve never heard about, William Williamson, and he’s not keen on his new wife going to church under a pastor she’d been dating. A few months pass, and Sophy decides to return to worship, only to be publicly humiliated when John refuses her communion. John says she was unrepentant for skipping church and otherwise saying she loved him but then getting married to some other dude so soon after John broke up with her. Sophy’s husband sues John for defaming his wife, and John must now go to court before Sophy’s corrupt uncle, Thomas Causton, a man John had previously ratted out to Governor Oglethorpe. Causton was known for stacking and bribing juries to get the outcomes he wanted in court. And Wesley was starting to look like a fly trapped in his web.
John continued to insist that he had done nothing wrong, and in fact, there were several others he refused to serve communion for dissent against British government. Wesley’s insistence on strict discipline led to the rumor that he was actually Roman Catholic in disguise. Worship attendance plummeted, and Wesley’s trial before Causton was about to land him in debt or in jail. So like brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Robin, he bravely ran away. Causton issued a public warning that anyone assisting Wesley out of the country would be prosecuted (Read more here).
And my favorite part of this whole story is that when John Wesley fled the country, he himself published a notice that everyone who borrowed his books had one day to return them. #Priorities.
It wasn’t until much later in life that John was willing to admit he had handled things poorly with Sophy Hopkey and the Georgia mission. Still, he referred to his time in Georgia as the Second Rise of Methodism, for it was the first time he attempted to put the Oxford Holy Club’s small group accountability model into practice in a church setting.
While he left the country feeling like a failure, John learned a lot that would set the stage for the Methodist movement that was about to take over the nation. He forged important relationships with the Moravians in America that would prepare him for his own conversion experience. He began to rethink his own understanding of grace and holiness, of God’s work and of human perfection. He learned what he already suspected: that parish life was not for him. John Wesley would not serve as the pastor of a church again, but instead, organize a movement equipping others to shepherd the flock. To quote Principal McGee from Grease: “If you can’t be an athlete, be an athletic supporter.”
When not drawing the Wesley Bros cartoon, the Rev. Charlie Baber, a United Methodist deacon, serves as minister of discipleship for youth and families at Highland United Methodist Church in Raleigh, N.C. His cartoon appears on United Methodist Insight by special arrangement.