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WITH RANDY MADDOX
FAITH & LEADERSHIP, DUKE DIVINITY SCHOOL

Health and wellness was an integral part of the ministry of the Rev. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, said Randy Maddox, a noted Wesley scholar.

Indeed, Wesley's most popular publication in his lifetime was "Primitive Physick," a book of medical advice.

"Wesley is convinced that God cares about the whole person," Maddox said. "He doesn't see the spiritual and the physical as separate." Wesley believed that God wanted human flourishing in every dimension, indeed, the flourishing of all creation.

That emphasis on integrating the physical and the spiritual is just one of the many lessons Wesley's writings and thinking on health offer the church today, Maddox said.

Maddox is the William Kellon Quick Professor of Wesleyan and Methodist Studies at Duke Divinity School. He spoke with Faith & Leadership about Wesley's interest in health and wellness. The following is an excerpt from that conversation.

Q: People today might be surprised that Wesley was interested in and wrote about health and wellness. Was that unusual in his day?

Of all Wesley's books, the one that stayed in print the longest and went through the most editions wasn't his sermons or hymns. It was "Primitive Physick," a book on medical advice. It was central to his work.

Today, spiritual care is done by pastors in churches, and physical care is done by physicians and nurses in hospitals and clinics. But you would not have had that separation before the 1700s.

The word physick or physician didn't describe the person who gave you medicine or did surgery. It was the one who gave you advice about how to maintain health, and then you would go to your local apothecary or to a barber-surgeon or whatever. That was part of the pastor's duty, and they understood it in the sense that God cared for the whole person and they should too.

Q: Some scholars dismiss his work on health and healing, but you contend it was a central part of his ministry. How so?

First, Wesley is convinced that God cares about the whole person. He doesn't see the spiritual and the physical as separate. He actually differed from his brother Charles on this.

There was a strand of Puritan thought that assumed that whenever we had a physical ailment, whatever its physical cause, the ultimate cause was God. Illness awakened us to our spiritual need. We were to learn lessons from it, including not being too attached to this life.

If you understand illness that way, then trying to relieve or cure it could be seen as working against God's purposes. Many of Charles Wesley's hymns around illness basically say, "Lord, teach me the lesson I'm supposed to learn from this."

Q: Tell us more about the book.

Wesley was using the word "primitive" in the common usage of the time, meaning that which is pristine or goes back to the original. He was trying to offer medical advice that had been used for generations and that went back, as he understood it, to the roots of creation.

Wesley particularly wanted to offer care to the poor who didn't have access to the few "professional" physicians – certified by the Royal Society -- who were in and around London.

To understand the book, it helps to understand what Wesley was doing before he wrote it. After he left Georgia and returned to England, he never again served as a parish priest. Instead, he got caught up in this revival movement. Early on, he noticed that the meetings attracted a lot of poor people who didn't attend parish churches. Many were sick, and since they didn't attend church, they didn't have the connections to get health advice from a priest. And they didn't have money for a physician.

He felt that he needed to care for these people, so he opened a clinic in Bristol and later in London, and a dispensary where people could get medicines. But as the movement grew, Wesley spent most of his time traveling around England meeting the Methodist societies, and he began to wonder how he could still do this.

That's where the "Primitive Physick" came in. He put into a book the advice he had been giving verbally and then added to it over time.

He told his assistants in each region -- basically, lay preachers – to leave two books in every home for spiritual and physical care: "The Christian's Pattern," his abridgment of Thomas à Kempis' "Imitation of Christ," and "Primitive Physick."

Q: What was the pastor's or the regional leader's role?

In Wesley's day, Methodism was kind of a parachurch movement. Wesley encouraged the movement's traveling preachers to give advice but also leave behind the book. And he also set up in each local setting a position called the "visitor of the sick."

It was usually a woman who visited the sick and drew upon the "Primitive Physick" or other resources to help meet their spiritual and physical needs.

But you could also say that the "preacher's" role was to hold up the ideal. In many ways, even today, the most important thing preachers can do is articulate an understanding of God's purposes and will that doesn't separate the spiritual and the physical.

If everything we hear on Sunday is about the spiritual dimension of life and getting to an eternal rest, and nothing about caring for the whole body, it can encourage that separation.

Q: What are the lessons for the church today?

First, that God cares about body and soul, that we are created in such a way that the spiritual and the physical are interdependent.

Second, Wesley was concerned not just about how we heal that which is sick or broken but also how we nurture sustaining practices of health. He stressed that we ought to practice proper diet, exercise and sleep in order to cultivate health, that God created and sustains us, and expects this of us.