250th Birthday

In Philadelphia's steaming Convention Hall and nearby Franklin Field, 5.000 Methodist delegates from all over the world celebrated the 250th anniversary of the birth of their founder, John Wesley.

One aim of the convocation was to recall the life and example of Wesley himself, who preached his way over some 225,000 miles in 50 years to bring religion back to the people he thought the Church of England had forgotten. Much of John Wesley's journeying was uphill. Gangs of bullies dogged his steps. A heckler's stone gashed a scar upon his brow. But afoot and on horseback, he kept on going, a short little man in a plain black coat, whose hair was silken white most of his adult life. And his labors helped establish a world church of 14 1/2 million members.

But chiefly the Methodists were looking ahead, not back. In sparkling, silvery letters high above the stage blazed a slogan after Founder Wesley's own heart: "Win 250,000 for Christ." This is the specific goal of Methodism's worldwide evangelistic campaign for 1953. Its distant aim is much higher. Said the campaign's codirector, Dr. Harry Denman of Nashville: "The purpose of our evangelistic mission is to reveal God to every person in the world."

One of the most rallying speeches of the three-day rally came from the Rev. Dr. Nels F. S. Ferre, professor of philosophical theology at Vanderbilt University. "These days call for creative daring in social relations' said Dr. Ferre. "They call for setting the world right side up . . . These days call for freedom to think radically, to speak radically, to work radically, to go to the root of our troubles with the daring wisdom of Christian love and tender caution of Christian concern. "No evangelism to the masses will work today that seeks mostly escape. No evangelism can be wholesome that speaks in spiritual terms alone. Today the whole man need be saved and creatively fulfilled . . . When we Methodists become evangelical we shall have a social gospel that snail make entrenched evil tremble, rationalized selfishness seethe, organized greed rail, but shall make the peoples of the earth rise up to call us blessed."

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