Leslie Weatherhead
President of the Methodist Conference | |
---|---|
Personal | |
Born | Leslie Dixon Weatherhead 14 October 1893 London, England |
Died | 5 January 1976 | (aged 82)
Religion | Nonconformist Christianity |
Nationality | English |
Church | City Temple, London (1936–1960) |
Senior posting | |
Period in office | 1955–1956 |
Predecessor | W. Russel Shearer |
Successor | Harold Crawford Walters |
Leslie Dixon Weatherhead
Life
Weatherhead was born in London in 1893. He trained for the
His book This is the Victory was first printed in 1940 (preface dated November 1940) and reprinted in March 1942. In the period of time between these two editions, the City Temple was "gutted by fire from incendiary bombs dropped from enemy aeroplanes". He was able to continue his ministry thanks to the nearby Anglican St Sepulchre-without-Newgate church. After the war, Weatherhead raised the funds to rebuild the City Temple, largely from John D. Rockefeller. The City Temple is now a congregation of the United Reformed Church.
Despite opposition, Weatherhead was elected as
The three books of his sermons which Weatherhead considered his best were That Immortal Sea, Over His Own Signature and Key Next Door.[3]
Three biographies of Leslie Weatherhead have appeared: in 1960, for young people, Dr. Leslie Weatherhead of the City Temple by Christopher Maitland; in 1975 Leslie Weatherhead: A Personal Portrait by his son A. Kingsley Weatherhead, a professor of English; and most recently in 1999 Doctor of Souls: Leslie D. Weatherhead 1893–1976 by John C. Travell.
Theology
Weatherhead is identified as a
Weatherhead's concept of the
As for the Holy Spirit, Weatherhead confessed agnosticism. "Few Christians, whom I know, think of the Holy Spirit as a separate Person," he said. Disagreeing with the historic Christian creeds, he taught that such a view would equate to worshiping two gods instead of one.[9]
His view of the church was an idealistic one. The church on earth should copy the divine original, in which all who loved Christ would be joined together to "worship and move forward to the unimaginable unity with God which is his will."[10]
Virgin Birth
Reformed minister
In his own view, Weatherhead had made every effort to present Mary as a very pure and sincere (if immature) young maiden—who had simply misinterpreted the Angel's Annunciation as a divine instruction to go and stay for three months with her cousin's husband, Zechariah—and that was when Jesus was conceived.[12] Weatherhead considered it significant that the Gospels do not record that Jesus saying his mother had conceived him without a human father.[12]
Weatherhead's theory that Jesus was the son of Zechariah later became part of the teachings of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. Encountering it in Weatherhead's The Christian Agnostic,[12] Unificationist theologian Young Oon Kim adopted it as the best explanation of the birth of Jesus in her work Unification Theology, a standard textbook of the church.[13][14][15][16][17] Christian author Ruth A. Tucker comments in her book Another Gospel: "Kim's Christology is a prime example of liberal theology.... By diminishing the role of Jesus, Kim paves the way for the exaltation of Sun Myung Moon."[18]
Scripture
Weatherhead taught that the Bible is merely a collection of works that progressively reveal man's search for and understanding of God, culminated in the best representation of God's true nature in Jesus Christ. He was critical of many passages, including some from Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, that he claimed went against Jesus teaching, stating that "some of the passages of Browning are of far superior spiritual value."[19] Weatherhead insisted on rejecting anything in the Bible, including Jesus' own words about God's judgment and the reality of eternal punishment, that did not coincide with Weatherhead's view of 'the gospel of Christ', which he interpreted as the spirit of "love, liberty, gaiety, forgiveness, joy and acceptance."[5]
Reception
Weatherhead was a highly controversial figure on account of his questioning of some of the central tenets of the Christian faith—he once said he regarded "creeds and confessions of faith" as "museum specimens"[20]—and his incorporation into Christianity of elements from other religions and from spiritualism.
In the view of Professor David D. Larsen, of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, "Weatherhead jettisoned historical Christianity". He denied the
For Professor Horton Davies, Weatherhead was "unrivalled as a twentieth-century physician of souls and preacher of the integration of personality through Christ".[3] Professor Larsen, while agreeing that Weatherhead was "a brilliant preacher", judges his sermons, however, to be theologically "vacuous and empty". Weatherhead, he writes, was perhaps the most striking example in the British Isles of "the increasing horizontalization and psychologization of the sermon",[21] a tendency wittily characterised by E. Brooks Holifield as "From Salvation to Self-Realization".[23] Weatherhead's scorn for theology—he claimed that poets had more insight than theologians—and penchant for "preaching as psychotherapy" made him, in Larsen's view, "a tragic instance in which psychical research replaced 'sound doctrine'".[24] Even his psychology, which drew on fringe thinkers as well as more mainstream figures like Freud, is now "severely dated. No one today talks about Odic force and the leakage of psychic energy. His 55 books are virtually unread today."[21]
John Taylor, reviewing Doctor of Souls states that "[Weatherhead's] writings still have an impact on Churches today, and Christians read and re-read his works". Nevertheless, though Weatherhead was a "great man", he "remains an enigma.... His name and ministry still enable passions to arise, depending how you see him." As Minister of "a supra-denominational church" like the City Temple, "he was largely free to follow his own agenda", which he did, "not accepting the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, nor being comfortable with the doctrine of the Trinity". He was "a rebel, breaking out from the confines of Methodism", and impossible to imagine "in a traditional Congregational church".[25]
Works
Weatherhead wrote many books, including:
- After Death: A Popular Statement of the Modern Christian View of Life Beyond the Grave (1923).
- The Old Testament and Today (with J.A.Chapman) (1923).
- What we believe to-day about the Old Testament (1924).
- The Transforming Friendship. A Book about Jesus and Ourselves (1928).
- Healing the Soul (1929).
- The After-world of the Poets: The Contribution of Victorian Poets to the Development of the Idea of Immortality (1929).
- Psychology in Service of the Soul (1929).
- The Transforming Friendship: A Book about Jesus and Ourselves (1929).
- Jesus and Ourselves: A Sequel to The Transforming Friendship (1930).
- The Presence of Jesus (1930).
- The Mastery of Sex Through Psychology and Religion (1931).
- Every Man's Hour of Destiny. A Message to the Disappointed. (1931)
- His Life and Ours: The Significance for Us of the Life of Jesus (1932).
- The Strength of Christian Confidence (1932).
- Pain and Providence (1932).
- The Guarded Universe (1932).
- Discipleship (1934).
- How Can I Find God? (1933).
- Psychology and Life (1934).
- Psychology and the Cure of Souls (1934)
- Why Do Men Suffer? (1935).
- Discipleship (1935)
- It Happened in Palestine (1936).
- Through the Year with Leslie D. Weatherhead (1936)
- A Shepherd Remembers: A Devotional Study of the Twenty-third Psalm (1937).
- The Eternal Voice (1939).
- The Mystery of Pain (1939).
- Thinking Aloud in War-Time: An Attempt to see the Present Situation in the Light of the Christian Faith (1939).
- This Is the Victory (1940).
- Things Which Cannot be Shaken (1940)
- Guarding our Sunday (1941)
- Psychology in the Service of the Soul (1941).
- Personalities of the Passion (1942).
- This is the Victory (1943)
- In Quest Of A Kingdom (1943).
- The Will of God (1944).
- A Plain Man Looks at the Cross (1945).
- The Significance of Silence and Other Sermons (1945).
- Healing Through Prayer (1946)
- Holy Land (1948).
- The Resurrection and the Life (1948).
- When the Lamp Flickers: Radiant Answers to Life's More Perplexing Questions (1948).
- Psychology, Religion, and Healing (1951).
- That Immortal Sea: A Book of Sermons (1953).
- Over His Own Signature: A Devotional Study of Christ's Pictures of Himself and of Their Relevance to Our Lives Today (1955).
- Prescription for Anxiety (1956).
- A Private House of Prayer (1958).
- The Resurrection of Christ in the Light of Modern Science and Psychical Research (1959).
- Key Next Door and Other City Temple Sermons (1960).
- Salute To a Sufferer: An Attempt to Offer the Plain Man a Christian Philosophy of Suffering (1962).
- Wounded Spirits: Case Histories of Spiritual and Physical Healing (1962).
- The Christian Agnostic (1963). Wikiquote: The Christian Agnostic
- Time for God (1967).
- Life Begins at Death: Replies to Questions Put by Norman French (1969).
- The Busy Man's Old Testament (1971).
References
- ISBN 9780810865464. Retrieved 8 March 2019.
- ^ "No. 41589". The London Gazette (Supplement). 30 December 1958. p. 11.
- ^ a b Bishop, John. "Leslie Weatherhead: Surgeon of the Soul", p. 2 Archived 15 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- ISBN 0-687-06978-5.
- ^ ISBN 0-687-06978-5.
- ^ ISBN 0-687-06978-5.
- ^ ISBN 0-687-06978-5.
- ISBN 0-687-06978-5.
- ISBN 0-687-06978-5.
- ISBN 0-687-06978-5.
- ^ Paisley, Ian R. K. (2 March 1969) "Apostasy vs Fundamentalism" Sermon given at the Martyrs Memorial Free Presbyterian Church, Belfast, Country Antrim, Ulster.
- ^ a b c Weatherhead, L.D. (1965). The Christian Agnostic. England: Hodder and Stoughton. pp. 59–63. Archived from the original on 6 April 2016. Retrieved 29 August 2011.
- ISBN 978-0-89875-607-4.
- ISBN 0-687-40622-6.
- ^ Weatherhead, L.D. (1965). The Christian Agnostic. England: Hodder and Stoughton. pp. 59–63. Archived from the original on 6 April 2016. Retrieved 29 August 2011.
- ISBN 0-310-25937-1pages 250-251
- ^ Unification Theology: Some Additional Problems
- ^ Tucker, Ruth A. (1989) Another Gospel: Cults, Alternative Religions, and the New Age Movement. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, p. 251.
- ISBN 0-687-06978-5.
- ^ Weatherhead, Leslie D. (1928). The Transforming Friendship. London: Epworth Press, p. 56.
- ^ a b c Larsen, David L. "Leslie D. Weatherhead: The Sermon as Psychotherapy", p. 2 Archived 15 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine. Preaching.com.
- ^ Weatherhead, Leslie D. (1958). "The Case for Reincarnation". M. C. Peto, Surrey, England.
- ^ Holifield, E. Brooks (1983). A History of Pastoral Care in America: From Salvation to Self-Realization. Abingdon Press.
- ^ Larsen, David L. "Leslie D. Weatherhead: The Sermon as Psychotherapy", p. 1 Archived 15 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine. Preaching.com.
- ^ Taylor, John. "Review of John Travell, Doctor of Souls Archived 12 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine
Further reading
- Maitland, Christopher (1960). Dr. Leslie Weatherhead of the City Temple (Red Lion Lives). Cassell. For young people.
- Weatherhead, A. Kingsley (1975). Leslie Weatherhead: A Personal Portrait. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 978-0-340-20127-5
- Price, Lynne (1996). Faithful Uncertainty: Leslie D. Weatherhead's Methodology of Creative Evangelism. Peter Lang. ISBN 978-0-8204-3190-1
- Travell, John C. (1999). Doctor of Souls: Leslie D. Weatherhead 1893–1976. Lutterworth Press. ISBN 978-0-7188-3004-5
External links
- City Temple Church and Conference Centre, Holborn, London, UK
- Leslie D. Weatherhead: The Sermon As Psychotherapy, article at Preaching.com
- Leslie Weatherhead: Surgeon of the Soul, article at Preaching.com
- Leslie Weatherhead on "Hell" Archived 7 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine, article at John Mark Ministries reviewing one theme of The Christian Agnostic