In his interesting article ‘Evangelical Conversion’ (Winter 2003) Godfrey Talford made links between the evangelical revival in the 18th Century and later social developments, especially in the British Isles.  He described in detail John Wesley’s conversion and its immediate effects on him, as well as on 18th Century society.

I would like to share one continuing effect of Wesley’s 1738 conversion and his contact with the Moravians.  Shortly after his return from America, John Wesley went to Germany and came under the direct influence of the Moravian community in Saxony, close to the border to Czech Republic.  The effect of his contact with the Moravians on the life of Methodism in that part of Germany has lasted until this day.

In June 1984, I was a member of a small delegation to the annual Conference of the East German Methodist church, which was always held in the part of Germany that Wesley visited and in which scores of churches were created.  I was one of a group of five, with four Methodist ministers, who attended the Conference as representatives of our own President.

The Moravians were based in Herrnhut, at the eastern end of Saxony and had been settled there since 1722.  Until 1990 that part of Germany was in the eastern Communist zone, which, with its population of about 16 million, was about 30% of the area of Germany as a whole.  It is in that part of Germany and to the west of that, along the border of what is known today as the Czech Republic, the vast majority of Methodist churches in Germany are located.  There are a number of other Methodist churches in Germany but, in Saxony, there is a chapel ‘behind every hill’, as one member told me.
I was amazed to find that in 1984, Methodism still could be so strong numerically in what was then still a Communist country.  In the big cities such as Dresden and Karl-Marx-Stadt (now returned to its former name of Chemnitz) each church had a membership of well over 600.  Sometimes there were two sizeable churches in one city.  There were only about 120 ministers altogether in the church in the old East Germany.  Most were in the southern area where there were two districts, each with a superintendent (the equivalent of a District Chair in Britain).  The other ministers were in the Berlin and Northern District where just one superintendent covered the vast area up to the Baltic Sea.  It was in that superintendent’s flat in Berlin where I stayed for my first night in Germany.  It was in a run-down side street in East Berlin.  The outside walls of the house were marked with bullet holes, relics of the hard street-by-street fighting that took place in Berlin in the last days of the war during the Red Army occupation.

It was surprising how the problems the church in Germany was facing then resembled the problems we have today.  At the Conference, there were concerns about falling numbers, about low finances, about the recruitment and deployment of ministers and about how to develop the growth of mission in inner city areas.  There had also been concerns about the right stance to adopt towards the ‘Socialist’ authorities, how much support to give to dissident ministers and groups, without putting the whole church at risk.  Freedom of worship was guaranteed under the East German constitution, in theory, but that did not prevent the authorities from discriminating unofficially against church members, many of whom found themselves denied access to higher posts and better educational opportunities.
The daughter of the minister with whom I stayed, a bright girl with ability in Russian, was refused entry to study Russian at Leipzig university, a prestigious institution relatively near to her home, but sent to a remote university at Greifswald on the Baltic coast in the far north, which meant an enormously long and expensive journey for a family by no means able to afford it.  Because the country needed linguists, at least she got a university place!  This did not stop the authorities from putting excessive pressure on church ministers, but the churches kept going well, often with members who were middle-aged, either retired or with fewer ambitions and demands on the system, and often self-employed or trades people.

As the main German speaker in our team, I addressed the Conference in a ten-minute talk, and preached a 25-minute sermon in one of our host minister’s churches.  The congregation seemed just like most congregations here; the folk were friendly and lively.  No censorship restriction was placed on me as a visiting, foreign speaker, despite the fact that in my ten-minute address to Conference I had expressed thoughts that could be described as liberal and western.
We knew that the Conference had been infiltrated by the authorities, as details of closed sessions were later mentioned in a speech by a visiting Communist party dignitary. The politician concerned was from a political party that professed a watered-down form of Christian socialism and formed part of the grand Socialist Unity party coalition.  He was trying to reconcile his faith (rather uneasily) with a system which, while officially tolerating religion, regarded it in Marx’s terms as the ‘opiate of the people’.  He was intent on making out that his party and the Methodist church were both aiming at ‘peace’, even though to him it meant something different and essentially anti-western and anti-capitalist.

Another astonishing thing was that the closing service of the Conference was filled to overflowing, with the service relayed to a neighbouring church.  The singing was wonderfully vigorous, powerful and inspiring, memorable in its fervour.  All this was only five years before the Berlin Wall came down.  At the time, there was absolutely no sign that such a change was ever going to happen.  It has been well documented that the church played a major role in the sudden changes that led within weeks to the opening of East Germany and the breaching of the Wall.

My host and minister, Joachim Richter, became involved in the frontline of change and after the reunification of Germany in 1990, he was elected as a Social Democrat member of the new parliament of Saxony.  As he had previously been the Methodist minister involved in children’s work and religious teaching within the church, he assumed responsibility for the ground-breaking task of creating the terms of their new constitution that safeguarded education and children’s rights.   This was all the more remarkable when no religious teaching had been allowed in German Democratic Republic schools and churches had to provide such education after school hours.  During our stay, he showed himself to be outspoken and a born defender of citizens’ rights.  On our walks round the town in the intervals between sessions, I would sometimes see him protesting to resigned and stony-faced shop assistants about the poor quality of goods and service.

My 1984 visit was a unique and exciting week, one which I can now never repeat, of course, as things have changed so much.  The Methodists are still there.  Whether the economic and political changes have changed them, is doubtful.  It is a living example of the direct influence of John Wesley’s visit to that part of Germany following his conversion and his link with the Moravians.  It was a revelation to see during that week how God was keeping his flame alive within a system which tolerated His people, but denied Him.

Dr. Gordon Leah is a retired teacher of German and a Local Preacher in the Worcester circuit.