Leslie Weatherhead
Encyclopedia
Leslie Dixon Weatherhead (14 October 1893 – 5 January 1976) was an English
Christian theologian
in the liberal Protestant
tradition. One of Britain's finest preacher
s in his day, Weatherhead was noted for his preaching ministry at City Temple
in London
and for his books, including The Will of God, The Christian Agnostic, and Psychology, Religion, and Healing.
, Manchester
, and Leeds
, Weatherhead was called to be Minister of the City Temple, a Congregational Church
on Holborn Viaduct
in London. He served there from 1936 until his retirement in 1960. From 1930 till 1939, Weatherhead was a member of Dr Frank Buchman's Oxford Group and wrote several books reflecting the group's values, including Discipleship and The Will of God. He often symbolized the "head" of the Oxford Group London.
His book This is the Victory was first printed in 1940 (preface dated November 1940) and reprinted in March 1942. In the space 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 St Sepulchre
church. After the war, Weatherhead raised the funds to rebuild the City Temple, largely from John D. Rockefeller
. The City Temple stands to this day and is now a congregation of the United Reformed Church
.
Weatherhead served as President of the Methodist conference in 1953. The re-built City Temple was opened in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II in 1958. In 1960, Weatherhead retired to live at Bexhill-on-Sea
. He died in 1976.
The three books of his sermons which Weatherhead considered his best were That Immortal Sea, Over His Own Signature and Key Next Door.
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.
.
In the view of Professor David D. Larsen, "Weatherhead jettisoned historical Christianity". He denied the Atonement and the efficacy of the Blood of Christ
in A Plain Man Looks at the Cross, and the bodily Resurrection of Christ in The Manner of the Resurrection in the Light of Modern Science and Psychical Research. He dismissed the Virgin Birth, was inclined to believe that Zechariah
was the father of Jesus, thought that the "legion
" of demons probably meant that the man had been molested as a child by Roman legion
naires, and regarded the Apostle Paul
as hopelessly neurotic. Weatherhead regularly attended spiritist séance
s, at one of which John Wesley
appeared to him. In 1957 he gave a lecture to the City Temple Literary Society on "The Case for Reincarnation". He continued to advocate reincarnation
for the rest of his life in books like The Christian Agnostic and Life Begins at Death.
For Professor Horton Davies, Weatherhead was "unrivalled as a twentieth-century physician of souls and preacher of the integration of personality through Christ". Professor Larsen, however, while agreeing that Weatherhead was "a brilliant preacher", judges his sermons 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", a tendency wittily characterized by E. Brooks Holifield as "From Salvation to Self-Realization". 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'". 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."
The Rev. John Taylor, reviewing Doctor of Souls, disagrees that Weatherhead is no longer read: "his 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".
, now Lord Bannside, denounced Weatherhead in a 1969 sermon as "the man that said that Jesus Christ was the bastard son of Zechariah, John the Baptist
's father, and Mary, who was a prostitute of the temple.... That is about as vile a thing as anybody could say." He called Weatherhead "an arch-apostate", whose place was "in hell
".
However, Weatherhead had in fact made every effort to present Mary as a very pure and sincere (if immature) young maiden—who had simply interpreted the Angel's Anunciation as a divine instruction to go and stay for three months with her cousin's husband, Zechariah—and that was when Jesus was conceived.
Weatherhead regards it as significant that the Gospels contain absolutely no record of Jesus mentioning that his mother had conceived him without a human father.
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, 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. 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."
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
Christian theologian
Christian theology
- Divisions of Christian theology :There are many methods of categorizing different approaches to Christian theology. For a historical analysis, see the main article on the History of Christian theology.- Sub-disciplines :...
in the liberal Protestant
Liberal Christianity
Liberal Christianity, sometimes called liberal theology, is an umbrella term covering diverse, philosophically and biblically informed religious movements and ideas within Christianity from the late 18th century and onward...
tradition. One of Britain's finest preacher
Preacher
Preacher is a term for someone who preaches sermons or gives homilies. A preacher is distinct from a theologian by focusing on the communication rather than the development of doctrine. Others see preaching and theology as being intertwined...
s in his day, Weatherhead was noted for his preaching ministry at City Temple
City Temple (London)
City Temple Church is a church on Holborn Viaduct in London, most famous as the preaching place of 20th century liberal theologian Leslie Weatherhead.Other notable preachers include Thomas Goodwin and Joseph Parker....
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and for his books, including The Will of God, The Christian Agnostic, and Psychology, Religion, and Healing.
Life
Weatherhead was born in London in 1893. He trained for the Methodist Ministry at Richmond Theological College, in south-west London. The First World War cut short his training, and he became Methodist Minister at Farnham, Surrey, in September 1915. After serving in IndiaIndia
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, and Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, Weatherhead was called to be Minister of the City Temple, a Congregational Church
Congregational church
Congregational churches are Protestant Christian churches practicing Congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs....
on Holborn Viaduct
Holborn Viaduct
Holborn Viaduct is a bridge in London and the name of the street which crosses it . It links Holborn, via Holborn Circus, with Newgate Street in the City of London, passing over Farringdon Street and the now subterranean River Fleet.It was built between 1863 and 1869, at a cost of over two million...
in London. He served there from 1936 until his retirement in 1960. From 1930 till 1939, Weatherhead was a member of Dr Frank Buchman's Oxford Group and wrote several books reflecting the group's values, including Discipleship and The Will of God. He often symbolized the "head" of the Oxford Group London.
His book This is the Victory was first printed in 1940 (preface dated November 1940) and reprinted in March 1942. In the space 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 St Sepulchre
St Sepulchre
St Sepulchre was an ancient parish partly within the City of London and partly within Middlesex, England.For civil purposes it was divided into two civil parishes, each called St Sepulchre, although the parish in the City of London was also known as St Sepulchre without Newgate...
church. After the war, Weatherhead raised the funds to rebuild the City Temple, largely from John D. Rockefeller
John D. Rockefeller
John Davison Rockefeller was an American oil industrialist, investor, and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of...
. The City Temple stands to this day and is now a congregation of the United Reformed Church
United Reformed Church
The United Reformed Church is a Christian church in the United Kingdom. It has approximately 68,000 members in 1,500 congregations with some 700 ministers.-Origins and history:...
.
Weatherhead served as President of the Methodist conference in 1953. The re-built City Temple was opened in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II in 1958. In 1960, Weatherhead retired to live at Bexhill-on-Sea
Bexhill-on-Sea
Bexhill-on-Sea is a town and seaside resort in the county of East Sussex, in the south of England, within the District of Rother. It has a population of approximately 40,000...
. He died in 1976.
The three books of his sermons which Weatherhead considered his best were That Immortal Sea, Over His Own Signature and Key Next Door.
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.
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"—and his incorporation into Christianity of elements from other religions and from spiritualismSpiritualism
Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...
.
In the view of Professor David D. Larsen, "Weatherhead jettisoned historical Christianity". He denied the Atonement and the efficacy of the Blood of Christ
Blood of Christ
The Blood of Christ in Christian theology refers to the physical blood actually shed by Jesus Christ on the Cross, and the salvation which Christianity teaches was accomplished thereby; and the sacramental blood present in the Eucharist, which is considered by Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and...
in A Plain Man Looks at the Cross, and the bodily Resurrection of Christ in The Manner of the Resurrection in the Light of Modern Science and Psychical Research. He dismissed the Virgin Birth, was inclined to believe that Zechariah
Zechariah (priest)
In the Bible, Zechariah , is the father of John the Baptist, a priest of the sons of Aaron, a prophet in , and the husband of Elisabeth who is the cousin of Mary the mother of Jesus.In the Qur'an, Zechariah plays a similar role as the father of John the Baptist and ranks him as a prophet alongside...
was the father of Jesus, thought that the "legion
Legion (demon)
Legion is a group of demons referred to in the Christian Bible. The New Testament outlines an encounter where Jesus healed a man from Gadarenes possessed by demons while traveling, known as Exorcising the Gerasenes demonic.- In the Bible :...
" of demons probably meant that the man had been molested as a child by Roman legion
Roman legion
A Roman legion normally indicates the basic ancient Roman army unit recruited specifically from Roman citizens. The organization of legions varied greatly over time but they were typically composed of perhaps 5,000 soldiers, divided into maniples and later into "cohorts"...
naires, and regarded the Apostle Paul
Paul of Tarsus
Paul the Apostle , also known as Saul of Tarsus, is described in the Christian New Testament as one of the most influential early Christian missionaries, with the writings ascribed to him by the church forming a considerable portion of the New Testament...
as hopelessly neurotic. Weatherhead regularly attended spiritist séance
Séance
A séance is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word "séance" comes from the French word for "seat," "session" or "sitting," from the Old French "seoir," "to sit." In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, speak of "une séance de cinéma"...
s, at one of which John Wesley
John Wesley
John Wesley was a Church of England cleric and Christian theologian. Wesley is largely credited, along with his brother Charles Wesley, as founding the Methodist movement which began when he took to open-air preaching in a similar manner to George Whitefield...
appeared to him. In 1957 he gave a lecture to the City Temple Literary Society on "The Case for Reincarnation". He continued to advocate reincarnation
Reincarnation
Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...
for the rest of his life in books like The Christian Agnostic and Life Begins at Death.
For Professor Horton Davies, Weatherhead was "unrivalled as a twentieth-century physician of souls and preacher of the integration of personality through Christ". Professor Larsen, however, while agreeing that Weatherhead was "a brilliant preacher", judges his sermons 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", a tendency wittily characterized by E. Brooks Holifield as "From Salvation to Self-Realization". 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'". Even his psychology, which drew on fringe thinkers
Fringe science
Fringe science is scientific inquiry in an established field of study that departs significantly from mainstream or orthodox theories, and is classified in the "fringes" of a credible mainstream academic discipline....
as well as more mainstream figures like Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
, is now "severely dated. No one today talks about Odic force
Odic force
The Odic force is the name given in the mid-19th century to a hypothetical vital energy or life force by Baron Carl von Reichenbach...
and the leakage of psychic energy. His 55 books are virtually unread today."
The Rev. John Taylor, reviewing Doctor of Souls, disagrees that Weatherhead is no longer read: "his 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
Trinity
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity defines God as three divine persons : the Father, the Son , and the Holy Spirit. The three persons are distinct yet coexist in unity, and are co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial . Put another way, the three persons of the Trinity are of one being...
". He was "a rebel, breaking out from the confines of Methodism", and impossible to imagine "in a traditional Congregational church".
Virgin Birth
The Rev. Ian PaisleyIan Paisley
Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, Baron Bannside, PC is a politician and church minister in Northern Ireland. As the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party , he and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness were elected First Minister and deputy First Minister respectively on 8 May 2007.In addition to co-founding...
, now Lord Bannside, denounced Weatherhead in a 1969 sermon as "the man that said that Jesus Christ was the bastard son of Zechariah, John the Baptist
John the Baptist
John the Baptist was an itinerant preacher and a major religious figure mentioned in the Canonical gospels. He is described in the Gospel of Luke as a relative of Jesus, who led a movement of baptism at the Jordan River...
's father, and Mary, who was a prostitute of the temple.... That is about as vile a thing as anybody could say." He called Weatherhead "an arch-apostate", whose place was "in hell
Hell in Christian beliefs
Christian views on Hell vary, but in general traditionally agree that hell is a place or a state in which the souls of the unsaved suffer the consequences of sin....
".
However, Weatherhead had in fact made every effort to present Mary as a very pure and sincere (if immature) young maiden—who had simply interpreted the Angel's Anunciation as a divine instruction to go and stay for three months with her cousin's husband, Zechariah—and that was when Jesus was conceived.
Weatherhead regards it as significant that the Gospels contain absolutely no record of Jesus mentioning that his mother had conceived him without a human father.
Weatherhead's theory that Jesus was the son of Zechariah later became part of the teachings of Sun Myung Moon
Sun Myung Moon
Sun Myung Moon is the Korean founder and leader of the worldwide Unification Church. He is also the founder of many other organizations and projects...
's Unification Church
Unification Church
The Unification Church is a new religious movement founded by Korean religious leader Sun Myung Moon. In 1954, the Unification Church was formally and legally established in Seoul, South Korea, as The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity . In 1994, Moon gave the church...
. Encountering it in Weatherhead's The Christian Agnostic, Unificationist theologian Young Oon Kim
Young Oon Kim
Young Oon Kim was a leading theologian of the Unification Church and its first missionary to the United States.Kim was a professor of religion at Ewha University in Seoul, South Korea. After she joined the Unification Church, church founder Sun Myung Moon sent her to the United States as a...
adopted it as the best explanation of the birth of Jesus in her work Unification Theology, a standard textbook of the church. Christian author Ruth A. Tucker comments in her book Another Gospel: "Kim's Christology is a prime example of liberal theology
Liberal Christianity
Liberal Christianity, sometimes called liberal theology, is an umbrella term covering diverse, philosophically and biblically informed religious movements and ideas within Christianity from the late 18th century and onward...
.... By diminishing the role of Jesus, Kim paves the way for the exaltation of Sun Myung Moon."
Works
Weatherhead wrote many books, including:- After Death: A Popular Statement of the Modern Christian View of Life Beyond the Grave (1923).
- The Afterworld of the Poets: The Contribution of Victorian Poets to the Development of the Idea of Immortality (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).
- His Life and Ours: The Significance for Us of the Life of Jesus (1932).
- Pain and Providence (1932).
- Discipleship (1934)
- How Can I Find God? (1934).
- Psychology and Life (1934).
- Why Do Men Suffer? (1935).
- It Happened in Palestine (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).
- Psychology in the Service of the Soul (1941).
- Personalities of the Passion (1942).
- In Quest Of A Kingdom (1944).
- The Will of God (1944).
- A Plain Man Looks at the Cross (1945).
- The Significance of Silence and Other Sermons (1945).
- 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 (1965). 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).
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 9780340201275
- Price, Lynne (1996). Faithful Uncertainty: Leslie D. Weatherhead's Methodology of Creative Evangelism. Peter Lang. ISBN 9780820431901
- Travell, John C. (1999). Doctor of Souls: Leslie D. Weatherhead 1893-1976. Lutterworth Press. ISBN 9780718829919; ISBN 9780718830045
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", article at John Mark Ministries reviewing one theme of The Christian Agnostic