Political conferences and the Wesleyan influence

John and Charles Wesley, John Hodges, Henry Viers, Sam Taylor, and John Meriton at the First Wesleyan Conference, Foundry, City Road, London.

This is a transcript of a Thought for the Day broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 8 September 2025.

Good morning. We’re in the midst of political conference season, and it’s a very different season to those I remember as a teenager in the 70s. Then, they seemed to be all about thrashing out policies and airing grievances between the grass roots and the leadership on the conference floor. Today, the set-piece, carefully curated, media-friendly speeches are more about energising the faithful and reaching out to the uncommitted. How this is done in a way that respects the complexity of issues and gives voice to those at the local level is a challenge — not just to political parties, but also to faith communities.

For me, some help is found in John Wesley, an Anglican priest and High Church Tory, who led an 18^th century church renewal movement which became the Methodist Church. A transforming encounter of the love of God led him to preach to miners in the open air, condemn slavery, and warn about wealth and overconsumption. His influence on political thinking has been much debated. Some point to Methodism’s role in the growth of Trade Unions and the Labour Party, while others, such as the Marxist historian EP Thompson, suggest that Methodism was an opiate, leading working people to focus on heaven rather than issues of justice.

However, often neglected is Wesley’s influence as an organiser of a movement which would bring about change. His legacy was a three-tiered structure of leadership and conferring — first in the local chapel, then in a region, and then in a national annual conference, a model which was adopted directly by many trade unions and had wider influence on the rise of party conferences. The first Methodist Conference met in 1744 when Wesley gathered his preachers to confer together about “what to teach, how to teach, and… how to regulate our doctrine, discipline and practice”. My Methodist colleague Dr Liz Kent points out that this culture of mutuality was fundamental to the growth and influence of Methodism. Even if the leadership of the emerging denomination often resisted change, the conference structure energised the drive at grass roots for justice, especially for the poor.

What would Wesley make of today’s conference season of competing claims? He would understand the need to get the message across, but in his own conference he called his preachers to an unwavering commitment to mutual questioning and truth-seeking, and to the highest standards of personal conduct. At the same time, his own encounter with the overwhelming love of Jesus meant that there was always the hope for new beginnings for justice in society and for transformed individuals – an important framing for conferences, churches, and my life.