Leslie D. Weatherhead: The Sermon As Psychotherapy
By David L. Larsen
This
preacher is of interest to all students of the craft if only because he was
one of the most widely heard English preachers in the post-World War II years.
In his masterly chronicle entitled
A History of Pastoral Care in America,
E. Brooks Holifield describes the direction in this discipline in the book's
subtitle: From Salvation to Self-Realization. A corresponding movement
within preaching saw the increasing horizontalization and psychologization of
the sermon with Leslie Weatherhead beating the loudest drum in the British Isles.
In North America the attractive and engaging preaching of the liberal Harry
Emerson Fosdick along with the "life-situation preaching" of Charles
F. Kemp (as in The Preaching Pastor) turned the focus of pulpit discourse
increasingly manward.
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The
ascendency of audience-centered, problem-solving preaching in our time finds
its roots in these earlier advocates of preaching as psychotherapy. While we
would not give way for a moment to those extremists who rant and rave incessantly
against psychology (after all there is psychology and there is pop psychology),
psychological insight can never be a substitute for Scriptural Revelation. Sound
insights from this discipline are relevant for the preacher, the counsellor,
the exegete, the historian, but psychology is not theology and is severely limited
in what it can yield to us. Since "nature abhors a vacuum," we see
in Weatherhead a tragic instance in which psychical research replaced "sound
doctrine."
Leslie
D. Weatherhead was born into a Wesleyan home near London in 1893. He early felt
the nudge to overseas ministry and matriculated at Cliff College and Richmond
College, Methodist training schools. In 1916 he went to Madras to serve the
Georgetown Church where in response to his public invitations, many stood to
be counted for Christ. In his younger son's memoir (Leslie Weatherhead: A
Personal Portrait), we trace his growing faith in human nature and his capitulation
to liberal theology. He served briefly as a military chaplain in Basra in Iraq
in World War I, and then after marrying in India, returned in 1922 to England.
Weatherhead
served two substantial Methodist churches, in Manchester and the famous Brunswick
Church in Leeds where his successor was W.E. Sangster, a true gospel-preaching
Methodist. Weatherhead drew crowds wherever he preached. He did this even with
a rather unattractive highly-pitched voice. What was his secret? He always appealed
strongly to the emotions — he was a "feeling" preacher and would
use the proverbial tearjerker. He loved language and could turn a phrase but
was always forthright if not blunt. He had a great sense of humor and after
his preaching at St. Giles in Edinburgh it was said that it was "the first
time they had laughed in St. Giles." His language was quite free and had
to be edited for publication. He delighted in the loud laconic whisper. But
above all, he genuinely cared for people. He could embrace a crowd of people.