The term “March Madness” generates positive enthusiasm for many and negative emotions for many others. It all depends upon how you feel about basketball. One of the unpleasant elements of all the basketball games that dominate our television screens is the increasing use of profanity by players and fans. One does not need to be much of a lip reader to “hear” the language so clearly expressed by so many.

To my knowledge, John Wesley never attended a basketball game. But he certainly confronted profane language, and he was not reluctant to let his feelings be known. Historian Conrad Archer directs us to Wesley’s WORKS for examples of how he dealt with those who cursed around him.

Wesley wanted one’s “words to be the picture of one’s heart.” This is why it pained Wesley to hear persons swearing, cursing and using the name of God in a vain manner. At the height of the panic in Newcastle (in the face of a feared Jacobite invasion), Wesley wrote to the Mayor of Newcastle (Oct. 26, 1745). He wrote requesting the mayor’s assistance in curbing the profanity uttered by the British soldiers (some 15,000 were billeted there). He did not know the British General and was asking for help in gaining entrance into the army’s camp.

“My soul has been pained day by day, even in walking the streets of Newcastle, in observing the senseless wickedness, the ignorant profaneness, of the poor men to whom our lives are entrusted. The continual cursing and swearing, and the wanton blasphemy, of the soldiers in general, must needs be a torture to the sober ear. … Can it be expected that God should be on their side who are daily affronting him to his face?”

I suppose it should not surprise us that Wesley was concerned about the language of those around him. His entire life was devoted to the written and proclaimed word. He clearly had great reverence for language and how it was used.

Craven E. Williams
President
Greensboro College
Greensboro, N.C.