On the Welsh Preaching Tradition

Another notable note from my OCE preparations. In the summer of 2005 I wrote a history paper on the father of Welsh Methodism, Howell Harris. He's remembered for having started a tradition of powerful, poetic, open-air preaching that would develop into a distinctive national characteristic in Wales. At the time I wrote it, I was praying that God would clarify my own call as a preacher. Discovering Howell Harris' story inspired me to start asking God for my own distinctive preaching style.

From my paper, here's a glimpse of his legacy in Wales:

[By the 19^th Century], the preacher began “to take on the character of a folk hero, and the prospect of a visit from a celebrated preacher invariably promoted intense excitement.” The reverence afforded the preacher in Welsh society was such that “children even played at being preachers, thereby becoming… socialized into religion and into fulfilling the duty of piety and evangelism.” [This was the era] when Edward Matthews could write (1863) that “our Lord saw fit to bless Wales with preaching second to that of no other nation under the sun.” Preachers like Christmas Evans (1766-1838), William Williams of Wern (1781-1840) and John Elias (1774-1830) are among the earliest of the nineteenth century “‘giants’ of the Welsh pulpit” whose reputations inspired a kind of national hagiography. Christmas Evans, of whom Owen Jones wrote, his “face is language, his intonation music, and his action passion” is remembered for his “strong reasoning powers and his force of logic, coupled with the unction of the Holy Spirit and great imaginative expression.” Likewise, of John Elias we read that he “held vast throngs spell-bound and silent under the solemn thunders of his sermons. … He possessed the marvellous power of putting dramatic force into his sermons, and in words could vividly portray scenes that aroused admiration or struck terror into the hearts of the people.”

There are a number of characteristics of the preaching from this era that are remembered as being distinctly Welsh; and, while many of these are probably less indicative of a specific ethnic trait than they are simply of good oration in general, the important point is that they were believed by the people of the time to be unique to their nation. In descriptions of the Welsh style, we see again the marks of a rich poetic tradition. Hood writes: “their sermons became a sort of song, full of imagination—imagination very often, and usually, deriving its imagery from no far-off and recondite allusions, never losing itself in a flowery wilderness of expressions, but homely illustration.” In a similar vein, it is remembered for containing an “element of the histrionic, or rather passionate, of modulating the tone of voice and reaching natural climaxes of feeling,” and for the “technique of porthi’r gynulleidfa (nurturing the congregation), of repeating or reiterating key words or phrases.” Yet the preaching of this era is especially remembered for a fervent, incantatory style used in moments of impassioned zeal, known as the hwyl. It was “the musical, semi-chanted, emotional climax of the sermon—which at its most effective could reduce a whole congregation to tears.” Of the hwyl Ackerman records, “In preaching or extempore prayer, sometimes even in descriptive speech, the speaker, under stress of emotion or deep conviction, instinctively and unconsciously lapses into this form of fervent declaration which makes an instant appeal to the hearts of Welshmen.” Perhaps the closest we can come today to experiencing the emotive and dramatic effect such oratory is by listening for relics of the style in a recording of Dylan Thomas reading his “And Death Shall Have No Dominion”—lingering behind its thunderous modulations and chanted refrain is the heir of the yr hen bregethwyr, the great Welsh sermonizers of the past.