By David Carter.
A Wesleyan Methodist minister, he was a precursor of ecumenical irenicism. Returning from missionary service in 1840, he was distressed by the bitterness of contemporary inter-church relationships in England and by the way in which independents and Tractarians alike impugned the authenticity of Wesleyan Methodist ecclesiology and practice. He wrote An Essay on the Scriptural Nature of the Wesleyan Economy, in which he called upon his fellow Methodists not to respond bitterly to the attacks on them, but always to affirm the good that they could discern in the other traditions. Some of his teaching anticipated that of Paul Couturier a century later, arguing that ‘it is by promoting holiness within its own limits that each church may most effectively benefit other churches…this is the scriptural way ‘to provoke to love and to good works’ (Heb 10:24). This corresponds to Couturier’s stress on spiritual emulation. Like Couturier, Shrewsbury was a rather conservative presbyter of his particular church, intensely loyal and obedient to it, whilst being deeply committed to commending the virtues and riches of others.
He further argued that ‘the Methodists have good reason to be the friends of all and the enemies of none’, on account of their indebtedness to so many other traditions, Anglican Puritan and pietist. His great hope was that Methodism might become the ‘middle bond of union’ between the other free churches and the Church of England.
I have published brief accounts of Shrewsbury in One in Christ ( 2000, vol 4) and in Woodruff, M. The Unity of Christians: The Vision of Paul Couturier (2003), pp. 64-75. His biography is by his son, John V.B. Shrewsbury, Memorials of the Rev. William James Shrewsbury (1866).