20 Facts About Leslie Weatherhead

Leslie Dixon Weatherhead was an English Christian theologian in the liberal Protestant tradition.

Leslie Weatherhead trained for the Wesleyan Methodist ministry at Richmond Theological College, in south-west London.

Leslie Weatherhead served there from 1936 until his retirement in 1960.

From 1930 till 1939, Leslie Weatherhead was a member of Frank Buchman's Oxford Group and wrote several books reflecting the group's values, including Discipleship and The Will of God.

Leslie Weatherhead often symbolised the "head" of the Oxford Group London.

Leslie Weatherhead was able to continue his ministry thanks to the nearby Anglican St Sepulchre-without-Newgate church.

Leslie Weatherhead understood that God cared for humankind, but that some would find this difficult.

Leslie Weatherhead believed the idea of Jesus being "the only begotten son" of God was impossible - and that such information is not presently available.

The virgin birth was not an issue for Leslie Weatherhead, having never been a major tenet for being a follower of Christ.

Leslie Weatherhead taught that many theologians assumed Jesus' sinlessness because of his moral superiority, but that Jesus never made that claim for himself.

Leslie Weatherhead was in agreement with Nathaniel Micklem, whom he quoted, that the blood sacrifice of Jesus was unnecessary for forgiveness of sins.

Leslie Weatherhead's view of the church was an idealistic one.

Leslie Weatherhead considered it significant that the Gospels do not record Jesus saying his mother had conceived him without a human father.

Leslie Weatherhead taught that the Bible is a collection of works that progressively reveal man's search for and understanding of God, culminated in the best representation of God's true nature in Jesus Christ.

Leslie Weatherhead denied the Atonement and the efficacy of the Blood of Christ in A Plain Man Looks at the Cross, and the bodily Resurrection of Christ in The Manner of the Resurrection in the Light of Modern Science and Psychical Research.

Leslie Weatherhead dismissed the virgin birth, was inclined to believe that Zechariah was the father of Jesus, thought that the "legion" of demons probably meant that the man had been molested as a child by Roman legionnaires, and regarded the Apostle Paul as hopelessly neurotic.

Leslie Weatherhead regularly attended spiritist seances, at one of which John Wesley appeared to him.

Leslie Weatherhead continued to advocate reincarnation for the rest of his life in books like The Christian Agnostic and Life Begins at Death.

Professor Larsen, while agreeing that Leslie Weatherhead was "a brilliant preacher", judges his sermons to be theologically "vacuous and empty".

Leslie Weatherhead was "a rebel, breaking out from the confines of Methodism", and impossible to imagine "in a traditional Congregational church".