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DEPARTMENTS
Letters
to the editor
News Analysis Political propaganda pervades Response
UM membership figures show growth outside the U.S.
Bishop Sprague blasts “Christo-centric exclusivism”
British theologian N.T. Wright comes to defense of the Resurrection
Liberal UM activists publish new book on "conservative renewal groups”
Every so often, something happens to illustrate the widening doctrinal chasm that still exists within the United Methodist Church. Perhaps the most recent example of this divide is the recent publication of United Methodism @ Risk: A Wake-Up Call. The book is an attack on all the United Methodist evangelical renewal ministries, including of course, Good News (see news article on p. 40). Because of these various evangelical groups, the church is supposedly “at risk.”
The book comes from the Information Project for United Methodists, an ad hoc group of liberal leaders and long-time church activists. Retired Bishop Dale White heads the project, others involved include well-known names such as Bishop Roy Sano, Ms. Peggy Billings, Rev. Jeanne Audrey Powers, and Dr. Tex Sample.
One can’t help but grin at the hyperventilated sense of alarm found in the opening sentences of the book’s preface, “Our denomination is at great risk. The time to act is now. Organizations calling themselves ‘conservative renewal groups’ are engaged in campaigns to change the essential nature of our church. They seek to take the church to a place where diversity and tolerance and breadth of spirit are in short supply.”
Don’t miss the irony here. While touting the virtue of tolerance, here is a book that seems quite intolerant of all the UM evangelical renewal groups.
Though it was produced by a bishop, an attorney, and a “skilled research team” who labored months on the effort, the book is laced with numerous errors. Admittedly, we all might do renewal ministry better, but these liberal critics have little understanding of the church’s evangelical groups and their views. They really don’t seem to know us. Consider a few examples:
• The book has me “at the helm” of the Confessing Movement, which has never been the case. That ministry was launched by a gathering of evangelicals called by Bishop William Cannon, Dr. Thomas C. Oden, and Dr. Maxie Dunnam. Sen. Pat Miller soon became (and remains) the executive director of that movement.
• In the paragraph dealing with the Houston Declaration of 1988, the book claims the Declaration’s authors were “Good News leaders.” Not so. Those responsible included the Revs. Bill Hinson, Maxie Dunnam, Ellsworth Kalas, Jimmy Buskirk, Ira Gallaway, John Ed Mathison, and Gerald Trigg. None of these were “Good News leaders.”
• In the book’s comments about the Mission Society for United Methodists, the author says “but nothing in the Mission Society’s public material suggests a holistic view of mission. It’s about Americans going overseas.” This embarrassingly uninformed claim reveals the group knows nothing about the impressive, holistic ministry of the Mission Society, which is now in its 19th year of operation with 153 missionaries on the field.
The book is critical of Good News for seeking “to mandate fidelity on the part of clergy” to what we call “classical Christianity.” To that we are guilty as charged. We believe pastors should be faithful to the church’s doctrinal standards. And so, we would add, does The Book of Discipline.
At the heart of this book’s disagreement with evangelicals is the role of doctrine in our church. We are not, says this book, a creedal or confessional church. We don’t use doctrine “as an instrument of inquisition.”
The book claims, rather, that we Methodists have “reached across significant theological disagreements to declare to one another Wesley’s words: ‘If your heart be as my heart, then give me your hand.’” This notoriously misquoted phrase, of course, comes from Wesley’s sermon, “Catholic Spirit.” It’s the popular trump card played to justify our long neglect of theology. “Let’s just shake hands and not fret about doctrine.”
But what did Wesley mean by the heart and hand quotation? Much more than most think. He spends no less than seven lengthy paragraphs explaining it. He asks: “Do you believe…, Do you believe…, Have you the divine evidence…?” Clearly, for Wesley, right doctrine—including Christ’s deity and atoning death—was a vital ingredient for a right heart. Wesley would never extend a conciliatory hand to one who denied the authority of Scripture or the deity of Jesus Christ, as if those doctrines didn’t matter. Wesley even goes on to describe “this unsettledness of thought,” “this being…‘tossed about with every wind of doctrine,’” as “a great curse, not a blessing.” He then says boldly: “A man of a truly catholic spirit has not now his religion to seek. He is fixed as the sun in his judgment concerning the main branches of Christian doctrine.”
For those of us involved in evangelical renewal, what really is @ risk today is our Wesleyan doctrinal heritage.
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