The Way of the Cross

by Steve | Mar 13, 2024 | March/April 2024

The Way of the Cross

By K. Morgan Edwards

Good News Archive
1970 Good News Convocation

The word out of the New Testament is that God seeks to redeem us. This is what Paul said, “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you” (Romans 8:11).

To make sure that we understand what this transformation is supposed to do within us, Paul continues, “Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation – but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live” (vs. 12-13).

What Paul is saying is that God offers newness of life to us by the quickening of his Spirit. He offers to us moral control and moral recovery. Paul further describes the God who offers us these things. “Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness” (Romans 11:22).

If there is any nation under heaven which needs moral recovery, it is the people of America. If ever there was a time when America needed this word, it is now.

Jonathan Edwards believed that the grace of God always came to the listener after self-centeredness was shattered by the fear of God. Now most of us don’t understand Edwards. We remember only the caricature of one who thundered about the horrors of hell, so that his congregation clutched the pillars in the church to keep from slipping into the yawning chasm of hell which that old near-sighted preacher was describing by candlelight.

Have you heard any sermons like that lately? Yet this is exactly the word we need to hear. In our arrogance and self-righteousness, we need to hear about the severity of God.

Two Laws. Jesus insisted that everything hangs on two laws. First, love God with your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Second, love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Jesus knew that the center of sin – the sinfulness from which everything else springs – is that we love ourselves when we should be loving God, and our neighbors. There won’t be any revival in America, and there won’t be any change in the world, unless you and I allow God to hold up the mirror of his severe demands before our own souls. We must allow God to shine the search light of his own penetration into our hearts, so that we recognize the selfishness which Paul is talking about. Until we cast ourselves down and ask for mercy, there can be no beginning of renewal within the Church.

Six years after his Aldersgate experience, John Wesley took his second round at preaching at Oxford. He made the mistake of telling the people the truth about themselves. Before that, he was telling them the polite things that audiences want to hear. They thought he was great; and they kept inviting him back. Then, six years after Aldersgate, he forgot to ask somebody – such as the Countess of Huntington, Selina Hastings – to look over his notes before he preached. Instead of saying to that assembled congregation at St. Mary’s Church at Oxford: My, what a wonderful company of people you are. How proud God must be, Wesley lifted his eyes heavenward and said, “It is time for thee, Lord, to lay thine hand” upon this place.

It is time for God to lay his hand upon this Church. And upon this nation. If that is a word of severity, so be it. Better that we should survive as servants of God, than perish by our own gluttony. The purpose of lifting up the severity of God is to prepare the way for the glorious and remarkable transformation of the grace of God. That’s the heart of the Gospel. But we must first be torn apart in order to know how desperately we need God’s pardoning and restoring grace.

Heart wound. Nathan Cole, a Connecticut farmer, described listening to George Whitefield preach. “My hearing him preach gave me a heart wound,” Cole said. “By God’s blessing, my old foundation was broken up, and I saw that my righteousness would not save me.”

Our old foundations must be broken up. I must be taken out of the center of this one-passenger heart. There’s only room for one. Either Christ or myself – not for both.

There will be no evangelical reawakening until you and I receive this experience at the hand of the Lord. First, God’s severity which gives us the heart wound and destroys our foundation. Then we are ready to receive the assurance of his grace: no matter what we’ve done or what kind of person we’ve been, he longs to forgive, pardon, and restore. And God stands ready to give us the assurance that we are forgiven if we will but trust him.

Just a few days before John Wesley had his Aldersgate experience, his brother Charles had an encounter with a man named Holland, who gave him Martin Luther’s commentary on Galatians. They sat down and read it together.

After Holland left, Charles Wesley, who was very uncertain in his inner life, read it himself. In his reading, Charles came to Galatians 2:20: “the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me.” And he read Martin Luther’s words about that verse: “Who is this me? Even I, wretched and damnable sinner, was so dearly beloved of the Son of God that he gave himself for me.”

Have you ever faced that about yourself? Do you feel uncomfortable saying that? Are you and I willing to admit that we are wretched and damnable sinners for whom Christ died? Unless we can get to that point, we cannot receive the peace of forgiveness.

Luther goes on, “Read the words ‘me’ and ‘for me’ with great emphasis. Print this ‘me’ with capital letters in your heart, and do not ever doubt that you belong to the number of those who are meant by this ‘me.’ Christ did not only love Peter and Paul. The same love he felt for them he feels for us. If we cannot deny that we are sinners, we cannot deny that Christ died for our sins.”

We cannot deny that we are all sinners. When I feel and confess myself a sinner through Adam’s transgression, why should I not say that I am made righteous through the righteousness of Christ! Especially when I hear that he loves me and gave himself for me.

Jesus died for you. Power first came to the Methodist movement on the day Charles Wesley suddenly realized that Jesus didn’t die for the sins of the whole world. That’s too abstract. But when Charles suddenly recognized that Jesus gave himself for ME, Charles Wesley.

Charles Wesley went home, sat down, and wrote his first hymn. He’d written verse for years. But he wrote the first of more than 5,000 hymns after that experience of pardon. It is back in the Methodist hymnal after years of absence.

O how shall I the goodness tell,
Father, which thou to me hast showed?
That I, a child of wrath and hell,
I should be called a child of God,
Should know, should feel my sins forgiven,
Blest with this antepast of heaven.

Do we want a renewal in the Church? We’ll only have a renewal in the tradition of our dynamic heritage when each of us comes to the place where we cannot understand what prompted God to give his Son for the likes of us. Incredible, unbelievable pardon! But that’s what it is. And that’s the beginning point – for each of us – to recognize that God has given himself “for ME.”

The promise of the New Testament and the witness of the Christian community for 2,000 years is that if you and I want moral recovery and a breaking of the chains of any habit, however severe, God in his grace through Christ will give it to us.

The kind promise of pardon is (1) the realization that Christ died for me, (2) the promise that the grace of God can make me new, and (3) that God can and will empower us to become the kind of loving human beings that church people so rarely are.

The real test of the authenticity of our conversion is whether or not it makes us loving human beings. If it doesn’t, we haven’t been converted, no matter what we think. This is what John Wesley learned. Four days after Charles had had his experience, John Wesley went “reluctantly” to a prayer meeting at Aldersgate. Perhaps he went reluctantly because he wasn’t going to preach.

At Aldersgate, John Wesley heard somebody read Luther’s Preface to Romans. Luther was explaining the heart of Christian obedience: “Doing the works of the law and fulfilling the law are two very different things. The work of the law is everything that one does or can do toward keeping of the law through his own free will. Since under all these works there remains dislike for the law, these works are all wasted. To fulfill the law is to live a godly and good life of one’s own accord, without compulsion. The pleasure and love for the law is put into the heart by the Holy Ghost.”

Compassion. Up until Aldersgate, Wesley had been a very obedient person, doing everything that he ought to do – but doing it for the wrong reason. He started back in Oxford going to the prisons. Eighteenth century British prisons were little more than abandoned cesspools. In the pre-Aldersgate days, Wesley came away holding his nose and saying, God you must be proud of me. After the awareness of his own forgiveness, Wesley came from the prisons crying out to England, How can you neglect these prisoners? They are the children of God.

He had the compassion in his heart.

Paul is sure that if you and I come to realize that Christ died for us, and if we bring to him our broken lives and enslavements and trustingly believe that he can break them, he will break them. And if we really live in gratitude for what he has done for us, it will be impossible for us not to do what we need to do for the human community in compassion and loving service. That’s the heart of the Gospel.

Need for redemption. If God can do this for us as individuals – redeem us, give us an assurance that the gap which we opened between God and ourselves has been closed by his bridging it in Christ, give us power over enslavements, release us to be loving and serving people – then the question remains: Can God do the same for our nation?

In the first American revival, Jonathan Edwards thought God could. In 1735 Jonathan Edwards was excited by the change that came about in his New England community where people began to love each other. Edwards said, I believe God has a plan for this nation. I believe God can redeem these people and make America an Israel here on earth. 

In 1865, 130 years later, Horace Bushnell said essentially the same thing. He looked at a nation torn by the Civil War, and said, God can save a nation. He may not save it through victory. He may have to save it through suffering and lives sacrificed. But by the suffering of Christian people, God can redeem a nation.

Less than a decade later, Dwight L. Moody was living in the middle of an ugly and wicked city. Moody saw that the rich were idle and drunken while the poor were starving. He saw the violence that you and I see in the cities of America today. Looking at his Bible, Moody asked, I wonder whether God really wants to save this nation? I wonder if God really can save a nation as wicked as we are? Moody decided that the Scriptures didn’t promise that God would save nations. So Moody decided that the earth was a sinking vessel. “God gave me a lifeboat,” said Moody and urged, “Save all you can.”

I think these are the two choices we have: see whether or not God can redeem a people and a nation or believe somehow that God will only save a remnant. (This traditional attitude is at least as old as Noah.)

Only Hitler was arrogant enough to say the Reich shall last forever. Churchill was less ambitious when he said, “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: This was their finest hour.”

The Way of the Cross. The real consideration is not whether America will last for a few years longer, but whether the people in America will be sufficiently Christian to walk in the way of the cross, risk the fate of the Lord of the cross, and share in the Kingdom with the Lord of the cross. This is what we are called to do. Not to save a nation, but to call a nation to be subservient to the Lord of all the ages. Not to save ourselves or our privileges, but to allow ourselves to be called to the foot of the cross. We are called to acknowledge our sinfulness, to trust in his grace, to receive his transformation, and to be released to do his loving.

When historian Will Durant (1885-1981) closed his remarkable and exhaustive study of Christ and Caesar – The Story of Civilization, 1944 – he ended by talking about the contest which has already been carried out. “There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned and oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state history has ever known. Caesar and Christ met in the arena. And Christ won.”

And he will again. For he always does.

Dr. K. Morgan Edwards (1912-2003) was senior pastor of First United Methodist Church in Pasadena, California, (1951-1961). He was the Gerald Kennedy professor of preaching at the Claremont School of Theology from 1961 until his retirement in 1978. This sermon is condensed from his address at the first Good News convocation in 1970. It first appeared in the October/December 1970 issue of Good News.

“Do or Die for Christ”

by Steve | Mar 13, 2024 | March/April 2024

“Do or Die for Christ”

By David F. Watson

A few weeks ago I found myself sitting by a campfire at a truckstop. Nearby, a large tent, open on one side, sheltered a few weary truckers who lay on cots. A man sold snacks from a small stand. It was cold outside and the fire warmed my hands and feet while I drank sweet tea seasoned with black pepper.

It’s not exactly a scenario one would see at a Buc-ees, but I was in India, somewhere south of the sprawling megalopolis of Delhi. I had come with my friend and colleague Scott Kisker to meet one of our students. He had invited us to visit and see what life is like in India, particularly for the beleaguered Christians who live there. The church in India experiences various levels of hostility, depending upon where one lives. Before we headed to his home in southeast India, our student, whose name I won’t use in this essay for his protection, wanted to show us the Taj Mahal. It didn’t take much arm-twisting to get us to go. The Taj Mahal is sometimes described as the most beautiful building in the world, and indeed it is hard to imagine a more aesthetically perfect structure. To get there, however, required a four-hour drive. Hence the truck stop.

Before we left for India, one of our colleagues appropriately described this vast country as a “land of extremes.” In India you will find extreme opulence and extreme poverty, incredible beauty and aesthetic chaos. There are smells that will make your mouth water and those that will make your eyes water. The food is exquisite as long as you don’t mind the heat. When Indians tell you that a certain food is not spicy, they honestly believe it, but this is like your weightlifter friend telling you that the box on the counter isn’t that heavy.

For a Westerner like me, one of the more striking features of India was the sheer volume of people. With over 1.4 billion residents, India has recently surpassed China as the most populous nation on earth. The cities boil over with pedestrians and traffic. As far as I can tell, the lanes painted on the streets are irrelevant, and drivers use the horn more than the brakes. Cars and motorbikes and the ubiquitous auto-rickshaws (think of a three-wheeled motorcycle with a roof) jostle and weave through the streets with but inches between them, and one wonders how any vehicle survives the day. A haze hangs over every inch of the city.

In Delhi the air quality is the approximate equivalent of smoking a pack of cigarettes each day. Small, mangy dogs run back and forth. Cows amble lazily down the streets, eating grass or garbage or anything else they want. Drivers skirt around them, hardly noticing their presence. For the 32 million people who live in the Delhi metro area, this is their normal, from cradle to grave.

When I teach students about the ancient Greco-Roman world, I often describe it as “a world full of gods,” a phrase I took from the classicist Keith Hopkins, who wrote a book by that title. India, too, is a world full of gods – gods with the heads of animals, gods with multiple arms, gods riding tigers, gods with blue or green or gray or bright red or purple skin. Among the most popular are Ganesh, the elephant-headed God, and Hanuman, with the head of a monkey.

India is the most intensely and pervasively religious place I have ever been. It is the place of origin for four world religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism. Almost a billion Hindus live there, and this diverse collection of religious traditions dominates public and private life, approximately 80 percent of the population. Along the streets of large cities and small villages sit temple after temple featuring one or several of the more than 60,000 Hindu deities. Some of the temples are only large enough to hold a few people. Some are massive complexes that sit on acres of land. They feature elaborate carvings and paintings of gods and goddesses. Hindu people commonly make offerings to one deity or another, though mainly as individuals, or perhaps families. Corporate worship is not a common practice.

After a few days in Delhi we made our way by air to the southeast of the country. We then drove for hours to a rural village surrounded by rice paddies and jungle. A small congregation of Christians waited for us. They have no church building, only a tiny courtyard covered by a floral pink awning under which they worship each Sunday. They graciously served us a delicious meal, the heat level of which would be somewhere in the “sizzlin’” range at Buffalo Wild Wings. (And yes, they had dialed it back significantly for us.) Theirs is one of three churches in this small village, along with eight Hindu temples. As I said, India is an intensely religious country.

According to official reports, the second largest religious group in India are Muslim, approximately 14 percent of the population. Christians represent a small minority in India. Around 28 million Christians live there, but that only accounts for about 2 percent of the population.

Life as an Indian Christian is hard. Christian worship is legal, but some states have passed anti-conversion laws. Additionally, opponents of the faith find ways of making life difficult. Many avenues in life are simply closed to Christians. For example, it can be hard for Christians to find jobs or take out loans. By design, their options are limited. Converts from Hinduism to Christianity are particularly at risk. They are seen as traitors not only to their religion, but to the Indian way of life.

“My father always told me, ‘Do or die for Christ,’” remarked our student. He was speaking of the resolve it takes to live as a Christian in India. Particularly in the north of the country, Indian Christians pay a high price for their faith. Hindu nationalism is ascendant, and Hindu extremists are known to beat and even kill Christians. Law enforcement agencies offer Christians inadequate protection.

In the state of Manipur, things have gotten particularly bad. The Church Times recently described the persecution of the predominantly Christian Kuki ethnic minority:

“A surge in violence against Christians occurred in Manipur, a state in north-east India, in May. More than 175 people from the minority Kuki ethnic community have been killed, and thousands displaced in fighting with the majority Meitei tribe. Sexual crimes against women have also been prevalent: the case of two Kuki women paraded naked through the streets before being gang-raped sparked international outrage when it was circulated on social media,” reported the independent Anglican weekly newspaper based in London. “Violence is still continuing, and a buffer zone has been set up between the Meitei and Kuki communities. An internet blackout has been reimposed on the region by the government to try to calm tensions.”

Thanks be to God, the Christians we visited have experienced no such violence. Nevertheless, the specter of violence is real for these faithful few. Violence against Christians has been on the rise in India for about the last twenty-five years. The Christians, moreover, have little political voice in most of the 28 states and 8 union territories that make up the Republic of India today. The numbers and social status of Christians are not great enough to form a voting bloc.

Although Christianity first came to India around 52 CE when Thomas the Apostle arrived at Malankara, on a lagoon near present-day Kodungallur on the Malabar Coast, the Thomas Christians or Mar Thoma Christians are primarily located in the state of Kerala.

Today, the Church of South India, the Church of North India, the Methodist Church of India, and the Roman Catholic Church are all significant expressions of the Christian faith. They maintain and support schools, hospitals, and various institutions to care for widows, orphans, and the poor. Although harassed and troubled by the anti-Christian sentiment in the nation, these communities have the social and legal resources to defend themselves and their institutions.

We learned that many were from among the lower castes and Dalits. Members of this latter group are sometimes called “untouchables.” They represent the most oppressed and powerless of Indian society. Those who become Christians are doubly despised.

In the region we visited, denominations seem not to matter, to the extent they exist or function. The number of Christians is so small that they can’t afford to quibble over theological distinctives. Here, Christians describe themselves as Pentecostal, but they have no formal connection to any Pentecostal denomination. As one pastor put it, “If you’re Spirit-filled, you’re Pentecostal. If you aren’t, you’re Baptist.” Protestants, then, tend to respect one another and cooperate when possible. The same animosity between Roman Catholics and Protestants found in much of Latin American and Africa also resides in India.

As foreigners, we were prohibited from evangelistic activity. We did, however, observe worship. It begins with singing, normally by women who sit on the floor at the front of the room near the podium. Don’t look for Bethel, Hillsong, or even traditional Western hymnody here. Worship is indigenized. The music bears raga intonations and rhythm that sound foreign and beautiful and haunting to my Western ears. The worship space eventually fills up with younger women and children sitting in the front and older women behind them in chairs. The men, fewer in number, sit in chairs at the back. The service continues with spontaneous prayer, including praying in tongues, the reading of Scripture, and preaching. I felt I could have stayed for hours in that space. I didn’t understand the lyrics they were singing, but I knew they were offered up in praise to Christ.

As our time in India came to a close and we prepared to leave, my heart hurt for these saints whom I had grown to love. I will go back to a comfortable life, not without its challenges, but comfortable nonetheless. They will remain and tend the fire first brought to India by the Apostle Thomas. Their life will not be comfortable. It will be difficult, but they will persevere as the persecuted faithful have across the centuries. They showed us incredible honor and deference while we were there, surely far more than we deserved.

Having communed with these faithful few, I am overcome with profound gratitude and admiration. In truth, I feel unworthy of the honor they showed me. For generations their faith has been tested and proved true. I’m reminded of God’s words to the church in Philadelphia: “I know your works. Look, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name” (Revelation 3:8).

Christians around the world experience persecution today, sometimes quite intense and violent. By contrast, in the U.S. the greatest threat facing the church today may be Sunday morning youth sports. Yet their churches are growing and ours are declining. Had enemies of the church the slightest sense of history, they would not persecute Christians, but coddle them. Irenaeus wrote that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. Strike the church and you will foster her growth. Let her settle into a warm bath of comfort and complacency, and she will wither. Allow her to blend seamlessly into the fabric of a fallen world, and she will become wraithlike and powerless. “Do or die for Christ,” said my student, and he meant it. Western Christians should take heed.

David F. Watson is Lead Editor of Firebrand. He serves as Academic Dean and Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. A version of this article was first published in his Substack, www.davidfwatson3.substack.com. It is republished by permission.

Holy Love and the Genius of Wesleyanism

by Steve | Mar 13, 2024 | March/April 2024

Holy Love and the Genius of Wesleyanism

By Ryan Nicholas Danker

For some reason, I’m enamored with the scene of the laying of the foundation stone at what was then the New Chapel on City Road, London, in 1777. John Wesley was happy with the rain that day, something anyone who has been to the British Isle knows all too well. There is a reason these islands are so green. He was happy with it, though, not because of the greenery but because it limited the size of the crowds.

Wesley liked crowds to an extent, but he liked them to be controlled. And crowds in London in the eighteenth century were not always the best behaved. It had been a number of years since the last mob attacked a Methodist preacher, including Wesley, but the memories of those events were likely seared in his memory. Early Methodist chapels had been built with rowdy mobs in mind, including ways for any preacher quickly to  exit the building when necessary. 

But by the late 1770s, when the chapel in question was finished, things were different. By then the trans-Atlantic Evangelical Revival, of which Wesley’s Methodism was a part, had been going on for almost forty years. The “showers of grace” as they were called kept falling and the Wesley brothers and so many other evangelicals in the Church of England had done their best to keep up with them, chasing these outbursts of the Spirit around Britain, Ireland, and even into the Americas. There were still concerns that Methodists were out to undermine the social and political order, and the rumblings of revolution on the European continent did not help assuage these suspicions, but most of these concerns were dying down.

Here on City Road, in the rain, on what was then the outskirts of a quickly expanding London, and just a few feet from his mother’s grave, Wesley preached a sermon that outlined his vision for Methodism: “On Laying the Foundation of the New Chapel.”

“What is Methodism? What does this new word mean? Is it not a new religion?” Wesley asked. “This is a very common, nay, almost an universal supposition. But nothing can be more remote from the truth. It is a mistake all over. Methodism, so called, is the old religion, the religion of the Bible, the religion of the primitive church, the religion of the Church of England.”

One of the mistakes of modern Wesleyans is to forget that Methodism began – and to an extent is always meant to be – a movement of renewal or restoration without group or later denominational limits. This is very clearly seen in Wesley’s description, as he believed that what Methodists were doing in their society meetings, their bands, their street preaching, their clinics for the poor, and their continued adherence to the Church of England, was to restore the best of the past by bringing it to the present.

At its best, Methodism, even in its more revivalistic periods, has valued the mind, the contribution of faithful scholars, and the insights learned from years of study and formation. This intellectual gift is not greater than any other, of course, but Methodism maintains its trajectory by means of thoughtful leaders who are attuned to the Spirit’s work and to the gift of wisdom. Unlike Luther, Wesley embraced reason. Knowledge and vital piety, to borrow from Charles Wesley, are not in opposition to one another. 

Wesley believed, however, that Methodism was called to renew or restore the heart of the church’s witness: a transforming encounter with the crucified and risen Christ, a witness that spoke to our transformation here and to the ultimate wholeness that God has for all creation. Proclamation, encounter, and Methodism go together. And in his sermon, he outlined the ways in which, at its best, Methodism was doing just that.

Notice that Wesley wants to make the point that Methodism is not new. We are not doing a new thing. Methodism at its best does old things and does them well. Like so many in our own day that yearn for an expression of the faith with substance, Wesley wanted Methodism to be “the old religion.” But let’s be careful here. This is not the same as “give me that old time religion,” which often points to 19th century camp meetings, as wonderful as they may have been. This – the old religion – is much, much older. It is the term he uses to encapsulate the other three qualifiers that he lists: a religion of the Bible, of the primitive church, and of the Church of England. And this emphasis mirrors comments he makes about the Christian faith elsewhere when he says about theology “if it’s new it’s wrong.” 

Wesley may have been creative at times to promote his evangelistic mission, but his earnest attempts to remain as traditional as possible are often missed by later interpreters who do not understand his context. For example, even his irregular ordinations in 1784 were done according to the rubrics of the Prayer Book! And that is an example of what was probably his most creative moment.

Wesley was a “traditioned” man, an authentic conservative. Not a right-wing populist, but someone who drank deeply from the wells of the past, who knew that the old wine, or the old story, was best. Attempts today to make Wesley into a sort of unhinged or unmoored pragmatist are profoundly misleading. While it’s possible for formalists to miss out on the life of the movement, many who try to contemporize Methodism miss out on the point of it.

Bear in mind that Wesley envisioned Methodist practice to include a liturgical, Eucharistic service on Sundays, society meetings during the week for preaching and singing, another day for some sort of small group meeting, personal devotions throughout the week, and taking every opportunity to help those in need, all on top of the regular rhythms of everyday life. This isn’t a religion of convenience. It’s almost monastic. Methodism at its best is primitivist, old school, steeped in the historic patterns of Christianity.

The religion of the Bible. In the New Chapel sermon, Wesley is adamant that what the Methodists were doing in the British Isles and even recently in the American colonies was profoundly biblical. They believed in the truthfulness of the Bible. But their focus was the transforming religion of love, that biblical religion, that they were preaching to anyone who would hear.

In his earlier work, Wesley described this old, biblical religion as “no other than love: the love of God and of all mankind; the loving God with all our heart, and soul, and strength, as having first loved us, as the fountain of all the good we have received, and of all we ever hope to enjoy; and the loving every soul which God hath made, every man on earth, as our own soul.”

Wesley continued, “This love is the great medicine of life, the never-failing remedy for all the evils of a disordered world, for all the miseries and vices of men. Wherever this is, there are virtue and happiness, going hand in hand” (Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion).

A truly Wesleyan view of Scripture begins with the question of holiness, and throughout our history we have been convinced that a holy life and a biblical life are one and the same; the Bible is a means of grace, a faithful helper in that journey toward holy love, which is a Christ-like life. And this, as Wesley says, is the message of Scripture “as no one can deny who reads” the Bible “with any attention.” We don’t start with theories about the text, but with the promise of wholeness clearly described in the text.

Wesley clearly believed in the inspiration of Scripture. For Wesleyans, the Scripture was inspired when it was written and inspired for readers in the present. When Wesley published his own annotated version of the New Testament in 1755, one of Methodism’s historic doctrinal standards, he wrote, “The Spirit of God not only once inspired those who wrote it, but continually inspires, supernaturally assists, those that read it with earnest prayer.” To understand Scripture is to see its “general tenor,” the overarching narrative of God’s work of redemption, from the first page to the last. And to see that is to see its beauty, and the equally beautiful life it promises even now.

It is crucial to understand, though, that Wesleyanism’s relationship with Scripture begins with holiness. And as Jesus is the pattern of holiness, so the Scriptures describe his life. The Scriptures not only speak of Jesus from beginning to end, in Wesley’s view, but give us the Gospels, describing his life, ministry, atoning death, and glorious resurrection.

Scripture, and especially the life of Jesus, demonstrates a distinct concern for the poor. From the beginning of the Wesleyan movement, a Christ-like concern for the poor has been at the center of its mission. John Wesley famously preferred the company of the poor, even writing about them as Christ figures. Despite his own Oxonian pedigree, he was notoriously uncomfortable around the wealthy, a distinct difference between him and his younger brother, who worked easily with those across the various classes of their day. 

The religion of the early Church. Just as Wesley believed that Scripture points us to a saving relationship with Christ, so he saw in the early Church those who both contended for the faith once delivered (Jude 3) and even more importantly those who sought the face of Christ.

Wesley’s view of church history looked for what might best be described as “purity points,” or persons, eras, and communities that, in his view, could be seen as patterns of holy love. The early Church, before Emperor Constantine, was his favorite. But we shouldn’t imagine that he lacked an affinity for the church fathers and mothers after the first Christian emperor.

Wesley’s love for the early Church began early in his own life. His affinity for the early Church came to full bloom when he was a student at Oxford where the high church attachment to the church fathers and, at least at Oxford, to the virtue ethics of Aristotle, shaped his thinking for the rest of his life. He did, in fact, have a nickname: “Primitive Christianity.” And it was out of this ancient faith that he, like so many others at the time, came to believe that the atonement of Christ was available to all, that grace was poured out on all people, and that God was seeking to be in relationship with all. This is catholic Christianity at its best, and Methodism is an expression of it.   

If you look at Wesley’s ministry, he arguably saw the Methodist movement as an attempt to live out the best patterns and practices of the early Church, to bring what he saw as the best of the past – in this case the first few centuries of Christian witness – to the present. And in this case, his vision was a radically different one than either a pragmatic American evangelicalism or that of Protestant liberalism, both too modern in their assumptions and practices. Wesley had a love for the early church because he believed it to be close to Jesus, not just chronologically (although that was important to him) but also in the way the early Christians lived.

The intentionality of the early church struck Wesley profoundly. Their commitment to the faith – even in the face of sporadic persecution – and their commitment to one another as brothers and sisters in Christ inspired him. This can clearly be seen in his desire for small groups and how these small groups, both classes and bands, evolved over the course of his ministry. They almost always entailed both a serious desire to grow in Christlikeness combined with a familial concern to “watch over one another in love.” Wesley was adamant that true Christianity was communal in nature. He once wrote, “‘Holy solitaries’ is a phrase no more consistent with the gospel than holy adulterers” (Hymns and Sacred Poems).

The sacramental vision of early Christianity also inspired Wesley. As a good Anglican, he avoided too fine a definition of Christ’s presence in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, but he believed wholeheartedly that Christ was present. This is no mere memorial, a view that he actually described as heretical in the preface of Hymns on the Lord’s Supper. And this is why he took the administration of Holy Communion so seriously, both in terms of the basic historic requirement that it be celebrated by validly ordained clergy, and also that, like the Church throughout time, it be celebrated with reverence and care.

The religion of the Church of England. Wesley’s triptych concludes with the Church in which he was born, lived, ministered, and died. One of the most damaging failures of contemporary Wesleyan thought is the belief that Wesley was not actually an Anglican, to see him and his movement as somehow impervious to time and place. We rob Wesleyanism of its riches if we take it – and Wesley – out of the ecclesiastical tradition that gave it life and content.

The genius of Wesleyanism can be seen when Methodism retains the sacramental and liturgical patterns of historic Anglicanism, a tradition that sought to retain the best of the Protestant world while also retaining the very best of the catholic inheritance. This isn’t a cookie cutter approach to a worldwide movement, but rather the acknowledgement that Wesley’s vision of holiness of heart and life was itself sacramentally driven and that the ancient dictum lex orandi lex credenda – the rule of prayer is the rule of belief – is profoundly true. The way we worship does, in fact, shape the content of our belief.

With the emphasis that the Wesleyan tradition places on personal experience, itself a good thing, this lack of sacramental and liturgical formation fails to provide the believer with the communal foundation that the Wesley brothers believed necessary to guide our experience toward ultimately fruitful lives. And the problem with this failure isn’t just that we’re not taught our own heritage, but that it is inevitably replaced by something else, most likely the shifting and untried opinions of an ultimately secular pragmatism.

Thankfully, we have a rich, beautiful, tried, and ultimately scriptural tradition right at our fingertips. And whether we’re aware of it or not, the content of classical Wesleyan thought was forged within the communal life of English Christianity. Everything from our sacramental theology to Christian perfection, or even the very definition of grace used in Methodist preaching, comes from this historic wing of the Church.

For example, see the sacramental theology of Charles Wesley. With the same focus on holiness that is central to the Wesleyan message, he describes the Eucharist using the language of poetical theology, a profoundly Anglican description using an Anglican pattern of theological communication. It communicates mystery without holding so tightly to it that the mystery is lost:

O the depth of love divine,
Th’ unfathomable grace!
Who shall say how bread and wine
God into man conveys?

How the bread his flesh imparts,
How the wine transmits his blood,
Fills his faithful people’s hearts
With all the life of God!

It’s a complete historical fallacy to imagine that Wesley thought that he was called to rejuvenate a moribund church. Like the church throughout history, the Church of England in the 18th century had its successes and its areas of needed growth. One of the ways that the 18th century church can teach us today is through its engagement with a rapidly changing culture. These Christians developed ways to promote the historic faith in an age of reason, while also defending it against Deism, Unitarianism, and other forms of rationalist reductionism.

Ironically, perhaps, Wesley praises the Church of England and its Prayer Book – his common companion every day of his life – in the preface to his 1784 revision of that revered text, The Sunday Service. He wrote, “I believe there is no liturgy in the world, either in ancient or modern language, which breathes more of a solid, scriptural, rational piety, than the Common Prayer of the Church of England. And though the main of it was compiled considerably more than two hundred years ago, yet is the language of it, not only pure, but strong and elegant in the highest degree.”

It is in the Book of Common Prayer that we can find the basis for the Wesleyan vision of grace as the dynamic and relational power of the Holy Spirit. This alone is a treasure that we must not forget. The life-shaping work of grace is central to the proclamation of holiness.

The Church of England equipped Methodism with an historic link to the ancient church as well as to the great emphases of the reformation era: the new birth and justification by faith.

Wesley’s relationship with the Church, and its hierarchy, was not always an easy one. But his 1786 claim that “I still think, when the Methodists leave the Church of England, God will leave them” should rightly haunt us – primarily as a reminder that Methodism at its best is a movement of renewal, not a self-serving institution. Methodism must be engaged with the larger Church in order to remain authentically Methodist. And this engagement must include the Church of our own day as well as those who have gone before. 

The Genius of Wesleyanism. What I hope that I’ve described is an historic, faithful, dynamic, and Spirit-enabled community organized around the attainment of Christian perfection. Without it, it’s hard to call any of this Wesleyan. Whether looking at Methodism as the old religion, the biblical faith, the belief and practice of the early Church, or even the Church of England, what lies at the heart of an authentic Wesleyan witness is the sure hope that the restoration of the image of God in each and every one of us begins now, not just in a future state. The promise of Scripture can be experienced now. The wholeness that God has for us can, and should be, lived now. The freedom that we have in Christ is a freedom we can have now.

But Wesley also knew that human frailty is real, therefore we need one another. And we need the formative power of the church’s historic patterns of worship and witness. We need fellow believers now, just as we need the tried and true formation of those who have gone before us. Our need includes, among so many other things, the church fathers and mothers, the councils of the Church and the creeds they formulated, the English reformers and their witness, and the liturgical practices of two thousand years. Christianity is not a solitary religion, and that includes the idea that we can be somehow solitary in the present, without need of our forebears.

What Wesley envisioned for Methodism as long as it exists in this world is that it can be a community of holy love where the wholeness promised in Scripture and lived by the saints is a common expectation. He once wrote that he wasn’t afraid that Methodism might cease to exist, but that it might “have the form of religion without the power.” In fact, this expectation that God continues to work today in human hearts and communities is a hallmark of Methodism that should never be lost. That expectation is not simply an intellectual one, but one given present reality by the encounter of the risen Christ, in the cleansing waters of baptism, in the means of grace, in Scripture read and proclaimed, in works of mercy, and in that “grand channel of grace,” Holy Communion.

The genius of Wesleyanism is that it takes the best of the past and brings it to the present that all might experience the freedom and wholeness found in holy love. Yet as Wesleyans we know that this isn’t a song exclusive to us, but the song of all those who have gone before us in the faith. Wesley knew this. He was adamant when he said that Methodism was nothing new.

The song starts with Jesus, the embodiment of all the promises of God. He taught this song to his apostles who in turn taught it to the early Church, and on through the centuries. Our task is to join the faithful chorus, to harmonize with the song of holy love that has been sung long before we were born and will continue well after we have joined the heavenly chorus. In so doing, we will faithfully communicate the Wesleyan message, because it is nothing less than scriptural Christianity, a beautiful hope for us all.

Ryan N. Danker is the founding director of the John Wesley Institute, Washington, D.C., and Assistant Lead Editor of Firebrand. Dr. Danker is the author of Wesley and the Anglicans: Political Division in Early Evangelicalism. This article originally appeared in Firebrand (www.firebrandmag.com) and is reprinted by permission.

Looking Ahead to GC 2024

by Steve | Mar 13, 2024 | March/April 2024

Looking Ahead to GC 2024

By Heather Hahn (United Methodist News)

After a four-year delay, the next General Conference of The United Methodist Church is rapidly approaching. It will take place April 23-May 3 in Charlotte, North Carolina. During their December meeting, the commission members that plan the event heard updates on efforts to ensure General Conference delegates from outside the United States receive the required visas to attend.

The UM Church typically holds its General Conference every four years. Before the pandemic shut down world travel, the coming session was initially scheduled in May 2020 in Minneapolis.

The 2024 General Conference comes as the denomination is grappling with the withdrawal of more than 7,600 U.S. congregations from The United Methodist Church. Those departures represent about a quarter of U.S. churches leaving the denomination under a disaffiliation policy passed by the 2019 special General Conference. The bulk of those departures took place in 2023 before the disaffiliation policy officially ended on December 31. Whether that church-exit policy will be extended beyond this year or expanded to include churches outside the United States will be up to General Conference. The same is true for any change in the denomination’s policies related to LGBTQ people.

All told, General Conference has received 1,100 properly submitted petitions. The Book of Discipline – the denomination’s policy book – requires that all petitions must receive a vote in their assigned committee and all legislation approved by a committee must receive a vote by the full General Conference plenary.

Impact of disaffiliations. At its previous in-person meeting in May, commission members discussed how to handle petitions submitted by people who, for whatever reason, are no longer part of the UM Church. The Book of Discipline states that any United Methodist organization, clergy member or lay member may submit a petition to General Conference. The key phrase in that provision, the Discipline’s Paragraph 507, is “United Methodist.”

The commission approved a recommendation from its rules committee that will allow the Rev. Gary Graves, General Conference secretary, to enter a report identifying petitions submitted by people who have now left The United Methodist Church. Graves will base his report on information provided by chairs of delegations. His report will be shared with legislative committee chairs and printed in the Daily Christian Advocate, a daily report on General Conference proceedings.

The Judicial Council – the UM Church’s top court – has ruled that annual conferences could hold elections to fill any vacancies in their General Conference delegations if their pool of reserve delegates is empty. However, the church’s high court has left it up to General Conference how to handle vacancies in delegations to jurisdictional and central conferences, which meet after General Conference takes place.

A number of U.S. annual conferences held elections earlier to fill vacancies in their jurisdictional conference slates. For now, those delegates are only provisionally elected. General Conference will have final say on whether those additional delegates can be certified to serve. Similarly, if General Conference chooses to allow those vacancies to be filled, annual conferences that have not yet filled vacancies on their jurisdictional and central conference slates will have the chance to do so after General Conference meets. However, if General Conference opts to leave those vacancies unfilled, then the provisional delegates will not be certified and no new elections will need to be held.

Visa updates. The commission also received an update on where things stand in ensuring elected General Conference delegates have the required visas to attend.

Commission plans call for the coming General Conference to have 862 voting delegates – 55.9 percent from the U.S., 32 percent from Africa, 6 percent from the Philippines, 4.6 percent from Europe and the remainder from concordat churches that have close ties to The United Methodist Church. Half are to be clergy and half lay. Bishops preside at General Conference sessions but do not have a vote.

Of the 862 delegates, 360 are to come from Africa, the Philippines and Europe. Kim Simpson, the chair of the Commission on the General Conference, reported that letters of invitation have been sent out to 262 of those delegates – the first step in obtaining visas. Simpson said the commission is currently waiting to receive passport information from another 45 delegates. For the remaining 53 delegates from central conferences, the commission is still waiting on their credentials from their annual conference secretaries.

Handling regionalization legislation. The commission also spent time discussing how to handle the multiple proposals coming to General Conference that affect the denomination’s global structure.

A number of United Methodists have submitted legislation aimed at putting the U.S. and central conferences on equal footing in church decision-making. At this point, central conferences have the authority to adapt the Book of Discipline to their contexts but the United States does not. One result is that U.S. concerns end up dominating General Conference, and the U.S. dominance has contributed to the debates over LGBTQ policies that rage at the global meeting.

The most prominent of the regionalization proposals aimed at changing this dynamic comes from the Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters, a permanent General Conference committee that meets between sessions. All regionalization proposals, including the standing committee’s plan, are currently assigned to be first considered in the conferences legislative committee.

The committee, whose members have already started discussing the proposals, would have responsibility for refining the legislation and voting on what heads to the full plenary for more possible changes and a vote. But because regionalization has the potential to affect other legislation at General Conference, the commission wanted some way for all delegates to at least keep the proposals in mind during their time in legislative committees.

The commission approved a recommendation that all legislative committees set aside time for delegates to discuss regionalization and how it will affect the work of their committee. That discussion would take place as the first order of business when legislative committees meet on April 25. The committees will receive a resource, including some questions for discussion, prepared by General Conference’s steering committee.

“Regionalization is at the forefront in the minds of every delegate coming, no matter how they feel about it,” said the Rev. Andy Call, a commission member from the East Ohio Conference. “We know that there are going to be significant conversations.”

Heather Hahn is assistant news editor for United Methodist News (www.umnews.org). This is an edited version of her comprehensive report.