by Steve | Jul 24, 2017 | In the News, Uncategorized
The Wesleyan Family Tree
By Kenneth C. Kinghorn (1930-2017)
John Wesley invented no new theological doctrines. “Whatever doctrine is new must be wrong,” he wrote, “and no doctrine can be right, unless it is the very same ‘which was from the beginning.’” Mr. Wesley said, “If Methodism…be a new discovery in religion…this [notion] is a grievous mistake; we pretend no such thing.” Far from being narrowly sectarian, John Wesley was a catholic Christian. He stood firmly in the mainstream of historic Christianity, and drew from many of the tributaries that fed into it.
1. Early Church Writers. John Wesley often referred to “Primitive Christianity,” that is, the Church from the end of the apostolic age to the early fourth century. Christian writers in this era helped confirm the biblical canon, the doctrine of the Trinity, and the mystery of the Incarnation, through which the eternal Christ entered time and space as fully human and fully God. Mr. Wesley said of those early, “primitive” Christians, “I reverence their writings, because they describe true, genuine Christianity….They never relinquish this: ‘What the Scripture promises, I enjoy. That the God of power and love may make you, and me, such Christians as those Fathers were, is [my] earnest prayer.’”
2. The Protestant Reformation. John Wesley was a Protestant, who believed the Medieval Church had allowed layers of nonbiblical tradition to cloud the gospel of grace. Accumulated ecclesiastical inventions compelled the sixteenth-century Reformation. The Wesleyan message harmonizes with the fundamental themes of the Protestant Reformers, who recovered the supremacy of Scripture above human conventions. The essence of Protestantism is that salvation comes through grace alone, faith alone, and Christ alone. Wesley wrote, “We have all reason to expect…that [Christ] should come unto us quickly, and remove our candlestick out of its place, except we repent and…unless we return to the principles of the Reformation, the truth and simplicity of the gospel.”
3. Pietism. The Wesleyan tradition also borrows from the seventeenth-century German Pietists. Those earnest Christians championed the individual’s personal knowledge of Christ, serious discipleship, Christian witness, missions, and social ministries. Wesley referred to the Pietist August Francke as one “whose name is indeed as precious ointment. O may I follow him, as he did Christ!” From the Moravian Pietists, the early Wesleyan movement appropriated such means of grace as class meetings, conferences, vigils, and Love-feasts.
4. The Mystics. The influence of certain aspects of mysticism further reveals the catholicity of the Wesleyan message. John Wesley’s reading of Thomas à Kempis led him first to see that “true religion was seated in the heart, and that God’s law extended to all our thoughts as well as our words and actions.” Jeremy Taylor’s Rule and Exercises of Holy Living (1650) and Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying (1651) and William Law’s Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728) convinced Wesley of “the exceeding height and depth and breadth of…God.” The mystics also helped Wesley understand the Christian’s privilege of knowing the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. He wrote, “The light flowed in so mightily upon my soul, that everything appeared in a new view….I was persuaded that I should be accepted of Him, and that I was even then in a state of salvation.”
5. The Puritans. The Wesleyan message also bears the influence of the Puritan divines, such as John Owen, Thomas Goodwin, and Richard Baxter. These prodigious writers highlighted the profound depths of grace, God’s call to purity, and living daily in the light of eternity. “Their judgment is generally deep and strong,” said John Wesley, “their sentiments just and clear, and their tracts on every head full and comprehensive, exhausting the subjects on which they write…. They are men mighty in the Scriptures, equal to any of those who went before them, and far superior to most that have followed them.”
The power of the Wesleyan witness. All valid Christian traditions preach that justification and adoption give repentant sinners a new standing, in which God imputes Christ’s righteousness to us and frees us from the guilt of sin. The Wesleyan message also emphasizes that regeneration and sanctification give us a new state, in which God imparts Christ’s righteousness to us and frees us from the power of sin.
The sources and treasures of the Wesleyan message have never been more relevant than today.
Kenneth C. Kinghorn taught Methodist history for more than 43 years at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. He died on July 23, 2017. He is the author of many books including The Heritage of American Methodism and the three volume set of John Wesley’s Standard Sermons in Modern English. This article originally appeared in the January/February 2010 issue of Good News.
Art: This is a model for a proposed Wesley monument to be built at Epworth in the mid-1800s that never materialized. It was on the display at the World Methodist Museum in Lake Junaluska, North Carolina. Photo by Steve Beard.
by Steve | Apr 27, 2017 | In the News, Uncategorized
To United Methodists from the Rev. Dr. Jerry Kulah, Central Conference Coordinator, UMC Africa Initiative (Liberia Annual Conference), and The Rev. Evariste Kimba, Coordinator, French & Kiswahili Region, UMC Africa Initiative (Democratic Republic of Congo).
Dearly beloved,
On behalf of our global church, we wish to invite you, your local church, district, annual and provisional annual conference to join ranks with us in a season of fasting and prayer for the Judicial Council and the Council of Bishops’ Special Commission on the Way Forward as they make critical decisions that will impact the future direction of our Church. Your prayers will make a difference.
From 24th to 28th April, the Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church will convene for its regular meeting in New Jersey, USA. The Judicial Council is the Supreme Court of our denomination comprising of nine members from Africa, Asia, Europe and the USA. It is clothed with the responsibility, consistent with our Book of Discipline, to adjudicate cases of the church and come up with final rulings. One of the major issues to be addressed during this session of its meeting is to hand down rulings on a petition from the South Central Jurisdictional Conference which has asked the Judicial Council to rule on questions related to the election, consecration and assignment of a bishop who is in a same-sex marriage.
For the first time in the history of our Church, the Western Jurisdictional Conference, in July, 2016 elected a lesbian as bishop, Rev. Karen Oliveto, who is married to a deaconess. Since her election she has been serving as the bishop of the Mountain Sky [Episcopal Area]. This action of the Western Jurisdiction has caused many disagreements among United Methodists in the USA and globally, and it has created a sense of uncertainly about the future unity of our denomination. The Judicial Council is expected to make a decision on the matter.
Meanwhile, the Council of Bishops who will meet from 30th April to 5th May have set up a 32 member Commission to review every paragraph in the Book of Discipline on the subject of human sexuality in order to determine a way forward. That Commission is at work doing its utmost best to bring recommendations for consideration of the General Church during its meeting in 2019.
Based upon these concerns, and the times of uncertainly in which we find ourselves as a global church, we believe it is time to unite our hearts and minds in prayer to the Lord of the Church, Jesus Christ, for His timely intervention in sustaining His Church. Indeed the UMC is at a crossroads (Jeremiah 6:16), and it is only the Lord that can lead us into the “paths of righteousness for His name’s sake” (Psalm 23:3b).
The Lord promises, “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from Heaven, and will forgive their sins and heal their Land” (2 Chronicles 7:14). Also, in Jeremiah 33:3, the Lord challenged his people to “call upon me in the times of trouble, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things which you do not know”.
Based upon these scriptural promises, and our confidence in God’s intervention, the United Methodist Africa Initiative invites all local churches, districts, annual and provisional annual conferences of the Central Conferences of Africa in particular, and the global UMC in general, to a season of fasting and prayer, from Monday to Friday, 24th to 28th April, 2017.
At a minimum, we encourage everyone observing the fast to begin at 12:00 mid-night to 12:00 noon daily, while individual and corporate prayer sessions may be held throughout the day at your convenience. The purpose of this season of fasting and prayer is to intercede on behalf of the Judicial Council and the Commission on the Way Forward as they seek divine wisdom and scriptural guidance in their decision making process to the glory of God, and in the best interest of the global church.
We want to thank you in advance for your kind commitment to “stand in the gap” (Ezekiel 22:30) on behalf of our church. “If my people…pray…I will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).
For His Glory,
Rev. Dr. Jerry P. Kulah, Central Conference Coordinator, UMC Africa Initiative
Rev. Evariste K. Kimba, Coordinator, French & Kiswahili Region, UMC Africa Initiative
by Steve | Apr 24, 2017 | In the News, Uncategorized
Key questions in the Oliveto case
On July 15, 2016, during the session of the South Central Jurisdictional Conference, Dixie Brewster, a delegate and lay member of the Great Plains Annual Conference, asked that the delegates to request a declaratory decision from the Judicial Council on the following matter:
“Is the nomination, election, consecration, and/or assignment as a bishop of The United Methodist Church of a person who claims to be a ‘self-avowed practicing homosexual’ or is a spouse in a same-sex marriage lawful under The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church?”
Specifically, Brewster wanted to know how United Methodism’s standards on ordination and same-sex marriage applied to the nomination, election, consecration and/or assignment as bishop of a person who claims to be a “self-avowed practicing homosexual” or is a spouse in a same-sex marriage or civil union?
In her motion, Brewster asked some key questions:
• Does a public record that a nominee for the episcopacy is a spouse in a same-sex marriage disqualify that person from nomination, election, consecration and/or assignment as a bishop in The United Methodist Church?
• If a jurisdictional conference nominates, elects, consecrates, and /or assigns a person who, by virtue of being legally married or in a civil union under civil law to a same-sex partner, would be subject to a chargeable offense, is the action of the jurisdictional conference null and void?
• Is it lawful for one or more of the bishops of a jurisdiction to consecrate a person as bishop when the bishop-elect is known by public record to be a spouse in a same-sex marriage or civil union?
• When a bishop, district superintendent, district committee on ordained ministry, Board of Ordained Ministry, or clergy session becomes aware of or is made aware that a clergy person is a spouse in a same sex marriage or civil union of public record, does such information in effect and in fact amount to a self-avowal of the practice of homosexuality as set forth in the Discipline and related Judicial Council decisions?
The motion made by Brewster was seconded and then adopted by the South Central Jurisdictional Conference by a vote of 109 for the motion to 84 against the motion, a 56.48 percent majority.
The United Methodist Judicial Council will hear the oral arguments of the case on April 25, 2017.
To read the brief on behalf the Western Jurisdiction College of Bishops click HERE.
To read the brief on behalf of Ms. Dixie Brewster, the South Central Jurisdiction lay delegate who made the motion requesting the declaratory decision, click HERE.
To read a reply to the brief on behalf the Western Jurisdiction College of Bishops click HERE.
by Steve | Feb 23, 2017 | Uncategorized
A Peek Behind the Curtain
A survey of recent books from F. Willis Johnson, Lecrae, William H. Willimon, and John Perkins
By Courtney Lott
2017
“I looked, and behold, great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’” (Revelation 7:9)
In John’s vision of the kingdom of God we are presented with a very diverse picture of its citizens. The worshippers come from every race, every language, every nation. Far from monochromatic, the kingdom of Heaven is an undoing of Babel, a breaking of barriers, the unification of Christ’s body. But when we look at our churches today, at our congregations, what do we see? Though in many ways the church has taken great strides against racism, the after effects of old structures and mindsets remain like fingerprints on a mirror. As Christians, we are called to take a sober look at these things.
Racial reconciliation is hard, but thankfully, many have undertaken to aid the church in this difficult journey. The following books are helpful perspectives for this conversation. Each voice is different and offers its own unique angle.
Holding Up Your Corner by F. Willis Johnson
For situations fraught with sensitivity, practical guidance is essential. In Holding up Your Corner, the Rev. F. Willis Johnson, a United Methodist pastor, provides wisdom and insight. Offering helpful definitions and sober advice that is practical rather than preachy, this book equips leaders and readers to approach racial reconciliation with grace. Through his accounts of the racial strife in Ferguson, Missouri, and similar events, Johnson gives his audience the unique experience of seeing the world through his eyes.
“Once we have acknowledged someone’s humanity, we can move on to affirmation – respecting their humanity,” Johnson writes. “Hear this: affirmation is neither an act of complicity nor condemnation. Affirming someone’s experience – their humanity in their own experience – does not mean you approve their ideology or behavior. We can love people without agreeing with them. That bears repeating: we can love people without agreeing with them. In the words of Howard Thurman, ‘Hatred does not empower, it decays. Only through self-love and love for one another can God’s justice prevail.’ In short, affirmation is a willingness to emphasize our interdependence and commonality over our difference.”
Holding up Your Corner is carefully rooted in the scriptural idea of balancing both justice and mercy, truth and grace, the practical and prophetic. It reaches out with gentleness and humility that challenge the reader in such a way as to promote conversation rather than dampen it. Johnson’s humble way of engaging his audience invites engagement rather than shutting it down. This book is a desperately needed guide through the difficult terrain that the church now faces in regard to loving the “other.”
Unashamed by Lecrae
Unashamed, the autobiography of mega-star Christian rapper, Lecrae, holds as its central concept the need for acceptance. From the first page, the writing conveys the painful sting of rejection. The reader can’t help but wince through the author’s childhood abandonment issues and heartache, then rejoice at the acceptance found in Christ. Yet Lecrae offers a starkly honest picture of his conversion and doesn’t shy from sharing his struggles with sanctification.
This particular path, the suffering of his youth and the abandonment he felt, prepared him for the role of a “lamenter” rapper. It was only when he allowed himself to be vulnerable and honest about his own battles, and stopped trying to preach like a “Pastor Rapper” that the “magic” came. Lecrae describes his unique position within the industry and how it provides him with the opportunity to reach people others might not be able to. He writes:
“Operating as a ‘Pastor Rapper’ was hard work for me because it wasn’t playing to my strengths. Rather than letting the music pour out of me when the inspiration came, I would spend hours studying beforehand … Being theologically educated is a great thing. And using music to explicitly express theology is needed. But I mistakenly believed it was the only way to make music. On the rare occasion, however, I would let go and let the ‘lamenter’ in me come out. When I did – when I let Lecrae just be Lecrae – it would spark magic… Rather than make myself the winner, I allowed myself to be the loser… People wrote to say how much that song impacted them because it was real and vulnerable. And this was one of the first moments I began to wonder if maybe God was calling me to make a shift in my music and begin producing new songs that were truer to how I was naturally made.”
Who Lynched Willie Earle? by Willam H. Willimon
Centered around a specific event, Who Lynched Willie Earle approaches the issue of race from a historical standpoint. Bishop Will Willimon creatively reimagines Pastor Hawley Lynn’s thought process leading up to his sermon condemning the lynching of a black man accused, but not convicted, of murder. Pastor Lynn confronted his own congregation with the mindset he believed led to the lynching, the deeply ingrained attitudes that allowed the mob to pervert “democratic justice” and execute Willie Earle.
Willimon, prolific author and retired United Methodist bishop, proceeds to analyze the sermon. Not only does he take into consideration the history of America, but also connects this with Israel, the Gentiles, and the kingdom of God. Willimon also points out Pastor Hawley’s own blind spots, in which he failed to address systemic, institutional racism. In this, Willimon says, the church was able to “disassociate themselves from the sin and to bolster their confidence in Jim Crow.” In spite of his failings, Willimon calls Pastor Hawley’s sermon “heroic homiletics”.
“Though these sociological and historical facts about racism are significant, race is a specifically Christian problem because of the God we are attempting to worship and to obey,” Willimon writes. “In the gospel, we are given the means to be color-courageous, to talk about matters our culture would rather keep silent. That you have persevered this far in this book suggests you are exercising a bravery that is not self-derived. Paul says that, in God’s realm, Jews and Greeks, slave and free, ‘You all are one in Jesus Christ’ (Galatians 3:28). It is a baptismal call, not for color-blindness or arguing that gender or race are inconsequential, but rather a theological affirmation that Jesus Christ enables a new eschatological community where conventional, worldly signifiers don’t mean what they meant in the kingdoms of this world.”
Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win by John Perkins
Like Unashamed, Dr. John Perkins’ approach is extremely personal and humble. In spite of this, he does not shy away from calling out injustice and racism. Quoting Frederick Douglas and sighting the stark reality of his own experience with segregation, Perkins focuses on the “walls that have kept black people and white people apart, even in places where we had so much in common.”
“Anyone who knows my story would expect this book to ooze with justice issues. After all, the pain caused by injustice has motivated me to spend a lifetime working for social change on behalf of widows, prisoners, the poor, and anyone who struggles,” writes Perkins, a prolific civil rights veteran. So how did someone who has experienced the anguish of poverty, racism, and oppression end up wanting to write a book about love as his climactic message? Good question… I’ve come to understand that true justice is wrapped up in love. God loves justice and wants His people to seek justice (Psalms 11 and Micah 6:8) But I’ve come to understand that true justice is wrapped up in love. The old-time preacher and prophet A.W. Tozer had a way of making the most profound truths simple and palatable. He once said, ‘God is love, and just as God is love, God is justice.’ That’s it! God’s love and justice come together in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, and we can’t be about one and not the other. They’re inextricably connected.”
Perkins takes a strong look at motivation. By keeping in mind questions about his own choices, he tempers his assessment with a great deal of grace and mercy. On the one hand, he condemns the undermining of integration when white parents send their children to private schools. On the other, he empathizes with parents wanting a good education for their kids. Perkins asks people to be aware of the effect our choices have on black children in public schools. Moreover, he asserts that integrating our churches is at the very heart of the gospel, the very heart of 2 Corinthians 5:19.
If we want to work toward racial reconciliation in a country that desperately needs it, if we desire to share the love of Christ with all nations, we must take steps to build empathy for our brothers and sisters. The books on this list are testimonies, a mere peak behind the curtain, but they may also serve as first steps. We encourage you to take some time to check these out and prayerfully consider how we might work together to build better unity within the church.
Ultimately, God alone through Jesus Christ can accomplish this. Racism, comparison, pride, arrogance, greed all root deep down in the hearts of man. But thanks be to God that he does not leave us in this sad state!
Courtney Lott was the editorial assistant at Good News when this was published. Photo of John Perkins courtesy of the John and Vera Mae Perkins Foundation https://jvmpf.org/.
by Steve | Dec 8, 2016 | In the News, Uncategorized
By Steve Beard
Unbeknownst to him, Professor Thomas C. Oden was the prime agitator to the agony and ecstasy of my seminary experience. It was wading through 1,400 pages of his three volume systematic text books that introduced me to his dear friends Athanasius, Basil, John Chrysostom, Gregory Nazianzen, as well as Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine –– that’s just to name a few.
To be honest, sometimes it felt like fraternity hazing and at other times it read devotionally, healing the wounds of my worn-out and stretched mind.
Looking back on it, I would not have had it any other way.
It was with deep sorrow and great gratitude, mixed with a redemptive joy, that I heard about the death of Dr. Oden (1931-2016), my dear friend who taught me so much about the faith once delivered to the saints.
There will be many glowing testimonials to Tom – and none of them will be exaggerations. The praise will be deserved. He was a one of a kind theological mind with a deep spiritual yearning to be faithful to the deep roots of Christianity. Over our 25 years of friendship, there are a few notable reasons I have always trusted Oden.
First, he was steadfastly committed to the historic teachings of Jesus. He made a professional vow to be theologically “unoriginal,” a counterintuitive move for a brilliant intellect within a culture where newer is always considered better and theologians huff and puff to “keep pace with each new ripple of the ideological river.” Oden was sold out to the witness of the martyrs, saints, and prophets –– the faith that has been “everywhere and always and by everyone believed” to be the truth of Christianity.
Second, he had a checkered past. For some reason, I trust those whose skeletons have already been laid bare. He wasn’t always a bleeding heart for orthodoxy. As a “movement theologian,” he dabbled in theoretical Marxism, existentialism, demythologization, Transactional Analysis, Gestalt therapy, humanistic psychology, and parapsychology. Oden liked the bandwagons and everyone winked and nodded. Everyone, that is, except the late Jewish scholar Will Herberg, a brilliant colleague at Drew University who hounded Oden to rediscover his Christian roots.
“The modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place, and I still felt depressed even in acquiescence,” G.K. Chesterton wrote many years ago in Orthodoxy. “But I had heard that I was in the wrong place, and my soul sang for joy like a bird in spring.”
Taking Herberg’s admonition seriously, Oden incrementally turned his back on the countless trendy movements and “the fantasies of Bultmannianism” he had embraced and ended up being United Methodism’s preeminent and most prolific theologian.
Third, Oden smiled. Sounds insignificant, but it was not. He was pastoral and deeply concerned about the care of the soul. He was a lover of ideas, an engaged student and teacher. Oden was not bitter –– mildly amused, but not bitter. He was actually grateful for his colleagues –– feminist, form critical, deconstructionist, and even heretical –– who challenged him to be more clear in his espousal of orthodoxy. He only asked for a fair hearing.
One would need a billboard to list all his books. Oden spent 17 years editing the 29-volume Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. My last lengthy interview with Oden dealt with his four-volume collection of John Wesley’s Teachings. He showed that Wesley’s instructional homilies addressed the “whole compass of divinity” through his deep grounding in ancient ecumenical teaching.
The same could be said of Professor Thomas C. Oden. Rest in peace, my treasured friend and teacher. I know that you are relieved to no longer see through the glass dimly, but finally you are granted the joy to see your Savior face to face.
Steve Beard is the editor of Good News.
by Steve | Oct 1, 2016 | Uncategorized
Clarification: In this space, Good News republished a widely-distributed email critique of the Wesleyan Covenant Association gathering in Chicago from a well-known denominational official in the North Central Jurisdiction.
“It’s ok to forward this email to friends and delegates of your choice,” read the email. In anticipation of its release, the official wrote: “I’d prefer to not get reactionary and hostile emails in response, if you can protect me from that.”
The email was sent to progressive activists around the denomination and was strategically forwarded to church members of a congregation associated with the WCA. Good News also received the forwarded email, and we assume other United Methodist news and opinion outlets did as well.
Among the observations (some peculiar) in the email:
• “No one looked poor. Khakis and button shirts mostly. Some suits, fewer polos.”
• “Submission to authority, whether Biblical or Spiritual, was a prominent theme. Songs included ‘On Christ the solid rock I stand’ and one with the lyric, ‘my one defense, my righteousness’”
• “The WCA rebrands the right-wing caucus group agenda as a centrist church…. they portrayed the left as a threat.”
• “If you don’t decode the language, little in the presentations is objectionable.”
• “Very disciplined message management was deployed. Presenters were using the same terms and were demonstrating a common approach to the intent of the meeting. No one drifted from the common message.”
• “They view themselves as martyrs for their beliefs. Their martyrdom indicates the depth of their faith.”
The writer of the email contacted our office to lodge a complaint about the posting of the text of the forwarded email on the Good News website. Although the email explicitly stated: “It’s ok to forward this email to friends and delegates of your choice,” the writer asked Good News to remove it from our website.
As a courtesy, Good News honored the request and removed the text of the controversial email for the past several months. We have posted this brief explanation in response to on-going questions about the forwarded email and our exchange.
For those curious about the various critiques of the WCA event in Chicago, please see the Rev. Walter Fenton’s tongue-in-cheek response HERE.
