Wesleyan Politics in a Divided USA
Photo by Robert Vergeson on Unsplash
Methodism, rightly ordered, should be uniquely equipped to respond to the polemics and political polarization of today’s America.
“Rightly ordered” must be stressed, because American Methodism is not, in any of its major denominations, currently institutionally and intellectually equipped to offer healing balm to American society. But the spiritual tools are embedded in our Wesleyan DNA and should be unsheathed for the present moment.
Methodism was a healing balm in Britain during the eighteenth-century revivals. And Methodism was key to building American democracy and civil society in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, much of institutional American Methodism derailed from Christian orthodoxy and forgot its heritage of personal and social righteousness. And yet, even in its errors and decline, Methodism for much of the last century, if only by force of habit, was central to cohering the best of American civil society, fostering social solidarity and political reform.
Sadly for America over the last several decades, most of institutional Methodism, with Mainline Protestantism, its group of longtime partners in building American democracy, degenerated into an often strident faction in America’s polarizing culture wars. Even so, local church culture, distinct from the institution, often continued to provide social ballast.
Methodism and Mainline Protestantism mediated much of America’s civil society for most of America’s history. Its vision of a Protestant egalitarian society seeking to exemplify justice and mercy was a lantern to American politics and cultural mores. Its social leadership was not always successful of course. Methodist divisions over slavery foreshadowed the Civil War. Methodist failure to exemplify racial equality was partner to America’s failures. And yet, amid failure and tragedy, Methodism sustained a vision of social striving that looked to the New Jerusalem as its ultimate model. Methodists were more perfectionist than other Protestant denominations, and so sometimes Methodism was too politically ambitious, as with Prohibition and its forays into pacifism. But overall, Methodism’s intrinsic pragmatism usually overcame its penchant for escapism and utopianism.
The 1970s/1980s United Methodist adventure into extremes of Liberation Theology resulting in support for overseas armed Marxist revolution marked utopianism’s triumph over political reality. The Cold War’s end offered an opportunity for reforming Methodism’s social witness. But soon it was instead subsumed into sexual liberation and identity politics, solidifying institutional United Methodism’s role as an often extremist partisan faction instead of a force for social mediation and social reform. Local church culture typically did not reflect this political extremism. But the extremism in church agencies and seminary left local churches without substantive counsel on social witness.
United Methodism of recent decades, in its political theology, as on other beliefs, has become largely congregationalist. Left to their devices, United Methodists adapt to the partisanship of the secular political left and right. The same is almost true of theologically more conservative, smaller Wesleyan denominations. These denominations have little organized social witness, which they largely outsource to the National Association of Evangelicals. Their members increasingly have become generic evangelicals, and many would align with the Religious Right even as many of their church elites align with the Evangelical Left. Few if any meaningfully appeal to distinctly Wesleyan understandings of government, nations, statecraft, or society.
The impending split of United Methodism, with the creation of a new orthodox Methodist denomination that is both American and global, offers the opportunity for recovering and developing a distinctly Wesleyan approach to society that is desperately needed by today’s divided America. This renewed Methodist social witness optimally would help other Wesleyan denominations speak and interact with society through a distinctly Methodist lens. Perhaps it could even motivate other Protestant traditions in America to heed a Methodist understanding of society or recover and apply their own heritage to contemporary challenges.
For this Methodist social witness recovery to occur, the new global Methodism must not become generically American evangelical in its view towards society. American evangelicalism, for all its vitality and organizing gifts, is largely a modern movement not often deeply connected to rich Protestant and Christian traditions. Its political witness is often dynamic but intellectually and spiritually superficial. It often quickly aligns and echoes the secular right or left. It is often apocalyptic, Manichaean, and absolutist. It often lacks confidence in divine sovereignty. It thinks short-term. It sometimes fantasizes, no less than Social Gospel liberals, about completing God’s Kingdom on earth. It builds political arguments on isolated Bible verses rather than comprehensive Christian teaching rooted in history and experience. It’s susceptible to fads, trends, and activisms. No less than the Religious Left, it often distils the Gospel down to elections and legislation. It imagines opponents as demons and valorizes political allies as God’s anointed. Evangelical Right and Left can be self-righteous and sanctimonious. Evangelical politics, in its political unitarianism, imagines a politics built around Jesus alone. Evangelical activists often forget that creation is rooted in the Trinity, which is itself a community of Persons each with distinct and complementary vocations. It often forgets that Christians, and all humans, likewise have distinct political vocations.
In contrast, classical Christians, which should include all Wesleyans, are rooted to historic church teaching. They are Augustinian in their political theology. Humanity is fallen, yet God in His grace has structured institutions in society to protect public order and to encourage pursuit of the public good. The state is ordained by God. But Christians are not passive to it. Christians are called to work, within the limits of their strengths and opportunities and mindful of their weaknesses, for a society pointing towards justice and human dignity. The state, whose core duties are judicial and often punitive, is central to creating the social harmony in which other public institutions, especially the church, can witness to God’s mercy and grace. Rulers are God’s instruments, but they are not God’s infallible puppets. Christians, mindful of fallen human nature, honor government while restricting its powers and challenging its missteps. Governments everywhere typically reflect the vices and virtues of their respective societies. Christians are called to amplify every society’s virtues while combating its vices. We as Christians start by warring against our own internal personal vices, before we wage war against the vices of others or society’s.
John Wesley specifically spoke of every human bearing God’s “political image.” Sadly, Wesley did not greatly expound on this insight, and he never composed a specifically Methodist political theology. But his citation of this political image, and his stress on God’s grace being available to all people, is inherently egalitarian. Methodists by spiritual instinct, as they proclaim the Gospel to all, assume the equality of all persons on earth before God. In this sense, Methodism is democracy-friendly. Methodism was especially successful in early America because its anthropology was particularly republican. Wesley himself may have been a staunch monarchist who by habit believed in social hierarchy. But the new church which he reluctantly loosed upon America was, even in contrast to other Protestant movements, no respecter of persons.
It’s no accident that Methodism directly or indirectly fueled ambitious political egalitarian movements, such as abolitionism, women’s suffrage, and racial equality in law. Methodism, in its push for social reforms like Prohibition that targeted corrupt political machines and corporate syndicates that synthesized saloon, brothel, and casino, sought to defend especially the poor, women, and children. In its social crusades, Methodism had a special vision for ever increasing social righteousness that fit neatly into the Calvinist/Puritan vision of America as a city on a hill, susceptible both to divine blessing and judgment. Central to Methodism’s social witness is: God is watching!
Methodist social witness, like Catholic social teaching, is not a series of activisms and hot button topics automatically aligned with the contemporary right or left. It is a timeless and evolving understanding of godly statecraft and divinely ordained human dignity as articulated through principles rooted in historic Christian teaching. Each person, bearing God’s political image, is called to and is to be accorded the rights of responsible citizenship in every society. Methodism affirms human rights as God-ordained duties. Methodist social witness is not partisan, while it acknowledges that vibrant democracy often entails partisan commitments.
From, John Wesley and his Church of England, Methodism inherits a special superintending love for nation, wherever it finds itself. Methodists are called to love their particular national community and constantly to strive for godliness within it, while of course not forgetting that we are ultimately citizens of a more permanent celestial nation, whose perfection from God is our model. Methodists work for habits, traditions and social instruments that build social solidarity within nations. Only through such solidarity, and godly patriotism, can communities including diverse persons of many faiths and ethnicities, cohere harmoniously through bonds of common affection. This godly patriotism, rightly understood, works for harmony and peace among all nations, whenever possible.
Divided and confused America needs Methodist social teaching, based on God’s political image in each human of every faith or no faith. This understanding of intrinsic human dignity would offer patience, respect, hope, longsuffering and moderation. Methodism has often demonstrated this godly social solidarity through action and exhortation but too rarely with articulated principles. Wesley did not focus on this political articulation. He only bequeathed the implicit understanding, which was transmitted and activated across generations. As many of us emerge into a new global Methodism, we need bright and dedicated Wesleyan thinkers to do what Wesley largely did not: expound more fully on the principles of Methodist social witness. And we need sensible and persevering Methodist clergy and laity who can faithfully demonstrate these principles for the healing of our nation.
Mark Tooley President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and editor of the IRD’s foreign policy and national security journal, Providence.