A Test of Friendship: A Historian’s Reflection on the Recent General Assembly of the Church of the Nazarene
Photo by Jackson David on Unsplash
In the fall of 1994, while in the throes of finishing graduate education, I attended the annual meeting of the Wesleyan Theological Society at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, OH. I was encouraged to do so as I was looking for work, and it was at the meetings of that society where work for Wesleyan scholars could be found. I attended the banquet of the society hoping to get the whisper of a job opening during the one social event in an otherwise serious academic gathering.
During the evening, the WTS presented its newly minted “Lifetime Achievement Award” to the legendary Robert Traina, the systematician-turned-Bible-teacher who turned the Wesleyan academic world upside down with his Methodical Bible Study book. The tribute to Dr. Traina as the award was presented was curious to me. I expected to hear a heroic story of a scholar who pulled himself up by his bootstraps and was a model of rigor for us all. Instead, the tribute told the story of a veteran of academic wars, not widely published, but by all accounts a fabulous teacher. He was a stalwart, gracious, and quiet man who had endured great criticism at the hand, not of his enemies, but of his friends. His stances on the atonement, divine agency, and theological ethics had brought him much critique, and mostly from his Asbury colleagues.
The end of the tribute was a stunning reminder to a young academic that what was at stake in our work was not just doctrine and truth, but the character of our witness. Dr. Traina took the criticism and remained the same: constant in his positions, his demeanor, and his treatment of both his friends and his enemies. The last line of the evening still stands out to me: “We give this, the very first Lifetime Achievement Award, to one who has been a witness to us all by his personal holiness.” Dr. Traina sat through it all with his head down, never giving any indication of his sense of the moment and only stood to receive the award with a short “thank you” to the gathered assembly.
I have reminisced about the event and Dr. Traina with my teacher, Dr. H. Ray Dunning, now 96 years of age, and with whom I still share the burden of teaching a Sunday School class. Dr. Dunning always reminds me that those were the days of the great “Wesleyan Theology versus the American Holiness Movement” debates and the raging arguments we had about “The Fundamentalist Crisis in the Church.” Traina, on the Wesleyan side, would read a paper challenging veteran academics at the core of their thinking and ideology to liberate the Bible from a fundamentalist either-or perspective to a Wesleyan dynamic of grace, repentance, and forgiveness as a way of reading both the biblical text and the holy life. After his paper, his critics/friends would just let him have it, challenging him down to every last jot and tittle. When the session was over, Dr. Dunning tells me, they would all hug and go eat lunch together. Ah, the good old days, we knew them well, said the historian.
I tell that story as an introduction to a reflection on the recent General Assembly of the Church of the Nazarene, held in Indianapolis, IN, June 10-15, 2023. As anyone who attended the assembly or (as I did) watched it online knows, there was plenty that went on during the assembly that resembled the story of a people at battle with themselves. It is no secret that there were strong and dividing opinions across the assembly floor on issues as wide-ranging as spiritual gifts, theological language and doctrines, and human sexuality.
What became clear as the assembly unfolded was that the divisions were to be most clearly seen in the elections of the two new General Superintendents, elected into a body of six leaders, who head the denomination. Those up for election became the target of attacks, often carried out on social media, that brought to bear the truth of our times. Nazarenes, like many other denominations, are a people deeply divided by issues of politics, theology, and globalism. While one could go on about the way opinions about those issues turned into ad hominem personal attacks directed at both the orthodoxy and morality of individuals up for election to leadership, not much is to be gained in doing so.
In talking to my friends who were in attendance, I was regaled with stories about things that were said and posted that were at best embarrassing and at worst disturbing. I have sadly witnessed the same in talking with my friends across the lines of other denominations and throughout the last century or so who have acted in like manner. What is clear is that we have issues to deal with and those issues are mostly around friendship, trust, and our personal holiness. Given all we have heard and seen, one is tempted to think that Methodist or Wesleyan-Holiness has simply become code for “an angry family.”
As a historian, I also noted that this was the first worldwide meeting of the Church of the Nazarene in six years, the first time we have been absent from one another’s company for so long. Our assemblies are usually held every four years, but in this COVID-dominated era of our lives, we postponed the assembly due to the pandemic (indeed, one of my friends contracted the COVID virus for the first time at the assembly). Many of the assembled 900 or so delegates were attending a General Assembly for the first time and any divisions regarding the positions I have mentioned have only been exacerbated during the interim. It is likely that issues regarding friendship, trust, and the theological call to holy living have become background to the meeting when they needed to be at the forefront. That will mean better preparation of delegates and some explanations and theological education on the assembly floor by the committees and writers of proposed changes to doctrinal issues and moral statements. It will mean that we as Nazarenes must be willing to tell one another in friendship when we disagree and even when we think our friends are wrong. Such is the nature of true friendship, and that is a risk worth taking.
It is only when theological friendship occurs—the friendship made possible by a God who leads us into common judgements about theology and morality—that being church together is possible. That sort of friendship, and the trust and holy living that necessarily accompanies it, must re-make any denomination who lives into the eschatological hope of being church together in these interesting and distressing days. It is only when we agree on common judgements that we learn what trust and holiness require. We often name those judgements, rightly as doctrine or morality, but what is really meant is a shared orthodoxy that extends to our statements of faith and doctrine, our shared moral commitments around issues such as human sexuality, and our understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit who makes us a holy people—church. And that, along with one other thing, is what this historian thinks we need the most.
It is that other thing that is most concerning to one whose job in the church is to do history, to remind us of our shared past and the gift of time God has given us. We call that gift “identity,” and the history of the Church of the Nazarene and its assemblies over the last century tells a story of a church that became friends by common judgements formed around great causes and needs that gave us a history and made us friends. Church history teaches us that it is in reflection upon our past that we learn that eschatological hope—the gift of God that gives reason to live into the future—creates friendship that is lived out in the actions that such a grand task demands.
In our earliest assemblies, the cause was the merger of geographically oriented evangelistic and camp-meeting associations and churches that brought east coast and west coast, north and south (divided by issues of the American Civil War) into a single holiness church. The ideal of “unity in holiness” was our great cause in establishing the Church of the Nazarene. In the 1920s and 30s we invented the institutional church that remains today with the creation of a central governing General Board with denominational departments like missions and education and a centralized fundraising mechanism to support the world-wide efforts of the church. We also rewrote many of our Articles of Faith, pastors and theological educators working side by side, reasoning and arguing together to create a Wesleyan-Holiness orthodoxy that we continue to depend upon as our shared expression of faith. Between 1948-1956 we held a two-quadrennium “Mid-Century Crusade for Souls” and promoted revivals around the world. In the 1980s we created a new structure of geographical regional offices around the world in a movement of internationalization designed to bring a wider choir of voices from around the world into the decision-making processes of our work. These great causes were the practices of friendship, our “unity in holiness,” as my friend and fellow Nazarene historian Stan Ingersol has said, formed around common judgments of our theological commitments and the needs of the day. Those causes gave us great hope and made us friends as we learned together what being church requires.
As I write this, I am readily aware that I am a historian—and not a prophet. As a historian, I work with dead people and tell their stories with the hopes they will lead us into a better future. History, like the history lived out in the Wesleyan Theological Society by Bob Traina and his critics/friends, reminds me that some of what I have said will be received as obvious by many. Some of what I have said will bring some criticism. Some may even disregard it as being the naïve reflection of someone who lives mostly in the past. My hope is that it will bring about some needed debate and even arguments about serious issues between friends, who will take each other to task and then still be the kind of friends who share a meal together and live into the hope that the test of friendship that is our life together in the church demands.
Steven Hoskins is professor of church history at Trevecca Nazarene University, Nashville, TN, and a member of the Firebrand Editorial Board.