David F. Watson: A Theological Profile [Firebrand Special Edition]
David Watson speaking at the 2023 Spirit & Truth Conference in Dayton, OH.
Editor’s note: Last month was the five-year anniversary of Firebrand magazine, which began as the brainchild of David F. Watson. Although articles for the magazine are written by a wide variety of authors across the Wesleyan world, David’s articles have far outnumbered those from any other author. In light of his strong contributions to the magazine and his recent appointment as President of Asbury Theological Seminary (and unbeknownst to David himself), Firebrand is pleased to present this analysis of the theological thinking of a key leader in Wesleyan circles.
I joined the faculty of United Theological Seminary in the Fall of 2015. When I arrived, the school was in one of those chaotic seasons common in academic life. This one involved a presidential transition and several major and new initiatives, mostly involving fundraising. The headwinds of denominational conflict were heavy on us, but the faculty was strongly united around the school’s vision and enjoyed an internal spirit of collaboration and hope for the future. This was in no small part due to the leadership of our academic dean, David Watson, then in his fifth year as dean.
Over the past decade, David and I partnered in numerous ventures. We were quick friends, as we were both profoundly impacted by our teacher, Billy Abraham. David and I shared regular lunches, dinners, and evenings, “talking shop.” And for eight years we co-directed a Doctor of Ministry cohort devoted to “Living the Historic Faith” that allowed us to pursue a common set of readings with some really sharp students.
Let me be clear, I am not an authorized spokesperson for David. We share a lot in common. But we do not agree on every issue. At times, I do not understand his conclusions, as I am sure he often does not understand mine. But we have enjoyed one of the finest gifts people in our line of work can hope for—an intellectual friendship. Over the years, we’ve maintained an ongoing dialogue about the church, faith, Scripture, society, humanity, and our common Lord.
In light of David’s appointment as the next President of Asbury Theological Seminary (my own alma mater), I decided to revisit his writing in Firebrand over the past five years, from the time he penned the magazine’s inaugural essay, “Why Firebrand?” It’s a substantial collection of essays—57 so far. Their topics are wide-ranging, from early Christianity to the contemporary West, Christology to pneumatology, Scripture to episcopacy. In what follows, I’ve done my best to synthesize and organize the major threads of his theological outlook as it has developed over time. Links are inserted throughout, so you can dig deeper when and where you like.
Early Christianity
Watson’s thought is grounded in a robust commitment to the theological vision of early Christians. In an important essay inspired by Hippolytus of Rome’s The Apostolic Tradition, he gives a general structure for his way of thinking about the importance of ancient Christianity for the contemporary church. The West is experiencing a twenty-first century “repaganization.” By listening carefully to the thoughts and experiences of Christians in pagan Rome, we can find direction for present challenges. In this case, we learn the importance of living a Christian life that is distinctive (peculiar, as he will later emphasize), the need for a “rigorous and high-commitment” expectation for initiation into Christianity, and the serious spiritual hazards of dabbling in paganism.
One feature of early Christianity central to all of Watson’s thought is the lordship of the incarnate Son of God. One of his earliest Firebrand pieces is entitled “The Incarnation is Everything.” The commitment constitutes the core of his vision for Firebrand magazine. Speaking of Firebrand’s genesis, and its role within the ministry of Spirit and Truth, he argues:
“Truth,” so the argument goes, is simply a means of coercion, a way to force people into certain norms of belief and behavior. Christians, however, cannot properly think this way about truth. We claim that we have not developed truth, but perceived it. Truth is not a matter of invention but revelation. Truth precedes us. It is built into the very fabric of creation. God brought all things into being through the divine logos—reason, word, thought, order—and that very logos became one of us in the person of Jesus Christ. Truth is not just an idea. Truth is a person. Pilate stands in for the human condition when, in the very presence of Christ, he asks, “What is truth?” As Christians, our role is to point people to Christ, who is himself truth. And from this one source of truth come all other truths. The logos of God is the organizing principle according to which everything else makes sense.
Watson’s Christological orientation, shaped by his engagement with New Testament and early Christianity, shapes almost every topic he entertains. He oversaw Firebrand’s launch in the summer of 2020, a turbulent season for national and ecclesial life. In the aftermath of that tumultuous Presidential election, he reminded us to seek the mind of Christ. “The lordship of Christ does not depend upon his agreement with a political agenda. If it did, he would not be Lord. We can accept Christ or reject him. There are no other options.” He continued these reflections that December in an article entitled “Behold Your King,” inspired by his reading of the late second century Epistle to Diognetus. Finally, in the wake of the events at the U.S. Capitol at January 6, 2021, he reminded his readers of their fundamental obligation to Christ’s Lordship.
Jesus—the real Jesus—does not bow at the altar of politics. He does not require the assistance of the kingdoms of this world. He transcends all governments, states, and borders. He cannot be held captive by any political agenda. He is not an ideological wax nose. Jesus—the real Jesus—is Lord of all. And attempts to remake him in our image, no matter how sincere our intentions, are affronts to his lordship. We do not honor him by parading his image in displays of political showmanship. We do not honor his cross by distorting its meaning for political gain, nor do we honor his name by co-opting it in the service of some other cause. Jesus is the cause, and he is too holy, too righteous, too perfect to serve as a spokesman for our this-worldly enterprises. We are not his masters. He is ours, and he abides no rivals.
Holy Spirit
Watson combines this Christological vision of early Christianity with a commitment to the ongoing activity of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church. This commitment emerged over time and was facilitated by his encounters with Aldersgate Renewal Ministries, Global Awakening, and Cuban Methodism. He describes these encounters as an invitation to move from God as a theoretical construct to God as a living and active agent. That is, whereas he had developed a set of orthodox theological convictions, engagement with charismatic and pentecostal Christianity allowed him to follow through on those orthodox commitments. In “Life in the Spirit: A Personal Reflection,” he insists:
God is not simply a construct, not simply an idea that gives weight to my moral principles, but the living presence who moved among the people of Israel, became incarnate in Jesus Christ, established the church in Pentecost, abides with us in the Holy Spirit, and will come again in glory.
Billy Abraham prepared David him for this development. Abraham’s theology (especially his ecclesiology) is radically pneumatological, a point Watson observed in his memorial upon Billy’s passing. Abraham’s canonical theism project is grounded in the conviction that an active God has poured out an abundance of resources for the church’s growth in holiness and witness to the world. This robust endorsement of divine action grounds David’s basic thinking about Pentecostalism and its contemporary emphasis upon signs and wonders. These are divine acts, as are the means of grace; to deny one or the other is fundamentally incoherent. A year after Billy’s passing, Watson returns to this pneumatological conviction, speaking both ecclesiologically and evangelistically:
While he remained dedicated to Methodism throughout his life, Billy was also careful not to overstate its significance. He once called Methodism a “hiccup of the Holy Spirit.” I think he meant by this that God poured out the Spirit on the people called Methodist as a way of sparking renewal, enlivening Christian mission, and promoting holiness. Yet Methodism is just one manifestation of God’s work within the depth and breadth of the Church universal. We can learn from other traditions, both past and present. Likewise Methodism should be open to the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit moving forward so that we can confront the challenges of new generations. In other words, we need to change when God wishes to change us.
Though Billy prepared this development, it was shaped by Watson’s own experiences, both with second- (Aldersgate) and third-wave (Global Awakening) Pentecostals and with global Christianity. In January 2022, David spoke to a community of scholars gathered in Alexandria, VA for the Next Methodism Summit. “A Peculiar Methodism” is a programmatic case for the theological work integral to a fruitful Methodism. He concludes by drawing attention to the possibilities offered and challenges presented to western Christians in light of the shift of gravity from the West to the majority world. Chief among both possibilities and challenges for the West is the fact that these Christians live by the power of the Spirit.
We in the West are the outliers. We are no longer the head, but the tail. We are a rich tail, but a tail nonetheless. After centuries of Western dominance, the bulk of the Christian world is now in Africa and Asia, and Pentecostalism is making massive inroads in Latin America.
In a later article reflecting on his experiences in India, Watson observes that challenges of poverty and persecution breed life by the Spirit in the majority world. While persecution breeds health and growth, comfort and ease breed death. Once again, Watson turns to early Christianity to make sense of this contemporary reality.
Had enemies of the church the slightest sense of history, they would not persecute Christians, but coddle them. Tertullian 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.
Scripture
David was formed by late-twentieth century mainline Protestantism, a world in which pastors regularly distributed the works of John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg to their parishioners. Central to this theological journey was his change of outlook regarding Scripture.
Adjectives matter. When Watson describes his view of Scripture, he won’t describe it as “scholarly,” “erudite,” or “relevant.” Instead, he tends to call it ecclesial, or “churchly” interpretation.
I suggest that a churchly interpretation for Protestants begins with a commitment to and dialogue with the consensual tradition of Christian faith—those truths, embodied in creeds, that have been confessed across time and throughout the globe. In the words of Vincent of Lerins, these are the truths confessed “everywhere, always, and by all.”
David recognizes this puts him askew of the mainline academic and ecclesial culture that trained him. In “The Church is Scripture’s True Home,” he recounts his journey from the world of late-twentieth century mainline Protestantism to a vision of historic Christianity. For his mainline teachers, approaching the biblical text without shedding one’s “churchly” commitments is uncritical, naïve, even violent. “Some biblical scholars would suggest that, in approaching the Bible in this way, I am doing violence to the text. They would insist I am imposing upon it theological ideas that are foreign to the texts themselves.”
This is no defeater. There may be no plausible materialist account for the attribution of a Trinitarian view to the active intention of the author of 1 Samuel. But what follows from such an observation? For the church founded by the Triune God, very little. I take it that something like this is what Watson means when he calls his interpretation “ecclesial.”
A central feature of Watson’s ecclesial interpretation is Scripture’s soteriological purpose. Watson continues:
The reason that the church compiled a canon of Scripture to start with was to teach the message of salvation, both what it is and what it is not. Put in more Wesleyan terms, the purpose of the Bible is to teach us how to be saved. This is its telos, and it will never achieve that telos outside of the church.
The soteriological purpose of Scripture is integrally related to the ecclesial nature of its interpretation. The Bible is the church’s book; it bears an essential relationship to those united to Christ as a body to his head.
These commitments flesh themselves out in several directions. We have already noted its implication for mainstream mainline Protestant interpretation. These implications are further developed in Watson’s critical engagements with evangelical Christianity broadly, and particularly evangelical Wesleyans, especially in the Global Methodist Church.
In “The Global Methodist Church and the Quadrilateral,” Watson raises several critical questions about the relationship between the infamous “Wesleyan” quadrilateral and the nascent GMC. After reciting the history of the quadrilateral in the UMC, Watson recounts several major objections. Speaking of Scripture, he observes one potential problem for GMC reception of the quadrilateral:
We may say that our faith is revealed in Scripture, but what is the content of that revelation? Put more simply, what does God reveal to us through Scripture? While the Reformers affirmed the perspicuity of Scripture (the idea that its meaning is clear on its face), they quickly began to betray this principle by separating from one another over the content of biblical teaching.
His solution to this dilemma is twofold. First, he follows the suggestion of Billy Abraham that we adjust our categories when we think about theological sources. Rather than the four “sources” of the quadrilateral, Watson prefers to think about the task of theology in relation to divine revelation.
The primary theological category with which we should begin is divine revelation. God has revealed himself to us in general and special ways. Regarding general revelation, we may perceive God in creation, but even this is a gift. In other words, our ability to apprehend truths about God through creation depends upon God’s self-disclosure through creation. God has also revealed truth to us through special revelation. We know of God’s saving purposes because of his work in the world through Israel, Christ, and the church. We comprehend specific truths related to God’s saving work because God has told us through prophets, Christ, and the apostles. Scripture mediates this revelation to us. When we talk about God, then, we should begin with what God has revealed about himself and work from there.
Second, David insists that Methodist theologians must retain their commitment to the deliverances of the early Christian tradition. Here he sharpens Abraham’s looser concept of canon by appeal to Tom Oden’s notion of consensus. Granting that the church’s history is both diverse and fallible, nevertheless:
We can recognize moments of clarity and the apprehension of truth in the church’s deliberations over time. In many cases, the body has come to general agreement about the nature of the triune God, the incarnation in Jesus Christ, the necessity of his atoning work on the cross, his bodily resurrection from the dead, Christ’s establishment of the church, the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit, the return of Christ in glory and judgment, and other important theological topics. Though we apprehend none of these truths fully, we do see in part, as through a glass darkly. Thus we have what Billy Abraham called the canonical tradition, which is very close to what Thomas Oden called the consensual tradition. Having reflected prayerfully upon God’s self-revelation, the church has reached consensus on a number of matters over time. This is where we begin—not with the self, nor social location, nor our own halting attempts at reasoning our way to the divine, but with revelation mediated through Scripture and interpreted in the ongoing witness of the church.
Watson’s evangelical bona fides are beyond doubt. Nevertheless, the commitments we’ve observed, and their relationship to his theological formation, often land Watson in distinctive positions vis-a-vis mainstream American evangelicalism. He is clear-minded (and voiced) about potential pitfalls that follow upon the confidence many evangelicals place in their theory of Scripture. Reflecting on Andrew Walker’s famous essay, “The Third Schism,” he notes that the Western church is undergoing a sifting in the face of rising progressive social currents.
While the fault lines are not quite what Walker anticipated, there is a schism happening across much of the Christian world today. Perhaps 85% of the Anglican Communion has recently rejected the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Roman Catholic bishops in Germany are at war with the church’s teaching on homosexuality. It is reasonable to envision parts of the Roman Catholic Church breaking off to form their own communions. The ongoing division of the UMC is no aberration. It is part of a larger divide affecting huge segments of the church across the globe. In fact, as far as denominations in the U.S. go, the UMC is late to the party. Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Episcopalians, for example, have already undergone multiple divisions. I anticipate the same for some of the Wesleyan Holiness and Methodist African American denominations in the years ahead.
He continues, “Simple appeals to Scripture cannot resolve matters. Scripture is not, as the Reformers claimed, “autopistic,” or self-interpreting. Whether we admit it or not, we interpret Scripture according to various theological principles and background beliefs.” The data supports his case. As he points out in an earlier essay on challenges facing American evangelicals, “Ligonier Ministries indicates that 30% of American evangelicals believe that Jesus was a great teacher, but not God. In other words, 30% of American evangelicals reject the doctrine of the incarnation.”
These and other statements generate no small amount of confusion from evangelicals in the GMC and beyond. David’s position walks a fine line. His view of Scripture is unequivocally high. He consistently calls it divine revelation, a means of saving grace, and so on. He objects to the God Bless the USA Bible on the grounds of the unique authority and supremacy of Scripture:
When John Wesley referred to himself as a “man of one book,” he didn’t mean that he only read one book, or that other books weren’t important. He meant that one book towered over all others in importance, because only one book is inspired by the Holy Spirit to teach us how to be saved. In that sense, I’m a man of one book, too, and I hope you are a man or woman of one book. For Christians, among all the books ever written, the Bible is preeminently important. No other writing stands beside it.
But he also worries that certain evangelical attitudes about Scripture obscure its soteriological purpose and ecclesial location. These are the reasons he opposes a statement of inerrancy in GMC doctrine. Most importantly, he is worried that Christians will think the most important thing to get right is their theory of Scripture, when (1) the historical record is hard to square with this position, given the late emergence of such theories, and (2) the often-distorting implications of such intensive focus on fixing a theory of divine revelation.
Orthodoxy, then, depends upon divine revelation, but no single vision of divine revelation has cornered the market. Roman Catholics have their ways of understanding divine revelation, as do the Eastern Orthodox, as do various groups of Protestants. Yet somehow we all end up affirming the consensual tradition. We can all affirm the church’s great creedal faith. We join with that faith confessed everywhere, always, and by all (Vincent of Lerins). Exactly how we can do so is a bit of a mystery. We disagree on certain second-order teachings, including some ethical teachings, and at times we can trace these back to our ways of securing religious knowledge. The core of the faith, however, remains steadfast.
In sum, Watson worries excessive confidence in a theory of revelation (in this case inerrancy, in the case of mainline Methodism, methodological atheism) distracts from the central soteriological significance of the Scriptures. For these reasons he seeks to restore and retain what Tom McCall has described as the “catholic” (i.e. historic) view of inerrancy. In Watson’s words, Scripture is “a form of divine communication meant to lead us into salvation. It is a truth-bearing document, utterly reliable in all matters related to its God-given purpose.”
Diagnosing the Problem
To this point, I have mostly been focusing on David’s broadest and most fundamental positive theological commitments. But what makes his contribution so significant and influential is the way in which he attunes these commitments to the major challenges that confront contemporary Christianity.
Watson’s analysis of these challenges has evolved over time. Early in his career, his chief concerns were the methodological atheism at the heart of the intellectual culture of the UMC. Over time, however, the liberals of twentieth-century Methodism gave way to a new challenge: progressivism. Watson draws upon Andrew Walker and Carl Trueman (Charles Taylor lurks in the background as well) to describe a new intellectual culture encountered by Christians in the twenty-first century. In “On Liberalisms (They just don’t make ‘em like they used to)” he differentiates between the social and theological liberalism of the mid-twentieth century mainline and what he calls “postmodern) liberalism:
Most of my teachers in seminary and during my doctoral work were liberals in the two senses mentioned above (social and theological). Put differently, they were theological liberals with whom one could enter into reasoned debate. You didn’t have to agree with them. You had the freedom to explore ideas, though you did have to make sound arguments. As an educator I have followed them in their classical liberal principles, though generally not in their theological liberalism. Indeed, it is possible to be conservative (in the sense of wishing to conserve traditions, ideas, and practices) and classically liberal at the same time. What is often called “liberalism” today is quite different from either of the movements described above. We often refer to exponents of postmodernity as “liberal” because they oppose the conservative impulse to retain traditional ideas and structures, but this is a misnomer. Postmodernism is a complex set of movements that has no real internal coherence. It is essentially an abandonment of classical liberalism.
Watson’s clarity about these differences emerged over years of theological dialogue in the fragmenting UMC. The lessons were costly, but insightful. The UMC, a 50-year experiment in a big-tent Protestantism, eventually foundered on divisions not only between evangelicals and liberals, but also between liberals and progressives. As Watson worked for evangelical renewal within the denomination that formed him, he came to see deeper fragmentation than was often noted.
In our ecclesiastical debates we often talk past one another, but why? Perhaps the reason is that we fail to identify the underlying and causal points of disagreement. Yes, we can identify material issues such as miracles, the nature of God, homosexuality, and gender identity, but what is the root of these material differences? I believe they come from different conceptions of divine revelation, the ongoing interpretive authority of the church, and the authority of individual experience. Traditionalists tend to think of divine revelation, both general and special, as something that has already occurred. God has revealed himself through creation and in history, and the definitive revelation of God is in Jesus Christ. Since the apostolic period we have sought the guidance of the Holy Spirit to teach us about the meaning of God’s self-revelation and thus to shape our corporate life. Progressives, by contrast, tend to see revelation as ongoing. God is continually doing a “new thing,” they often say. Revelation commonly takes place through individual experience, and such experience is as authoritative as any revelation that has taken place in the past. What we have then, are deep epistemological differences that shape our conception of a properly Christian life. Put differently, we differ in how we identify what is right or wrong, what is true or false.
While this was going on inside the church, Watson was also tracking several trends in broader American culture. Here, too, we can see a complex and evolving assessment of the realities. Watson was heavily influenced by Aaron Renn’s analysis of the “negative world,” the idea that Christianity since at least 2014 (roughly the time of the Obergefell verdict) being a Christian in America has been status-negating. Moreover, David is conscious of the fact that there are real consequences to this decline of Christian influence. He has long been involved in disability advocacy, and has spoken openly about the evil trend toward physician-assisted suicide in the West. He has also been an engaged participant in the pro-life movement, and has lamented the defeat of pro-life objectives in the State of Ohio. These are real consequences, often for the most vulnerable human beings.
For Watson, though these realities have real costs, they are no reason for the loss of Christian hope. The negative world presents certain opportunities. After all, though the earliest Christians were status-negative in Imperial Rome, the church flourished.
Christianity tends to thrive when it stands in obvious tension with the surrounding culture. The early centuries of Christianity were a period of rapid growth. By the time Constantine converted, around a century after Hippolytus wrote, millions of Christians lived in the Roman Empire. Christians were still very much a minority, but their rate of growth had been extraordinary. This growth took place, moreover, in an environment that was not in the least friendly or sympathetic to Christians. There were periods of intense persecution. Martyrdom was common. Christians were thought to be disloyal to the Roman Empire because they would not make sacrifices to the Emperor, and those who did were considered apostate.
Of course, this is a difficult transition for American Christians. David has spoken often and directly about the challenges facing evangelical Christianity. A return to the faith of the early church will only come through repentance and re-formation. But these developments make such acts easier, as the idols of positive- and neutral-world Christianity deteriorate.
Watson has real reasons to hope this is happening. Always attentive to the latest data, Watson has recently observed that the “inevitable decline” narrative is being seriously tested by our best demographers. In light of recent Pew findings, Watson observes, “a five-year trend is no glitch. It doesn’t mean we’re experiencing revival, but we’re holding our own.”
Hopeful Responses
If American Christianity is holding its own, how should we respond? Watson offers several suggestions, all of them flowing from his fundamental commitments.
First, in the face of decline, the negative world, and the rise of postmodern liberalism, Watson advocates for a two-fold commitment to apologetics and accountability. Reflecting on the “deconstruction” trends advocated by Sam Harris and others, David distinguishes between two kinds of popular twenty-first century deconstruction. The first arises from the inevitable failure of a particular American evangelical view of Scripture and theology. The second arises from the betrayal of trust with leadership failures.
The response to the first is apologetics. Some deconstructionists’ plausibility structures have been rendered implausible by encounters with, for instance, modern science. In the face of these challenges, the church must give an account of her faith. However, and here David is unique, giving an account alone will not suffice to reignite faith in the face of deconstruction. Often, people need “demonstrations of Spirit and power.” Thus he advocates for power evangelism, and, more recently, cultivating cultures of expectation.
For the deconstruction of many, the second form is far more motivating. After all, even if we deliver perfect apologetics, who cares if we continue to elevate moral monsters? In his most recent programmatic article for Firebrand, “The Church in a New Day: Three Challenges,” Watson addresses three challenges for contemporary Christianity: challenges of morality, meaning, and community. All three are undermined by failures of Christian leadership. One rightly struggles to accept Christian demands on restrictions of freedom (sexual or otherwise) when Christian leaders obviate such restraints; thus, the plausibility of the faith to render life meaningful collapses, as does the appeal of committing to such a community.
Among his tribe, David has consistently advocated for serious structures of accountability. To this point, I have mostly been concerned with David’s thought in relation to the broader church in culture. No doubt, much of what he has to say is important for broader American and evangelical Christianity. But he has also written a substantial amount for his particular ecclesial community—the people called Methodist. In what follows, I want to demonstrate how these writings are integrated into his broader convictions, to detail their importance for the recent history of the United Methodist Church, and for the emerging Global Methodist Church.
For several years now, David has been working on a history of biblical interpretation of the Methodist tradition. His systematic and close reading of the history of Methodist engagement with Scripture has rendered great fruit in the pages of Firebrand. As he shows in an article on Adam Clarke, Methodism has struggled from its outset with doctrinal clarity. Clarke is an example of the dilemma of private judgment that has continuously encumbered American Methodism. The UMC attempted to resolve the diversity of her members’ private judgments by a twofold strategy: a doctrinal statement immersed in historical relativism and resolved by appeal to a flexible theological methodology—the quadrilateral. This proved a pyrrhic victory for the UMC. And atop the pyre was Methodism’s sense of particularity.
This reading of the Methodist tradition shapes much of David’s vision for and contributions to the Global Methodist Church. At the Next Methodism Summit in 2022, Watson spoke of “one overarching issue that encompasses many of our problems in the era following Wesley: we have time and again compromised our particularity by accommodating our beliefs and practices to the spirit of the age. We no longer know who we are, what we stand for, or even why we exist.”
The solution is to be a “saltier” or “peculiar” church, a nod to William Burt Pope’s influential work on the peculiarities of Methodism.
In most of its contemporary forms, at least in the U.S. and Western Europe, Methodism is indistinguishable from either (a) other forms of progressive mainline or African-American Protestantism or (b) a kind of generic evangelicalism. If we have no distinctive witness, no particular offerings to bring to the larger body, it is hard to see why we would continue to maintain a connection and institutions (such as theological schools), and identify as a collection of denominations. We are in danger of becoming the Golden Corral of religious movements.
For Watson, if Methodism is to have a future, it must get serious about what makes it peculiar in relation to American culture in general and ecclesial culture in particular.
This conviction motivates David’s contributions to the Global Methodist Church. In January 2024, Watson proposed a revision to what was then the mission statement of the GMC: “The mission of the Global Methodist Church to make disciples of Jesus Christ who worship passionately, love extravagantly, and witness boldly.” David advocated for this alternative: “The mission of the Global Methodist Church is to spread scriptural holiness across the globe.”
He offers several arguments in support of his proposal, but the core of the matter is that there is nothing particularly Methodist about the initial mission statement. “It could be a mission statement for Roman Catholics, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, the UCC, or various non-denominational churches.” What is needed is a mission statement that is distinctive to Methodism. “Over against those who might wish us to adopt a church-growth philosophy, I suggest we adopt what might be called a ‘peculiar-church’ philosophy. We will invite people into a different way of living, seeing the world, and understanding themselves.” Watson gives a theological account of the Trinitarian mission and the consequent and distinctive doctrine of sanctification at the heart of Methodism. And sure enough, at the inaugural General Conference of the GMC, delegates voted in favor of the following mission statement: “The Global Methodist Church exists to make disciples of Jesus Christ and spread scriptural holiness across the globe.”
Watson’s convictions also ground his practical views regarding the GMC Episcopacy.
Most Christians today live in pluralistic, often polytheistic, environments. Whereas the Global West was once overwhelmingly Christian in its population, that is no longer the case. Some would say the West has become secular. I would say it has become pagan again. We cannot take for granted that people in our churches, much less those outside of them, are familiar with the major doctrines of orthodox Christianity.
We live in a negative world. Paganism is back. Christians have to get serious about their apologetic and moral task. And this needs to start at the top. David’s solution, likewise supported by the GMC, is a more serious commitment to the episcopacy as a teaching office.
We cannot make the teaching of Christian doctrine a second- or third-level priority anymore. If we do not take effective measures to ensure doctrinal integrity in the Global Methodist Church, we have no one to blame but ourselves when our denomination is blown about by every wind of doctrine.
As I read through David’s ranging contributions to Firebrand, it struck me that he has developed a remarkably coherent, faithful, and integrative body of thought. As I’ve demonstrated, the consistency of his convictions across a range of doctrinal and practical topics is striking. At every stage, those convictions are marked by utter fidelity to the Lordship of Christ and commitment to his church. But one feature of David’s thought is a bit more difficult to characterize—its assimilative power. David’s intellect is uniquely voracious and bold. He is not afraid to explore new territory, to consider things more deeply, to integrate and synthesize and clarify, to maintain confidence in the revelation of God in Christ. His is, truly, a “peculiar” mind.
Justus H. Hunter is Associate Professor of Church History and Director of the Doctor of Theology Program at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.