“For Such a Time as This:” Global Methodism and the Struggling American Protestant Church
Photo by Bonnie
Charles Dickens’ classic opening line for A Tale of Two Cities is half-right insofar as much of American Protestant Christianity is concerned. Amid declining numbers, ageing membership and morale issues, it is hardly “the best of times” for the movement. In fairness, when compared to the treatment of the church in Stalinist Russia or the Communist China of Mao, it is not literally the worst of times. Stalin murdered or imprisoned over 90% of Russian Orthodox priests. US clergy, happily, have not faced such challenges. That said, the heady days of post-World War II growth and Protestant triumphalism are no more.
One is tempted to think the Holy Spirit may have misfired in allowing for the creation of the Global Methodist Church during a period of sustained and accelerating church decline and growing cultural indifference and disaffection toward Christian organized religion. Think again. The creation of new or re-focused movements of God during periods of increased cultural struggle and opposition is an historical trademark of the Spirit’s movement. Exhibit A is the original formation of Methodism by the brothers Wesley, birthed and weaned against an insouciant culture contemptuous of all such enthusiasm. The American First and Second Great Awakenings broke out against a cultural background of large indifference or disdain toward church and faith.
The new Global Methodist Church (GMC) has a clear and compelling niche as a means of authentic revival and spiritual renewal on the current American landscape. This does not devalue the potential power of the movement outside the US but speaks to the unique challenges the collective church of Jesus is facing in American culture. The opportunity rests in the identity and practices of the GMC as an authentic, Wesleyan, and evangelical Christian movement.
Recently I read three books that, when taken together, point toward a promising GMC future if the church lays firm hold of the biblical, theological and ethical identity of the Wesleyan movement. The three books were often annoying, occasionally infuriating, and consistently insightful in unpacking the flailing and failures besetting much conservative American Protestantism. Russell Moore, a former leader in the Southern Baptist denomination and current Editor-in-Chief of Christianity Today, has produced Losing our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America (Penguin, Random House). Sarah McCammon, a major reporter for National Public Radio and product of a conservative Protestant upbringing, has produced The EXvangelicals: Loving, Living and Leaving the White Evangelical Church (St. Martin’s Press). Tim Alberta, of solid conservative Protestant upbringing and staff writer for The Atlantic, has written The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism (Harper Collins).
In passionate and often personal detail, these authors critique evangelical Protestant church decline. The loss of spiritual integrity, the exchange of a crisp biblical birthright for a mess of popular political pottage, a gaudy, personality-driven loyalty toward preferred spiritual leaders, and the no-longer-subtle embrace of secular idolatries have neutered witness and vibrant faith. For every young adult attracted to the wingnut ways of replacing holy connection with tribal loyalties, dozens of young adults either leave the church or no longer take it seriously. Research from sources as varied as Barna, Pew, Gallup and Ryan Burge align to see a dead end to faith in this type of Americanized evangelical product.
The good news in reading these three scathing insider critiques is the absence of reference to the Wesleyan family. Indeed, much of their concern is aimed at independent and conservative churches and leaders more accurately labeled as culturally Christian fundamentalists. No major active leader in the GMC (or Free Methodists or Wesleyans or Nazarenes) has postured in public political rallies or aligned the faith with a particular political party…a temptation that also affects theological liberals/progressives from the opposite direction.
Consider GMC positives compared to the critiques of these three books. The GMC is not adopting nor encouraging blanket suspicions against public education, science, or medicine. The GMC neither marginalizes nor limits the leadership of women. The GMC collaborates with other Christians and/or groups in addressing common community crises and needs. The GMC does not see itself as the only real and true Christian church. The GMC strongly affirms doctrines such as the Second Coming of Christ and the full inspiration and authority of scripture without insisting on (nor forbidding) personal beliefs such as premillennial dispensationalism or the inerrancy of scripture. The GMC embraces a Christian faith informed and codified by the great creeds of the universal church and a sacramental vision of baptism and Holy Communion in which real grace is imparted as actions are rooted in faith. The GMC rejects a self-licking lollipop image of the local church as an independent Kingdom contractor but affirms a holy and healthy connectional ecclesiology in which mutual support and gracious accountability are real.
The GMC is not preaching a gospel that relegates love of neighbor in addressing social and economic injustice to fourth-tier irrelevance. In The Character of a Methodist, John Wesley defined a Methodist as “one, who has the love of God shed abroad in his heart, by the Holy Ghost given unto him: one who loves the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind, and with all his strength.” This is not simple liberal/secular do-goodism or a moralistic sop, since it is rooted firmly in an historic and orthodox vision of the person and work of Christ as Savior and Lord. Thus, a person’s Christian life or a congregation that reflects the power of this Great Commandment offers a barometer for the authenticity and depth of one’s Christian discipleship. This dynamic flows naturally from the Wesleyan vision of holiness and the sanctification of believers. Recall that Wesley in his Plain Account of Christian Perfection looked to the Great Commandment as foundational to this Wesleyan doctrinal distinctive.
It is crucial for the GMC to be proactive in its public definitions and emphases to ensure the larger culture never confuses a GMC church with a culture-bound fundamentalist congregation of the sort critiqued by Moore, McCammon, and Alberta. It is crucial that a refreshing, positive self-definition continues to emerge, lest the GMC shift toward negative public definition, i.e., like the Pharisee who enters the sanctuary murmuring, “I thank God I am not like the others.” It is crucial that the GMC draws lines of holy living and morality with clarity and grace, “speaking the truth in love,” especially when such views fly in the face of popular culture. The Christian sexual ethics and care for the poor of the first three centuries were nearly universally rejected in belief and practice within the Roman empire (except for Judaism), yet the movement grew exponentially during that time. Numerous secular and sacred scholars agree that the passion of Christian commitment and the integrity and wholeness that flowed from their alternative lifestyle made the case for faith in a powerful and consistent witness to a doubting and jaded world.
I have no doubt that there are individual GMC clergy, laity, and congregations that do not fully reflect the content of the previous paragraphs and would fairly fit a more fundamentalist label. I acknowledge a clear element of the ideal in this vision, which does not always play out cleanly in the real world. That inevitable unevenness also reflects Wesley’s wisdom: “Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike?” That said, the historical and theological DNA of the movement is solid. Named, claimed, and lived, the renewed Wesleyan way can embody the best of old and new in reaching a generation greatly disaffected by the drift of the church to the left as well as to the right. For such a time as this I believe God has raised up the people called Global Methodist. This Wesleyan movement has the potential to fill a growing and dissatisfying gap between what many Americans have experienced or perceived in much conservative Christianity and what a renewed Wesleyan way can offer. In so doing, may Charles Wesley’s words point the way:
To serve this present age,
My calling to fulfill.
O may it all my powers engage
To do my Master’s will.
Bob Phillips is a Captain of the Navy Chaplain Corps (ret.) and a Senior Status elder in the Great Lakes Annual Conference of the Global Methodist Church.