The Proposed Articles of Faith: A Few Final Comments

Photo by Wolfgang Weiser

Since the final publication of the proposed Articles of Faith for the Global Methodist Church, I have followed the online discussion from a distance. At times this discussion has been helpful and enlightening. It has helped me to understand where we might have communicated more effectively along the way. Some people have expressed concerns about the process of developing the proposed Articles. Others have expressed reservations about their content. As we make our way to Johannesburg, I want to address a few of these concerns. 

The first concern I’ve heard of is one of process. In particular, I have heard concerns about transparency and involvement by the wider church. The Commission on Discipleship, Doctrine and Just Ministry was charged with forming a working group to develop a successor document. Our group was international, composed of both men and women, and included people who had spent decades thinking and writing about orthodox Wesleyan doctrine. The names of the committee members were all made public. We published our working principles. We wrote a draft and submitted it to the Assembly of Bishops, a fifty-person review team selected by the bishops, and Wesleyan theologians of other denominations. Once we received the feedback from these groups, we worked through every comment submitted. After revising the document, we published it for public comment. Anyone could read it and anyone could comment. We received considerable feedback and worked our way through it. We then published the document again and submitted it for consideration by the General Conference. 

Another concern has to do with content, and particularly that the committee produced a document that included material beyond what was present in the source documents. There was little specificity in the charge to the Commission. We were simply to produce a successor document that involved combining the Articles of Religion and Confession of Faith. The process of doing so, however, revealed significant gaps in our doctrinal standards. For example, were we simply to have combined the wording of the two documents and left it at that, our doctrinal standards would contain neither a doctrine of creation nor a doctrine of human nature. When the Articles of Religion and Confession of Faith were written, questions regarding AI, transhumanism, and transgenderism did not yet exist. Today, however, not only do they exist, but they impinge ever more acutely on the lives of our church members. To say nothing about matters of creation and theological anthropology would amount to negligence. 

We added some heft to our doctrine of Scripture for two reasons. First, Wesley lived prior to the advent of higher criticism. He could make certain assumptions about Scripture’s nature and authority that we cannot today. The world had yet to meet figures such as Friedrich Schleiermacher, David Friedrich Strauss, William Wrede, and Rudolf Bultmann, not to mention the popularizers of their ideas, such as Marcus Borg. Yes, there were people who attacked the reliability of Scripture in Wesley’s day, though this was but a taste of what was to come in the wake of the European Enlightenment. Second, the EUBs did nothing to strengthen Wesley’s formulation, and many clergy and theologians of that tradition eventually adopted the perspectives of mid-twentieth-century liberalism. We did not invent the language we added, but drew upon the Lausanne Covenant, a consensus document affirmed by evangelicals around the world. 

We strengthened the section on sacraments because we have learned over the last three hundred years that it is easy for the perspectives of other traditions (e.g., Baptist, Zwinglian) to displace the Methodist understanding of sacraments in our churches. Methodists are not memorialists. We do not simply have ordinances; we have sacraments. They are means of grace, conduits of the Holy Spirit. God is at work in them, changing us into the people we were always meant to be. These ideas were particularly important for Wesley, though they are widely misunderstood or neglected today. We thus felt we should place greater emphasis on them in the proposed Articles of Faith.

John Henry Newman argued that some things can only be said after other things have been said. It is equally true that some things need to be said after other things have been said. Having combined the Articles of Religion and Confession of Faith, it became evident that, for the well-being of the church, some additional things needed to be said. Other Wesleyan denominations, such as the Wesleyan Church and the Free Methodist Church, recognized the need to adjust the Articles of Religion in the interest of shoring up their doctrinal commitments. I hope the GMC will do the same. The issue isn’t that the Articles of Religion and Confession of Faith make invalid claims. I believe what they say to be true. Rather, it is that we would serve the church by clarifying those claims and attending to a few topics they do not address. 

We could have produced a mechanical combination of the two documents. The reason we did not is simply this: we wanted to offer a document that would serve the church adequately. A mechanical, flat-footed harmonization of the Articles and Confession would not do so. It would not cover theological topics that are crucially important in our current moment. As noted above, other Wesleyan denominations have taken this path before us. 

It is interesting that critiques of the additional material did not come up during the vetting process. The fifty-person review team did not raise the issue, nor did the Assembly of Bishops. I recall no such critique even when we put the document out for public comment. I admit that the remarks that came from the public review were so numerous that I may have missed one here and there, but the inclusion of this material certainly did not rise to the surface as one of the significant themes we were asked to address. Only afterward, when it was too late to address the matter, were such concerns raised. 

Some have suggested the writing team engaged in “innovation,” or the adding of novel material. While we did cover a few topics not addressed in the original documents, there is nothing innovative in what we have written. Every word is steeped in the Great Tradition. We set out to produce nothing new, but only to convey the abiding truths of orthodox Christian faith in its Wesleyan expression. I have read on a few occasions of the “great danger” of making even the slightest changes to our statements of doctrine. If this were such a dangerous process, however, the General Conference should not have called for a successor document—not even a mechanical combination of documents—since any successor document would necessarily involve some changes to language. 

Additionally, I might add, there is real danger that such critiques have not hit upon: the danger of approving a doctrinal standard that does not address the real needs of people in our churches. A mechanical harmonization would be just that. If we do not address matters such as creation and theological anthropology, we will neglect theological topics that are crucial for our day and time. In particular, the matters of our created being and our status as embodied human beings are perhaps the most significant and contested theological issues of our day. We live in a world where people fall in love with AI chatbots, where they give hormone blockers to children, and where the sick and old are now routinely killed, particularly in the Global West. If we don’t at least say something about such matters, we are guilty of theological malpractice. That is what a mechanical combination would have been, and I am glad we did not produce such a document. 

I have also heard that the process of writing the Articles of Faith was “rushed,” that we need “a pause” for another six years. I understand the desire for deliberate discernment around doctrinal matters, but it’s not at all clear what six more years would accomplish. We won’t know anything about the Trinity in six years that we don’t know today. Neither will we receive some epiphany regarding entire sanctification. The contours of our faith were established long ago. In light of this, the writing team utilized a deliberate discernment process within the mandated timeline of the 2024 General Conference. It was the result of months of work by a team of writers, taking into account feedback derived from three stages of vetting (the Assembly of Bishops, the fifty-person review team, the church at large). The writing team was not constructing new doctrines, but simply giving voice to old ones (primarily through the language of the Articles of Religion and Confession of Faith) within the boundaries established by the will of the General Conference.

Any theological thinker worth his or her salt could of course find something to object to in the proposed Articles. It has been constructed as a consensus document, taking into account a wide variety of perspectives not only from the writing team, but from those offering review and critique. It reflects no one person’s particular vision, which is a strength, not a weakness. If I were simply writing this document by myself, I would word some things differently. But it is not my document. It is our document. A great many hands have left their fingerprints on it. We worked toward consensus. If each of us at the General Conference insists on adjusting the wording of the document to suit our theological tastes, we will never adopt this document—nor any other. More importantly, though, it reflects a faithful expression of orthodox, Wesleyan doctrine that will serve the Church in her commitment to live as people called Methodist for years to come. It can strengthen the foundation for the teachings that will cultivate transformative Methodist practice in our communities of faith. What we believe affects how we live as Wesleyan Christians in the world. The question is not, “Would I have written it this way?” but “Is this a faithful expression of Methodist belief?” 

As I have said before, if the General Conference does not want what the Commission has produced and approved, I accept that. But if we reject it, we should do so for the right reasons. Is it heretical? Is it un-Methodist? Does it lead people astray? Is it somehow bad for the church? By contrast, if the new Articles of Faith are orthodox and Wesleyan, if they lead people into truth and serve the church well, then we should approve them. Talmudic scrupulosity of the commission’s mandate may cause us to miss the point of combining the two documents to start with: to serve the church as a functional touchstone long into the future. 

I do not recommend simply dispensing with the Articles of Religion and Confession of Faith. If we adopt the proposed Articles of Faith, my recommendation would be to keep the two predecessor documents in the Book of Doctrines and Discipline, but to identify them as historical documents, not as doctrinal standards in themselves. We can maintain our heritage and remember where we have come from even as we move forward. 

What we are building in the GMC is not for us. At least, it shouldn't be. We are building this denomination so that people we will never meet, people around the world and in ages to come, will come to know and love God. I have served the GMC from its earliest days not because the world needs one more denomination, but because I believe that this expression of the orthodox, Wesleyan witness may end up saving people who would otherwise be lost. That’s it. There is no other reason for us to do any of this work. As Wesley told his preachers, “You have nothing to do but save souls.” The Articles of Faith are written toward that end. I pray that the Holy Spirit will guide the General Conference in our discernment.

David F. Watson is President of Asbury Theological Seminary and a member of the Firebrand editorial team.