Which Methodism?: How Will the GMC Self-Identify in Its First 25 Years?
Photo by Siegfried Poepperl
This past May, I was brought onto a podcast to have a panel discussion about the recently proposed Articles of Faith for the Global Methodist Church, which will be voted on at the next General Conference later this summer. Overall, I think the committee did an excellent job. It's a consensus document. I applaud their Herculean undertaking and that they made it public for us to critique it. This takes much courage, candidness, and honesty. The panel’s job of Monday morning quarterbacking was relatively light work in comparison. We all have preferences that we think are essential. The question among us is “Which Methodism will prevail?” We have no single, pure Methodist tradition to draw from after John Wesley until today.
As I prepared for the panel discussion, one weighty question struck me, a question which has its bearing not only on the approach to writing and interpreting the Articles of Faith but also on the approach to the Global Methodist Church itself and its future. Which Methodism? Which Methodist micro tradition(s) shape our understanding and writing of an Articles of Faith, and further, which Methodist tradition, or rather interpretation of our Methodist tradition(s), will help inform our identity as the GMC? Which tradition(s) will help generate our (doctrinal) identity as a people and launch our (missional) trajectory into the future? Which Methodism(s)?
What makes this task colossal is that we, as the Global Methodist Church, have no shared conservative (orthodox) ecclesial Wesleyan tradition from which we all operate. We have no common, defined orthodox starting point in terms of a Wesleyan tradition from which to build a shared identity for the Global Methodist Church. We, Global Methodists, have affirmed our Doctrinal Standards in the Book of Doctrine and Discipline. However, we may not always interpret them in the same way. In fact, interpretations may vary greatly.
In terms of a shared tradition, most of us came out of the United Methodist Church, an institution that has been basically left of center for its entire existence, since 1968. Additionally, many of us have been influenced by other tribes and traditions that we have integrated into our Methodism. Theological diversity can be a strength, but how will that diversity shape our future as the GMC? Which Methodism will prevail?
After coming out of United Methodist doctrinal exile and captivity, it is not unrealistic and no small matter to pose the existential question, “Who are we?” Of course, we claim we are Wesleyan, but in which way? Institutionally, as former United Methodists, we had been a part of predecessor denominations that more or less as a whole have been liberal to progressive since the turn of the 20th-century. I am speaking more to the dominant Methodist line rather than our EUB heritage, which was basically absorbed and marginalized following the 1968 merger.
The liberal-progressive bloc had pretty much won the day by the early twentieth century. As a whole we preferred Bordon Parker Bowne over H.C. Morrison. Apart from Harold Paul Sloan and the short-lived Methodist League for Faith and Life, we did not have much skin in the game of the early 20th century Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, which was mostly Reformed and Baptist. Much of our holiness ranks (the conservatives) had already departed by that time. The founding of Asbury Theological Seminary in 1923 marked the end of any conservative stronghold that once existed in the three main branches of Methodism, those being the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church-South, and the Methodist Protestant Church. Their merger in 1939 as the Methodist Church solidified it as a mainline liberal denomination.
Today, we have no living memory of when Methodism as a whole was ever “conservative” or “orthodox.” None of us are that old. Although we have been a part of effective conservative caucuses, movements, institutions, and sodality structures within the UMC, such as Good News, the Confessing Movement, Wesleyan Covenant Association, etc., it was as resistance movements under the yoke of a liberal-progressive hegemony. I am not undermining the strength and support that those oasis groups provided us in our ecclesial desert. Without them we would not have survived, nor would we have the Global Methodist Church. Even with their tremendous impact, conservatives, though a numerical majority, at times still remained in the margins of power. Many of us felt like exiles in captivity, living under the yoke of liberal-progressive Methodism. Even so, United Methodism impacted us both positively and negatively, and we bring its imprint on us to the GMC.
Well then, which Methodism (tradition) will we draw from to define who we are and who we will become? With the Nicene Creed and the Chalcedonian Definition as part of our Book of Doctrine and Discipline, I believe we have the great tradition well represented in the GMC. We are an orthodox Christian church. But what about our Wesleyan tradition? Originally, we adopted the Doctrinal Standards of our former denomination, which has somewhat defined which Methodists we are, doctrinally speaking. Currently, we are in the process of synthesizing our Articles of Religion and Confession of Faith into the new Articles of Faith. How will we approach the writing, interpreting, and applying of these Articles? Which Methodism will win the day?
Hans Georg Gadamer’s influential theory of philosophical hermeneutics claims that we do not approach a text, discourse, or reality with a blank slate. We rely heavily on our interpretive frameworks that stand as our present horizon to view and interpret what is before us. We cannot help but bring our situation and context with us. We cannot objectively remove ourselves from ourselves and function hermeneutically. We come to the discourse with our preunderstanding and pre-judgments intact and active. According to Gadamer, our preunderstanding stems from the history and tradition that forms us, our embedded history. The GMC will not be an object that we simply uncover and understand. We will bring our preunderstanding to the present horizon as we look out at the new denomination and interpret what it is and what it shall be.
What are some of those preunderstandings? In the case of many of us who came out of the UMC, our history and preunderstanding involve our encounters and life with the theological pluralism of our past, even if the interaction was reactionary. We had to process, parse, understand, critique, and respond to it from our own positions and posture on orthodoxy. Even our grasp of John Wesley led to diverse pathways, let alone to thinking about how pluralism impacted our understanding of United Methodism and orthodoxy, United Methodism and other religions, or United Methodism and culture. We had multiple iterations of Wesley: the process Wesley, the liberation Wesley, the queer Wesley, the mainline Wesley, the subaltern Wesley, the evangelical Wesley, etc.
UM pluralism has impacted even conservatives. We have embedded histories together with it that may impact our future. For example, how will the GMC think about social justice, marriage rights, abortion, euthanasia, other religions, immigration, war, the environment, climate change, infant baptism and dedication, sexual sin and sexual orientation, ecumenism, global and local theologies, and the list goes on.
Although great-tradition, orthodox and Wesleyan, generally speaking, we GMCers are still not all of the exact same ilk. Of course, we do not want to become GMC Wesleybots, but going forward, a common ecclesial understanding and culture will need to emerge. Yes, we are all members of the same denomination and adhere to the same Book of Doctrine and Discipline. However, in order to survive and define ourselves amidst and apart from the devastating hurricane of heterodoxy of our former denomination. Yes, we forged a basic, conservative Methodist identity, but we have also become secondarily Methobaptists, Methofundamentalists, Methocostals, Methoanglicans, Metho-evangelicals and the like.
The fact is that many of us stayed on life support in the UMC by drinking from the wells of early Methodism and our Doctrinal Standards, but also from wells of other tribes, borrowing from other traditions to help us navigate through the treacherous waters of theological pluralism. It makes some sense. We did not come out of a continuous, conservative, orthodox Methodist tradition that lasted from Wesley until today. For the last one hundred years or so, we more or less had been taken into ecclesial captivity, exiles scattered from our early Methodist roots and taken into foreign lands. Although we affirm our Book of Doctrine and Discipline, we have not shared a common, conservative Wesleyan ecclesial tradition that has catechized and discipled us prior to launching the GMC.
Now that we have been released from our captivity, we return to a homeland that needs rebuilding, the temple, the city, the walls, everything. Yet, we do not return to the land tabula rasa, without a map or vessel. We have the scriptures, the great tradition that we more or less share, our Methodist heritage, and our various micro-traditions that we have picked up along the way, and a variety of interpretations of all of these. We find general agreement in the Vincentian Canon and further agreement in our GMC Doctrinal Standards. With both of these sources we also enjoy flexibility around nonessentials, like modes of baptism, millennialism, or theories of atonement. More complicated is finding common ground among our micro-traditions, which may involve issues like infant and believer’s baptism, speaking in tongues and prophesying, or theories of inerrancy.
Which “preunderstandings”, in Gadamer’s words, will we bring to the GMC table? From which micro-traditions are we shaping the identity and future of the GMC? I am sure each has their own opinion. I will take a stab at it. Allow me to sketch out with broad brushstrokes at least five existing options for identifying which “type” of Methodism that will influence who we are and what we will be.
TYPE 1 - Primitive (Classical) Methodism
With this type, we renounce our liberal-progressive past and go straight to the source (ad fontes), John Wesley Methodism! This move involves bypassing much of the liberal-progressive expressions of our UMC and Methodist traditions (Methodist Church, MEC North and South, MEP) and takes a leap back nearly 300 years to our early Methodist roots and embraces the doctrine, spirit, and discipline of John Wesley and the pioneer Methodists. This is the primitivist option. With Primitive or Classical Methodism, adherents retrieve what they believe to be the early Methodist essentials that they glean from foundational Methodist documents, such as the Standard Sermons, The Notes, The Articles, The Minutes, etc., and apply them today in our various contexts. However, the focus is on originalism and textualism rather than on more fluid, contemporary interpretations of our early Methodist heritage. Basically, primitivism intends to pick up today where Wesley and Asbury left off then. Primitivism understands early Methodism, flaws and all, as the golden era and the gold standard for Methodism today. As the gold standard, early Methodism would be the measure by which we judge our Methodism today. This understanding says that we cannot go forward until we first go back and understand who we are, then we will be able to go forward.
TYPE 2 - Methodism 2.0
Another approach is what I am calling Methodism 2.0, classical Methodism with an update. I was originally tempted to call it Charismatic Methodism or Methocostalism, but I felt that was too narrow and would exclude other developments and expressions. Methodism 2.0 is not hardline about literally recapturing early Methodism. Although it honors our heritage, it does not romanticize it. Wesley’s Methodism had its warts as well. Methodism 2.0 also recognizes that we live in a different time and place than 18th-century England or 19th-century frontier America. This approach recognizes the firm foundation built by early Methodism but does not seek to recreate it literally, although it holds firmly to its doctrinal standards and other principles. However, the value of our early Methodist tradition is found in contextualizing the spirit of Methodism for today. It values our early Methodist tradition but is not intent on its literal reconstruction as a way forward. It seeks to implement the “spirit” of Methodism in our current world, an update. It holds to our Wesleyan doctrinal emphases but may construe them hermeneutically as multivalent, though still within an evangelical milieu. This approach is aware and open to the ways in which the Spirit has been working mightily throughout the majority world (the “update” language) over the last one hundred and fifty years, and is more interested in first building the Kingdom rather than Methodism. Methodism 2.0 is open to old and new waves of the Spirit that have moved through the church and the world following early Methodism, such as the holiness movement and the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement. Methodist 2.0 will attempt to follow the Spirit, the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. The person and full work of the Holy Spirit will be vital to Methodism 2.0 – Trinitarian, regeneration and sanctifying, charismatic, and missional.
TYPE 3 - Wesleyan Holiness Methodism
The third approach is to focus on entire sanctification (holiness) as our grand depositum and center our identity around it; become a “holiness” church. This would also involve adopting the broader historic holiness movement as our tradition and lens from which to go forward. We would be grafted into the larger Wesleyan Holiness movement (The Free Methodist Church, The Wesleyan Church, the Church of the Nazarene, etc.) and its idiosyncratic understanding of the nature and purpose of Methodism to spread scriptural holiness. We would be intentionally replacing our United Methodist heritage with a tradition with which we more readily can identify. In this way, we would be embracing a particular historic interpretation of our early Methodist roots, a traditionally Wesleyan Holiness one, which would provide us with orthodox, historical continuity from Wesley to today – a common, conservative, scriptural Wesleyan ecclesial tradition.
This Wesleyan Holiness tradition would define our identity, shape our doctrine and formation, and launch our trajectory into the future. Of course, the Wesleyan Holiness tradition is not a monolith. Even though, by definition, entire sanctification is the key that opens the door into this tradition, there are diverse views on entire sanctification and other issues as well among those who self-identify within the Wesleyan Holiness movement. For example, denominations within this movement have members that differ on issues like human sexuality, atonement theories, or the Charismatic movement. Thus, none of the five approaches offered here are without problems and challenges.
TYPE 4 - Big-Tent (Evangelical) Methodism
The next option is to go big-tent evangelicalism but still maintain our Wesleyan distinctives. In defining and carrying out our doctrine and mission, this approach would work within the orthodoxy of the great tradition and evangelicalism (Bebbington’s 4 points?), even with Wesleyan distinctives, but with boundaries and definitions that have softer and rounder edges that would allow for more diversity on the finer points within the orthodoxy of the great tradition and evangelical Wesleyanism. One objective would be to accommodate the wide range of evangelical Wesleyans that form this new denomination. Thus, this approach would be more open to differing views on infant and adult baptism, the nature of the episcopacy, the definition of inerrancy, continuationism and the Charismatic movement, the extent of depravity, theories of atonement, and other issues. This type focuses on Wesley’s catholic spirit but within the body of evangelicalism, a term open for debate, a catholic spirit, dare I say, that even acknowledges faithful Calvinists as sisters and brothers.
TYPE 5 - Anglican Methodism
High Church Methodism expresses a desire to return to Wesley and early Methodism but specifically the Anglican Wesley who created a little Methodist church (ecclesiola) within a larger Anglican Church (Ecclesia). Anglican-Methodism would incorporate the Common Book of Prayer into our life of worship and devotion, not only holding firm to the Pattern given by Wesley to the American Methodists, but to bolster it by drawing from the Anglican Mass and its rich liturgy and Eucharistic theology. This option would seem to moor the GMC to the historical church in a deeper way.
Of course, these five approaches in this “Methodist Enneagram” are not pure categories. They are not neat, cut and dry. They may not be mutually exclusive. Also, they are not the only options. In most cases, there will be overlap or a sharing of similar views across options. For example, the second and the fourth options would seem to be naturally more open to charismatic manifestations in the Global Methodist Church. Also, although all five options would recognize entire sanctification as a doctrinal standard, the first and third options would perhaps place more weight on it as a necessary experience for full discipleship. For all five alternatives, rejecting any of our current doctrinal standards would not be an option.
The main thrust of the GMC will be great-tradition orthodoxy and Wesleyan, according to our Doctrinal Standards. This is our defining core, our main language, our lingua franca, but it will have dialects and accents that may define various regions, groups, conferences, districts, and churches. And this type of diversity is not even touching on the natural diversity that will arise from diverse cultures in our quest to be global, which is an entirely different and more complex conversation of the one and the many across cultures. For now, it is enough to think about which micro-Methodisms will be expressed and have influence in defining the GMC over the next 25 years.
Peter J. Bellini is the Professor of Church Renewal and Evangelization in the Heisel Chair at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. He is also an elder in the Global Methodist Church.