Mapping Global Methodist Theology

In 1964, Albert Outler published an anthology simply entitled John Wesley. As many of you know, this anthology of carefully selected writings appeared in the Library of Protestant Thought. Outler served on the editorial board of this series, but when he suggested a volume devoted to Wesley, he told me that he was nearly laughed out of the room. He said that one of his colleagues reminded him it was a series devoted to Protestant thought and questioned whether Wesley had anything to offer in that arena. But Outler was persistent and got his volume, only by agreeing to edit it himself. Not too long before his death, he announced with great pride that, of all the volumes in that series, John Wesley was the only one still in print. Regardless, a lot of scepticism with regard to ‘Methodist theology’ remains. How often have you faced the question ‘Do Methodists even have a theology’?

Methodist theology is elusive. When John Wesley attempted to describe The Character of a Methodist (1742), he began by telling the reader what a Methodist is not. The distinguishing marks of the Methodist, he observed, are not a peculiar set of opinions, notions, doctrines, actions, or customs. Methodists are those, he claims, ‘who have the love of God shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost given unto them’. The clear and primary goal of both Wesley brothers was spiritual renewal. But a theology of faith working by love undergirded their efforts, to be sure, and it quickly took on a normative character in the life of the movement. Over time, formative expressions of Methodist theology further defined the spiritual heirs of the Wesleys in multiple historical and cultural contexts as the movement expanded, literally, around the globe. In this brief address, I seek to provide a map of these global Methodist theologies.

John and Charles Wesley viewed their theology and practice as aligned with the Anglican heritage in which they stood. Their vision of a lived Christian theology can be encapsulated in the simple phrase ‘faith working by love leading to holiness of heart and holiness of life’ (Gal 5:6). They sought to bring balance to the Christian life and restore vitality to the church they loved, undergirding the Methodist movement with a robust and normative theology of grace and love. But both brothers devoted their sizeable energies to practical theology, one as a ‘folk’ and the other as a ‘lyrical’ theologian. What Randy Maddox claims of John applies equally to Charles: ‘Wesley would not have understood the defining task of theologians to be developing an elaborate system of Christian truth-claims for the academy. His task was, instead, nurturing and shaping the worldview that frames the temperament and practice of believers’ lives in the world’.¹ Both were serious theologians, but their approach to theology reflected a more ancient model of ‘practical divinity’.

The normative Wesleyan practical theology, both taught and lived by the brothers, consists of five key elements:

Transformation – The inherent purpose of theology, according to the Wesleys, is personal and social transformation, not the mastery of ideas or theological concerns.

At the close of the 18th century, the mantel of Methodist theology passed to the next generations of leadership in a movement—becoming a church—in both the British and American contexts. As may be well expected, questions related to the continuity and discontinuity of subsequent Methodists with Wesleyan theology loom large. Three of the Wesleys’ theological successors—John William Fletcher (1729–85), Adam Clarke (1762–1832), and Richard Watson (1781–1833)—sought self-consciously to preserve continuity with the practical theology of the founders, albeit in a more scholastic or academic mode. As Methodism progressed further into the new century, it began to assert an identity distinct from the Church of England, losing some of its original moorings. The different cultural setting of Methodism in America cannot be overemphasised. Initially, American Methodist theology retained a sense of connection with its origins, but its direct engagement with competitive theological perspectives in the New Republic shaped it in distinctive ways. A chasm began to form between Wesleyan and Methodist theology, exacerbated by the nature of frontier religion.

American Methodist camp meetings reinforced heart religion, emphasising the monumental spiritual changes wrought by the Spirit in the lives of individuals. This was Wesleyan, to be sure, but the ecumenical nature of frontier religion also led to a more broadly defined evangelicalism within Methodism. The lyrical theology of Frances Jane ‘Fanny’ Crosby (1820–1915) epitomised these developments and contributed to the increasing chasm between American academic and popular theological discourse. The highly intimate, individualistic, and otherworldly orientation of frontier theology pervades Crosby’s most famous ‘gospel song’:

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!

O what a foretaste of glory divine!

Heir of salvation, purchase of God,

born of his Spirit, washed in his blood.²

In the changing and challenging terrain of the post-Wesley era, several distinctive streams of Methodist theology emerged: holiness, liberal, neo-Wesleyan, and contextual theologies. Any effort to map global Methodist theologies must take all these developments into account.

Of the various streams that sprang from the headwaters of Wesleyan theology, the holiness stream was the first to emerge. Phoebe Palmer (1807-74), mother of the holiness movement in the United States and the higher life movement in Britain, was a product of the Second Great Awakening. In contrast to emergent conversion-centred theologies, Palmer’s own spiritual quest led her to place renewed emphasis on holiness in Methodist theology. She insistently raised the question ‘Is there not a shorter way to the holy life?’. Her answer was ‘yes’. For more than three decades she promoted her so-called ‘parlor holiness’, developing a unique ‘altar theology’.

Her ‘shorter way to holiness’ rested on three propositions:

The Holy Spirit delivers believers from original sin as a consequence of their personal consecration and faith.

Variations of this Methodist holiness theology continue today among Free Methodists, Nazarenes, Wesleyans, and various Church of God traditions.

Developments following the American Civil War, in particular, and on both sides of the Atlantic, presented challenges to Methodist theologians. Changing attitudes about the Bible, new philosophical perspectives, and unresolved problems related to racism and social injustice, demanded a robust response from the church. Seismic shifts in Western culture shaped its response. Formal Methodist theology took a decided turn in the direction of philosophical theology and away from the foundations of earlier Methodism. In addition to this, three significant shifts further defined changes in Methodist theology: a movement from otherworldliness to this-worldliness; from passivity to activity in the world; and, in ethical practice, from symptomatic relief to systemic reform.

A stream of liberal or modernist Methodist theologians emerged who attended closely to these ‘modern’ challenges to classical Christianity and assumed an apologetic posture in relation to their ‘cultured despisers’. The appeal to experience drew the particular attention of Methodist liberals, since this was one element of their theological inheritance providing a potent response to the challenges of the day. Rather than driving a wedge between religion and science, the theologians of this stream entered into dialogue with the scientific community and brought their insights to bear upon matters of faith. While some made an effort to claim their Wesleyan heritage in substantive ways, the vast majority ignored the Wesleys, questioned their theological veracity, and viewed their methods as products of an outmoded age.

A form of classic theological liberalism known as ‘Personalism’ emerged at Boston University School of Theology under the influence of Border Parker Bowne (1847–1910) who posited that the concept of ‘Personhood’ provided the key to reality. Albert Cornelius Knudson (1873–1953), the great systematic theologian of this tradition, characterised evolving Methodist liberalism in six terse points: the centrality of Christian experience, the immanence of God, the true humanity of Jesus, critical study of the Bible, atonement as moral influence, and a positive sense that the kingdom of God is being realised in history.

For half a century, this school of thought dominated American Methodist academic theology, particularly shaping the leadership of the church. One of the most significant second-generation personalists, Georgia Harkness (1891–1974), was appointed the first female professor in a major theological seminary. Described as an ‘evangelical liberal’, she embraced the principal concerns of classical liberalism: continuity in the midst of diversity, the importance of human experience, an optimistic view of life, truth wherever it might be found, social justice and change, and centring all things in God. One of her most popular theological texts, Understanding Christian Faith (1947), demonstrates her ability, like John Wesley, to speak ‘plain words for plain people’. Boston Personalism reached beyond the bounds of Methodism, serving as a foundation for the civil rights platform of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Four particular personalistic themes resound in his writings: the inherent worth of all persons, a personal God of love and reason, the moral law of the cosmos, and the social nature of human existence.

The Personalist recovery of a dynamic vision of the ‘kingdom of God’ and its realisation in history resonated with the pioneers of the ‘Social Gospel’ movement who sought to reclaim the centrality of the God’s kingdom in Christian theology and practice. Methodist ‘social gospelers’ sought to apply the principles of Jesus’s ministry to the transformation of society, to establish a new social order by eliminating the social evils of poverty and racism. Figures like Hugh Price Hughes (1847-1902) and John Scott Lidgett (1854-1953) reflected this same orientation as advocates of the Christian Social Movement in their own British context. These parallel movements elevated human experience, freedom, and responsibility and demonstrated the implications of theology for social ethics, bringing increased awareness to a social and global consciousness.

The liberal theological tradition continues to exert its influence within contemporary Methodism through two particular schools of thought: process theology and open and relational theology.

John B. Cobb Jr. (b. 1925), a premier ‘process theologian’, reflects the philosophical underpinnings of this theology in three points:

Process and change characterise the universe.

The work of Schubert Ogden (b. 1928) and Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki (b. 1933) further explored a relational theology of God along the lines of this process trajectory. Thomas Jay Oord (b. 1965) coined the term ‘open and relational theology’ in his articulation of a theological vision that has challenged traditional ways of conceiving God, and while not strictly process-oriented, reflects some of the same concerns. With other ‘open theists’ he shares two critical convictions:

God experiences time moment by moment (open).

This theology affirms that love is the ultimate ethic, all creatures possess some measure of freedom, all creation matters, life has purpose, science points to important truths, and transformation is possible.

The Neo-Wesleyan stream of Methodist theology consists of two distinct but interrelated currents. In the middle of the 20th century, a ‘Neo-Reformation’ movement within the Protestant tradition renewed interest in the theology of the magisterial reformers. It did not take long for Methodists who resonated with these developments to rediscover the theological relevance of John Wesley, their own founding figure. ‘Neo-Wesleyan theology’ emerged, in part, as a rediscovery and re-evaluation of Wesleyan theology – an ‘ad fontes current’ within Methodism. Simultaneously, and following the lead of Karl Barth in Europe and Reinhold Niebuhr in the United States, ‘Neo-Orthodox’ theologians levelled serious critiques against what they considered to be the naïve and wrong-headed optimism of liberal theology. Within Methodism, this movement can be described as a ‘counter-liberal current’ within the larger Neo-Wesleyan stream.

As early as 1935, there were glimpses of an ‘ad fontes’ rediscovery of John Wesley, but the real watershed in terms of renewed interest in the theology of the founder came with the 1964 publication of John Wesley by Albert C. Outler (1908–89), the anthology mentioned at the outset of this address. His depiction of Wesley as a serious theologian, albeit of a different order, helped to fuel a renaissance in Wesley studies, later to include Charles Wesley as well. Outler’s contributions toward a new and elevated view of John Wesley as a theologian cannot be overestimated. His reappraisal led to an initial defence of Wesley’s ‘folk theology’ as a legitimate form of theological discourse. Outler located Wesley more squarely in his Anglican context and brought new insight to the three pillars of Wesleyan theology: repentance, justification, and holiness. Robert E. Cushman (1913–93) contributed to this rediscovery as well, explicating six basic propositions aligned with Wesley’s vision. In this platform, faith is about:

God finding us, not us finding God;

In his book, The New Creation (1998), Theodore ‘Ted’ Runyon (1930–2017) deviated from the typical model of exploring John Wesley’s theology as the order of salvation, began his analysis with the imago Dei, and described Wesley’s vision of how God restores this image of creative love in people. Scholars like Randy L. Maddox (b. 1953) and Kenneth J. Collins (b. 1952) continue to advance this work in Wesleyan theological studies, and Paul W. Chilcote (b. 1954) has facilitated a rediscovery of Charles Wesley’s ‘lyrical theology’.

The counter-liberal current within this stream can be traced back to Edwin Lewis (1881–1959) who had been schooled as a Boston Personalist, but experienced a radical conversion during his work on the Abingdon Bible Commentary (1929), claiming that this exercise enabled him to rediscover the Bible for himself. Growing increasingly suspicious of his inherited liberal theology, in 1934 he published A Christian Manifesto, in which he railed against modernism and called upon Methodists to reaffirm the reality of God, the authority of the Word of God, the fact of sin, the divinity of Christ, the cross as the supreme event in the divine-human story, and the gospel as God’s provision for the salvation of the whole world.

The confluence of the two currents within this stream can be discerned in the work of two particular theologians. Thomas C. Oden (1931–2016) subsumed his passion for Wesley under the aegis of a larger ‘paleo-orthodoxy’ project, an effort to advocate classical Christianity in the face of postmodern challenges. The British Methodist theologian, Geoffrey Wainwright (1939–2020), reflected similar tendencies in his attempt to wed the ancient liturgical heritage of the church with Wesley’s primitive Methodism. He produced a systematic theology entitled Doxology (1980), building upon a ‘pictorial method’, demonstrating the inseparability of worship and theology, and identifying the worshipping community as the proper matrix of theology. Three ‘pictorial statements’ present his main theses:

a medieval tomb sculpture depicting Christ on the cross with outstretched hands holding the sun and the moon;

While Stanley M. Hauerwas (b. 1940) reflects the counter-liberal current within contemporary Methodism, he also ‘represents practical divinity in a thoroughgoing way’.⁴ Theology and ethics are distinct but inseparable as are theory and practice. Practice shapes understanding, which shapes practice. Theological conviction must be embodied; faith must find expression through action. Working within the tradition of ‘virtue ethics’, Hauerwas, like the Wesleys, puts ‘character’ and its formation at the very centre of his theological agenda, explicated most richly in his highly acclaimed book, The Community of Character (1981).

The fourth stream of Methodist theology, due to its contextual definition, subdivides into a number of branches. The image of a waterfall might be a more appropriate metaphor for this most recent development. The waters of the tradition simply cascade into a myriad of streams and cross-currents, reflecting the unique contexts of Methodism around the world today. Even before the emergence of the revisionist trends of postmodern theology, many had argued the inescapable contextuality of all theological discourse. This reaction against the Enlightenment claim for universally demonstrable and applicable truth-claims stipulates that all truth is inextricably bound to unique and diverse cultural and historical contexts. Postcolonialism and ecumenical dialogue led to an increasingly positive valuation of contextuality in theology, particularly as previously muted voices joined the chorus. These developments necessitated a complete ‘rethinking of the essential nature of theology, looking for ways to relate it more integrally to the praxis of specific communities of faith’.⁵ In this arena, Methodist theologians have made substantial contributions to the black and womanist, liberation and feminist, and various indigenous branches of this ever-widening stream.