Imperative of Wesleyanism in America Today

(Here are video and text of my commencement speech yesterday at Wesley Biblical Ceremony where I was honored to receive an honorary doctorate. I’m introduced at minute 53.)

There has never been a more important time to be Wesleyan than now.  Denominations and denominationalism are melting down in America at a fast pace.  Loyalties to old institutions are fading.  Sometimes old institutions need to fade if they are failing in their mission.  But at their best, denominations were custodians of the great Protestant traditions.  In the vacuum they leave, non-denominationalism is prevailing.  It typically does not claim any tradition but is also typically Baptist in theology and ethos without the name.

We rejoice over and give thanks to the thousands of new nondenominational churches bringing the Gospel to America as old denominations retreat or implode.  They are entrepreneurial, courageous, innovative, biblically focused, and evangelistic.  May God continue to bless them. They are our partners in Christ from whom we have a great deal to learn. But America needs Wesleyanism beliefs and Wesleyan churches.

Why?

Wesleyanism is historical and catholic.  It is deeply connected to the universal church in time and space.  It is part of the great continuity of the Christian church.  It upholds tradition while applying it contemporaneously. It esteems the church’s ecumenical creeds, teachings, and ethics dating back to the church fathers.  It upholds the centrality of sacraments, including infant baptism. It cherishes liturgy transmitted to us across generations and centuries.  It perpetuates the great hymns. It upholds the beauty of worship. Its spiritual and physical architecture reflect historic Christianity.  Wesleyanism does not try to reinvent Christianity.  Nor does it divorce the Bible from Christian tradition.  Wesleyans understand the Bible belongs to and is read by the whole church together.  We as individual believers are surrounded by a great cloud or witnesses whose testimony and insights about Scripture and Christian living continually guide us.

Wesleyanism insists on the divine invitation to all for salvation.  Christ died for all humanity. God is not willing that any should be lost.  But He graces each person with the agency of choosing for or against Him and to what extent.  Come whosoever will.  There is nobody left outside God’s concern, but neither is there divine coercion.  We are confident that if Christ is lifted up, all will be drawn towards Him.  

Wesleyans know our choosing for Christ does not conclude with salvation but is an ongoing journey towards holiness and perfection.  God desires all His followers to become more like Him, and He gives them the power to do so.  There is no obstacle in earthly life around which the Holy Spirit cannot provide a pathway.  Divine righteousness is a tremendous gift against which earthly powers can battle but not prevail.  Wesleyans know we have the power of God within us, and there’s always more available to the extent we are willing to receive.

Wesleyans believe that God is no respecter of persons.  We all each have access to Him, and we each equally have His image upon us.  Wesleyans believe in order and discipline but not in unquestioning earthly hierarchy.  We see our fellow believers and our fellow humans as fellow creatures of God, not as subordinates nor as lords over us.  Wesleyans fully submit to God but to no one else.  Wesleyans are egalitarians spiritually, culturally, and politically.  Our movement is one of the most egalitarian among all Christian traditions. We believe in God-ordained equality.  The first shall be last and the last shall be first.  Those who are subordinate in society are typically most drawn to Wesleyanism, which has included slaves, the very poor and working class, women in all societies, racial and social minorities, persons who have been told they are little, when Wesleyans tell them they are everything to God.   And if you have received the Holy Spirit then you are authorized to testify to His power. None are ordered to keep silent in deference to others.  This Wesleyan perspective can be unruly, which is why Wesleyans have rules about respect and good order, rooted in sound doctrine.

Wesleyans have changed the world because they are optimistic about God’s power and purposes.  We do not passively yield to the status quo.  We do not assume the God has ordained whatever is the current situation.  And Wesleyans are driven by their knowledge that each person bears the Trinitarian God’s political image, ordaining each person, believer or not, as God’s vice regent on earth, called to steward power, authority and responsibility in ways that serve humanity and exalt God.   Wesleyans are not passive about injustice, corruption, or tyranny.   We know that God ordains a better path, and He will lead us there if we follow Him.

Thanks to our confidence in the ongoing power of God’s grace at all times and places, Wesleyans are not just hopeful eschatologically in some penultimate sense but are optimistic about the here and now.  We know God intends the best for us.  We know that the devil never has the final say.  We know that that God is redeeming the whole world now. His power is manifest everywhere.  His grace is sufficient.  His intentions for good are unlimited.   His perfection supersedes our failures.

This Wesleyan optimism is always needed but especially now in America. Optimism is out, grievance and pessimism are in.  Thanks to God’s work among us for centuries, we live amid unrivaled wealth, freedom security and opportunity.  Yet we often think we are doomed to the worst of times.  Too many of us have little hope for tomorrow.  We too often think of ourselves as victims rather than God’s vice regents on earth ordained to do His work, with consequences and rewards both earthly and eternal.  God intends to empower us all.  But too often we neglect to accept this wonderful opportunity.  It’s easier to complain than to accept this divine invitation.

American Christianity is today feeling besieged. Wesleyans needs to offer a course correction and more constructive alternative. We do not minimize the evils always among us in this fallen world.  We know that from the beginning Satan has roamed the earth as a roaring lion, seeking to destroy whom he might.  But we serve his dark purposes if we assume his power is unrivaled. We know there is always a far Greater Power whose intentions are peace, love, joy, mercy, and life abundant, now, and forever. Wesleyans are bearers of this Good News in the fullest sense.

Wesleyans will find godly success if we do not dwell on the past but stress God’s hopes for the future.  Yes, we should esteem our wonderful heritage starting with John Wesley and continuing with the early circuit riders who evangelized our frontier and made America in many ways a Methodist nation.  But the church never prospers from nostalgia.  John Wesley was a realist and an optimist, not a nostalgist.  So are we called to be. 

The largest Wesleyan denomination in America and the world just this week willed itself into a spiritual implosion.  All of us who grew up in it mourn its fall, while also grateful for how God used it.  But the Wesleyan message and movement are greater than any single institution, of course.  And in many ways, the fall of that institution, which kept many orthodox Wesleyans captive and often restricted in their ministry, is good news.  Now thousands of churches have been released and are free to become more fully Wesleyan.  We can now more clearly say that the Wesleyan movement is not bound to any singular institution but is broadly inclusive of many denominations, churches, and individuals.

America’s growing churches are nondenominational.  And much if not most of today’s Christian conversation at all levels is not tied to institutions but broadly online.  Here is an opportunity for Wesleyans to make our case within broader Christianity.  Perhaps and likely most nondenominational pastors are not very familiar with John Wesley the man beyond a vague historicity and know even less about wider Wesleyan theology.  Maybe some are even averse to what they understand to be Methodism as beyond the pale.  Certainly, their church members are uninformed.   

We Wesleyans should use this unique historical moment to reach nondenominational Christians with our perspectives.  The Wesleyan way is very suited to today’s America.  Divine grace offered to all people.  Equality under God with brotherhood and sisterhood to all people.  An experience with the living God that starts with salvation and escalates to ever greater harmony with Him realized in holiness and peace.  A focus on regular people and their routine concerns, seeing God’s face in each of them.  Deliverance from earthly addictions through accountability accompanied by sanctification.  Lifting up people from the monotony of daily life through self-denial and alignment with the Cross.  Empowering all people in the church and in society as God’s vice regents ordained to righteous, self-sacrificial authority.

Wesleyanism today should not only plant churches and evangelize the unreached but give broader Christianity a greater appreciation for the church universal and the God’s power to change the world.  Wesleyanism rejects complaint and passivity.  We are called to active faith with confidence and hope.

All of you are called to incarnate and represent this Wesleyan perspective on the Gospel.  You can reshape our society no less than any previous generation of fearless circuit riding preachers.  And, God willing, future generations will cite your example when recalling the generation of the early twenty first century who re-evangelized America and re-empowered the church through the churning, almost nuclear energy of Wesleyan Christianity.