United Methodist Ethicist Affirms Use of Force in Fallen World

United Methodist ethicist James Thobaben, speaking at the April 2008 Wesley Colloquium in Myerstown, Pennsylvania, highlighted the difficulties for Christians serving in government in a “fallen world.” But he insisted that it is God’s will for Christians to participate in the world, and that Methodist founder John Wesley would support coercive force to institute justice among lawless nations.

The Rev. Wendy Deichman Edwards, new president of United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, also addressed the colloquium. She argued that after coming to North America, early Methodism transgressed from John Wesley’s progressive social doctrines about race and gender, causing divisions that still exist today.  

The April 3 colloquium, entitled “Wesleyan Social Justice for the 21^st Century,” took place at Evangelical Seminary.  Affiliated with the small Evangelical Church denomination, the seminary hosts over 50 United Methodist seminarians.

Thobaben, a professor of social and medical ethics at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, asserted, “There are two different levels of moral expectation . . . one for those who are not Christians and one for those who are.”  He warned that Christians must tread carefully in public service. “If you are in the government in any form, you are saying you are willing to participate in the use of coercive power, including violence. You can’t hold a political office and not be willing to use violence.”

Explaining the concept of “dirty hands,” Thobaben defined it as “a necessity to compromise in a fallen world.”  He said that while dirty hands are permissible, they should never become “stained hands.”  He asserted that the Lord requires believers “to act justly, to love mercy and . . . to live a life of purity.”  Thobaben contended that it is consistent with the teachings of Wesley to judge the behaviors of others, and other nation states. Based on the above criteria, he argued that justice is the criteria to judge whether a nation is “relatively better or worse.”

Thobaben also asserted that it is justifiable for nations to hold other states or people accountable for their implementation of rights, based upon the “just coercion” theory.  He said Wesley would argue “that as a splendid vice . . . we can hold states accountable for using proper just coercion theory, and acting upon and responding to other injustices inside their boundaries first of all, but also outside of their boundaries.” He added, “I think Wesley would say, if he were here today, it is appropriate for certain nation states—including and specifically the United States because of its strength and because of its self-correction—for it to act as a policing authority under certain circumstances of . . . those actions.” 

While there are biblical passages in support of both obeying the state and obeying God rather than men, Thobaben argued that these both “have to be held simultaneously.”

“We have to have an ultimate relationship to God that tells us how to deal with penultimate relationships in the world,” he continued. “We can participate in the world, but only with hesitancy and caution, and we must have much lower expectations of those in the world.”

Thobaben urged the audience, “Participate in the machinery of the world as a splendid vice, because that’s what God has told us to do, to restrain evil the best we can in this fallen world. But you should always do it with one step back and ready to go out the door. Because the world wants to use the church, and the church should not be used by the world.”

In contrast to Thobaben’s abstract views on a proper Methodist social witness, Wendy Deichman Edwards spoke historically about Methodism in America.  From a young age, Wesley was able to “recognize the ability of God’s love and grace to affect a faithful response to the gospel through women as well as through men,” Edwards said.  “For Wesley the subject of women’s leadership, as it played out in the Methodist movement and revival, falls into the categories of both personal and social holiness.” For personal holiness, “It has to do with a belief that God affirms and works within women as well as within men.” And as an issue of social holiness, if someone feels a calling from God, even if they are a woman, “it is the duty of other Christians to respect that . . . to work together . . . to bring the gospel to all those in need.” 

Edwards argued that after Wesley’s death, North American Methodism quickly abandoned “the developments around women in the ministry that had occurred under Wesley’s leadership.” She claimed that women faced great challenges in fulfilling their spiritual callings. “The call to women to be in leadership from the days of early Methodism has required of women who responded to exercise deviance—not only from the social norms, but also the community of faith norms that have been established,” she said.

“For women called to leadership in the Wesleyan tradition, there has always been a level of social deviance required in order to fulfill the call,” concluded Edwards. However, for the women who served, “Their ultimate trust in the sufficiency of God’s grace, freed them to share what they had been given, even if it was socially and ecclesiastically deviant to do so.”

While discussing the idea racial egalitarianism in Wesley and his successors, she described Wesley’s doctrine of social holiness as his effort to “put forth God’s perfect love, as the standard for how Christians . . . ought to live in relationship with all others.” She continued, “There was no exception allowed for race or class in the divine mandate to love one’s neighbor perfectly as one’s self.”

According to Edwards, Wesley exemplified these principles by reaching out in service to those who were so often overlooked by the church. She noted that Wesley was actively engaged with the struggle against slavery, which he called “the vilest that existed under the sun.”

However, Edwards claimed that by the early 19^th century, Methodism began to withdraw from the concept of social holiness when revivalism and an emphasis on conversion “had become the essence of religion in America.” When Methodism came to America—“a new nation with limited democracy, preserved for certain privileged persons”—the racial egalitarianism exemplified by Wesley in England was severely challenged.

By the late 18^th century, the majority of Methodists were southern, and a growing percentage were of the elite slave-holding class, leading to differing views on social holiness and divisions with-in the church. Edwards attributed this as a significant reason for the divisions and transgressions to follow. “The overt practices of racial discrimination led directly to the founding of the African Methodist-Episcopal church in 1916, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church in 1820, and the ‘colored,’ later called Christian Episcopal Church in 1870,” she said.

“If American Methodism ever intended to enact completely Wesley’s standard for Christian social holiness among racially egalitarian lines, it has not succeeded in doing so,” concluded Edwards. She insisted that these divisions continue today, pointing out that black Methodism has found it necessary to maintain their own identity, and white Methodism has struggled to show “genuine hospitality” towards their black counterparts. “Ever since the 1785 compromise action of the Methodist-Episcopal Church with regard to slavery, black and white Methodists have struggled to co-exist in ways that exemplify true love of God and neighbor, in ways that exemplify true racial egalitarianism and heart felt social holiness across racial lines.”