Reviving Wesleyanism

The “New Room” conference last week outside Nashville, hosted by Seedbed, a publishing arm of Asbury Seminary, attracted about 600 Wesleyans across denominations, including at least four United Methodist bishops, for spiritual and intellectual uplift.  (Read Bishop Mike Lowry’s report.) Last year’s first “New Room” event attracted several hundred.

Speakers this year included Jo Anne Lyons, Wesleyan Church General Superintendent (pictured above), Asbury Seminary President Tim Tennent, and rising United Methodist thinkers like Kevin Watson of Candier School of Theology and Andrew Thompson, previously of Memphis Theological Seminary.

Seedbed, headed by J.D. Walt, aspires through its publication of a growing battery of Wesleyan resources, and through events like “New Room,” to strengthen and expand a global Wesleyan ethos, rooted in the early distinctives of salvation, sanctification and holiness available to all.

Most “New Room” participants were United Methodists, including many young pastors.   They of course often struggle as orthodox Wesleyans in a denomination whose leadership structures abandoned orthodoxy and traditional Wesleyanism starting early in the last century.  Meanwhile, many Wesleyans across denominations contend with a generic Evangelicalism oblivious to Wesleyan spiritual formation. 

Much of Evangelicalism is dominated by Calvinists.  Thank God for their robust witness and theological rigor.  But Wesleyans must carry their own weight with equal spiritual and doctrinal rigor, for which Seedbed was founded.

Seedbed is clear that its purpose through “New Room” and other initiatives is not to create a new denomination but to feed and enliven a pan-denominational Wesleyan community.  Maybe its goal is similar to the Gospel Coalition, a popular forum for Reformed expression and encouragement across denominations, including Presbyterian, Southern Baptist and Anglican.

Liberal Protestantism continues its sad, tragically avoidable death march to oblivion.  Generic Evangelicalism, to which much is owed for vitality in American Christianity, lacks roots in a deep tradition and maybe reaching its own culdesac.  For better or worse, denominationalism is declining across the board.

But groups like Seedbed and the Gospel Coalition signify that rich Protestant traditions, rooted in orthodoxy and centuries of church tradition, persevere and thrive.  They need to grow and offer even more leadership for Protestant and Evangelical Christianity.  

Seedbed has an especially tall task, since the historic bearer of American Wesleyanism was United Methodism, which has been doctrinally AWOL since before anybody can recall, even as evangelical Methodists within it have persisted.  The globalization of United Methodism through ongoing African church growth offers Seedbed additional opportunity for leadership and service.

Exciting days and years are ahead for the spiritual descendants of John Wesley, said to number 70 million globally.  The current challenges to Christian faith in America, including aggressive secularism and spiritual latitudinarianism, are trials for which Wesleyans should be uniquely equipped.