Joy Moore

Joy Moore on Wesleyan Future

on June 24, 2020

Joy Moore, preaching professor and soon to be academic dean at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, has long been a strong voice for orthodoxy and evangelical renewal in United Methodism. She’s the new president of the Wesleyan Theological Society, which includes theologians from across Methodist denominations.

In my interview with Moore, she discusses the very promising rise of a new generation of scholars committed to orthodoxy with Wesleyan distinctives, especially within United Methodism. She also explains how Methodism, with its spiritually egalitarian ethos and attention both to personal and societal redemption, might be uniquely equipped for today’s protests and social upheavals.

Moore is a formidable voice for Wesleyan Christianity. I hope you enjoy our exchange.

The IRD · Interview with Joy Moore
  1. Comment by John on June 25, 2020 at 3:47 pm

    Dr. Moore might want to consider the reasons for groups departing from the ME Church North over the issue of slavery, to wit, the Free Methodist Church which in 1860 left the ME Church North in pursuit of a full-throated position against slavery as condoned by the mother church. If the ME Church North had been as non-racist as the speaker suggests, how many groups would not exist today?

  2. Comment by Tamara Lewis on June 26, 2020 at 6:21 pm

    Halcyon days of total racial integration in Methodist history, as inferred by this discussion, are not apparent based on primary sources. For example, Francis Asbury indicates in his letters that early Methodist American meetings in the eighteenth century were largely segregated. This is clear based on his invitation to Harry Hosier to preach to black audiences while Asbury preached to white (although Hosier’s great preaching often attracted whites to stay and listen). Also, the African Methodist Church formed in 1793 (incorporated in 1816), four years after the establishment of the Methodist Episcopal church in 1789 due to blatant and oppressive racism. Prominent AME historian Dennis Dickerson, black Presbyterian historian Gayraud Wilmore, and even black (now) Eastern Orthodox historian Albert Raboteau, among others, have extensively chronicled, using primary sources, the systemic racism and forced subjugation that black Christians faced from the earliest days of American history from the white church, including the Methodists.

  3. Comment by Cindy on June 27, 2020 at 10:57 am

    Amen. Thank you, Dr. Moore. Your brief presentation here gives me better understanding of where we are, and where we need to go to become truly “the body of believers.” Thanks again.

  4. Comment by Rebecca on June 27, 2020 at 4:13 pm

    I would appreciate it, if one of the people talking about tearing the system down, would come out and say what system or systems they are talking about. The Marxists in the BLM want to get rid of the Constitution, and replace it with communistic totalitarianism. Is that what Joy Moore means?

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