Methodist Theology, Blood, and the Atonement

These are difficult days for United Methodists. Despite glowing optimism flowing from the 2024 General Conference, astute observers are concerned.

We have lost some of our best churches and members through disaffiliation. The non-American membership, now more numerous than the American membership, is presently debating its own forms of disaffiliation and that is not always going well. There is a question whether the idea of regionalization can work, or, for that matter, will even be approved by various conferences.

Denominational budgets are being cut. Parachurch ministries like the Gideons are cutting official ties with United Methodists. The Social Principles statement passed by the General Conference  has moved the church away from traditional morality, especially in regard to matters such as the family and human sexuality.

Still, some of us who identify as evangelical or traditionalist and still hold our connection as UM continue to hold out hope. While there are various reasons for this, this article lifts up one reason: our United Methodist hymnal. It is worth noting that among all the reasons given why numbers of churches and persons no longer wish to be identified as United Methodist, almost none (I don’t know of any) mention the hymnal as a reason for disenchantment.

I start this article by going back a number of years.

“Wesley wasn’t always right on the atonement.” These are the words as I recall them spoken during the discussion in the Language and Theology Subcommittee of the Hymnal Revision Committee for the new UM Hymnal approved in 1988. The words were spoken by a well-known theologian of one of our UM seminaries during a discussion on Wesley’s hymn, “Arise, My Soul, Arise” (1964 hymnal, #122). 

Arise, my soul, arise; Shake off thy guilty fears; The bleeding sacrifice, In my behalf appears
Before the throne my Surety stands, …my name is written on his hands.

Five bleeding wounds He bears, Received on Calvary; They pour effectual prayers; They strongly plead for me: “Forgive him, O forgive,” they cry, “Nor let the ransomed sinner die.” (vs. 3)

My God is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear;  He owns me for Hs child, I can no longer fear;
With confidence I now draw nigh,…and “Father, Abba, Father,” cry. (vs. 5).

The hymn had been a major part of the Charles Wesley corpus of Methodist hymns from the very earliest days of Methodism. It was popular in earliest Methodist hymnody, especially on the American frontier where a version was set to a fugue arrangement. It would seem a hymn too popular and too embedded in our Methodist ethos to be challenged. Even the most liberal of all the American Methodist hymnals, the 1935 hymnal, carried this (and other atonement hymns) in an unaltered form. These hymns not only reflected but affirmed and proclaimed the Wesleyan message, as set forth in the Articles of Religion and the sermons. This included the idea not only that we are reconciled to God, but that God is reconciled to us.

….whereof is one Christ, very God and very Man, who truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile his Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for the actual sins of men.  (Article II, Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church).

Despite the professor’s arguments the hymn was approved for use in the new hymnal. Then, mysteriously, several months later, the hymn was not listed among the approved hymns. I contacted Carlton Young, the editor of the hymnal, to inquire. He assured me the hymn had not been dropped. But, for mysterious reasons, and without mention in any of the committee’s minutes, when the final report was made to the General Conference, the hymn was not included and does not appear in the 1988 hymnal.

Despite the victories that progressive UMs claim in the development of the present UM Church, the truth is that, as we have been told many times, United Methodism is, at least on paper, committed to classical Methodist doctrine. Regardless of how radical the present Social Principles statements are, we have not changed our doctrinal standards. This includes all of Wesley’s writings and sermons on the atonement. It also includes all of Charles Wesley’s atonement hymns, such as: “And Can It Be that I should gain an interest in the Savior’s blood?” Or, “We who in Christ believe that he for us hath died, we all his unknown peace receive and feel his blood applied” (#372). Or, “O Love divine, what hast thou done! The immortal God hath died for me! The Father’s co-eternal Son bore all my sins upon the tree.” (#287)

The biggest challenge to Wesleyan theology and the Methodist message today is not just Calvinism but theology compromised by progressive thinking. When I was in conversation with editors of Curriculum Resources as a part of Good News some years ago, I remember the thought expressed that “Wesley was too ‘Augustinian’ and was simply wrong on his beliefs on Original Sin and the Atonement.”

What then do we do with the fact that in our present UM hymnal there are 80 some different hymns that refer to the blood of Jesus? When I was a part of the Hymnal Revision Committee I kept track of how “blood” was doing. For whatever it is worth, there is more “blood” in our 1988 hymnal than in any of the other official hymnals of the 20^th century. Instead of excising the blood hymns we even added a few more such as “What can wash away my sin? Nothing but that blood of Jesus.” (#362) Thanks to Wesley and the American (mostly Methodist-inspired) gospel hymns, blood in our hymnal flows, is poured, is sprinkled and is found in fountains, rivers and streams. The hymnal even carries the hymn that was #1 in most of the early camp meeting hymnals (“There is a Fountain Filled with Blood”).

Methodists, along with Baptists, were responsible for redefining the word “evangelical” in the American context. As reflected in older dictionaries, evangelical” is a form of Protestantism which emphasized the sinfulness of humanity, the atonement of Christ, and salvation by faith, as practiced by Methodists and Baptists. (See Thorndike Barnhart Comprehensive Desk Dictionary, 1958). We should not blame Baptists but Methodists (at least originally) if there was an overemphasis on blood in American religion. Thus there are more Methodist writers of hymns in the older Southern Baptist hymnals than there are Baptists writers (there are also more Anglican hymn writers than Methodists in the UM hymnals.) All of this is related to Methodism’s introduction of camp meetings, the altar call, and gospel hymns.

This helps to explain why progressive theology is so obsessed with its rejection of evangelical theology. Some time ago a group of United Church of Christ women clergy put out a list of The Ten Worst Things About Christianity. Number one was “Washed in the blood of the lamb” theology, evident in many old hymns. Number two was Surrogate theologies of atonement in which someone (Jesus) must die for me to be right.

Some time ago the Christian Century featured an article by Daniel M. Bell, Jr., entitled “God Does Not Require Blood.” As suggested by the title the author is opposed not only to the substitutionary theory of the atonement, but any doctrine of the atonement that has blood as a key element. Reacting to the most crass and extreme expressions of suffering and substitution, Bell links the blood stuff with violence, war, spousal abuse, primitive views of justice, and all sorts of bad things. The author grants that the easiest way to circumvent the argument for any sort of blood atonement is simply to reject the cross but there are problems with that, not the least being that we would have to do something with all those crosses on our churches.

Bell, and almost all of the progressive theologians, posit a rather convoluted theory of atonement which ends up with another variation of the Moral Influence Theory in which Jesus is “faithfulness to the embodiment of God’s faithfulness to the divine desire for communion” (whatever that means).

Bell and his kind would do well to check out some Scriptures: “For the preaching of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing but to those who are called…Christ the power of God” (I Cor. 1:18). “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures” (I Cor. 15:1). “Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” (Romans 3:24, 25)

In most of the Methodist world, which by this time includes the wider family of charismatics and Pentecostals and many non-denominational churches, this still holds true. It is not so certain for present-day United Methodists, for which the idea of the blood atonement as the core of our doctrinal heritage seems, if not outright rejected, to be deemphasized. I refer not to ordinary UMs but primarily to some persons in the episcopacy, in boards and agencies and in seminaries. As we pass through the trauma of change because of such things as the leftward lurch of our newly approved Social Principles statement, let us be clear where we stand not just on Wesleyan theology, but on classic Christianity.

One more item to add. While many churches now identify as part of the Global Methodist Church but still use the UM hymnal (possibly with “United” blotted out), other Global Methodists are adopting the brand-new hymnal, “Our Great Redeemer’s Praise,” published by Seedbed and specifically designed for Wesleyan-related groups. The last UM church I served, now ConneXion Church in Kokomo, IN, is even now switching to this new hymnal. Overall, this is an excellent hymnal. One of the first things I did when I received my copy was to check on whether one of my favorite hymns was included, “Cleansing Wave,” by the great Phoebe Palmer, which has about as much blood as anyone can handle. It is included (#488) in the Seedbed book, as well as many other holiness hymns.

However, as it relates to the present article, I must admit to some sorrow when I checked “Arise, My Soul Arise” (#535), which with the change of one word I believe has compromised and illustrates the matter under discussion. Instead of Wesley’s traditional wording which climaxes the message of the hymn in v. 5, “My God is reconciled,” the Great Redeemer’s verse reads, “to God I’m reconciled.”

We still need conversation about these things.

Riley B. Case is a retired United Methodist clergy member of the Indiana Conference.