Doug Wilson, the highly successful Idaho Calvinist entrepreneur who has founded a college, a denomination (with a new church plant on Capitol Hill in DC), classical Christian schools across America, and a national thought movement, has helped start new conversations. He wants a Christian confessional state that would privilege Christianity and Christians in law. And he thinks women ideally would not have voting rights in civil society (except possibly for female heads of household). He hopes to revive Christendom, as he understands it.
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, a Roman Catholic, recently interviewed Wilson about the finer points of his version of Calvinism and its political implications. It’s a fascinating conversation in which Wilson is articulate, engaging, and clever. When was the last time that Douthat or another major commentator interviewed a Methodist, whose adherents far outnumber Wilson’s, about the details of Wesleyan theology? The answer, of course, is not for decades. The early and mid-century pugilist H.L. Mencken routinely mocked Methodist societal sanctimony. Now nobody talks about us. Why?
(Continue reading the article at Firebrand here.)
Comment by DanW on October 31, 2025 at 11:58 am
“Methodists and Wesleyans are not active participants in America’s meaningful national conversations. ” (Mark Tooley, in his 10/28/25 Firebrand article.)
I thought that was the point of the IRD and Juicy Ecumenism? Also, progressive Methodists, mostly UMC, don’t hesitate to participate in the National conversation, including public protests/demonstrations. I don’t follow most (any) of the UMC or GMC blogs, but folks like Rev. Jeffrey Rickman (PLainSpoken YouTube channel) are having these conversations.
Comment by Gary Bebop on October 31, 2025 at 1:05 pm
Another Wesleyan influencer who is whip smart and writes with sass and a kick is David Watson. He doesn’t dither or maunder about the past. His voice needs to get stronger. (I’m talking oral quality as well as reach.) The Wesleyan-holiness upsurge needs recognizable leaders. I think Watson knows this. He has just ascended to high office at Asbury. But he’s definitely finding his path.
Comment by Wilson R. on October 31, 2025 at 2:33 pm
As a lifelong Methodist born in the 1950s, my experience has been that Methodist churches do a very poor job of educating their parishioners of what Wesleyanism is and why they believe in it. In Sunday School classes, I find a rather shocking lack of understanding of Wesleyan theology and practice. I have heard pastors and district superintendents complain that a topic that never gets mentioned in cabinet meetings with the bishop is Wesleyanism.
So it doesn’t surprise me that there are so few prominent spokespersons for Wesleyanism today. Most Methodists don’t have much comprehension of what Wesley was all about.
Also not surprising that Ross Douthat won’t find a Methodist of any stripe to interview, much less a United Methodist. Douthat’s apparent mission is to be an interlocutor for right-wingers (including the Religious Right)–to make them seem reasonable to the liberal readership of the New York Times. He’s not interested in interviewing Methodists. You will not find him talking to the Episcopal bishop who dared to address Trump and Vance about mercy. But he did do a long and sympathetic interview with the heretical Allie Beth Stuckey, because her twisted theology aligns with his (and her) political positions.
Finally, for someone who knows and reveres Wesleyanism as much as Mark Tooley, I am a bit surprised he left out some important context when he writes, “Wesley’s dynamic theology unloosed forces he did not foresee and perhaps would not have welcomed. Methodism bred an egalitarian perspective that was politically uplifting for society’s lower strata.”
I would argue that Wesleyanism did not so much unloose forces than respond to them. In context, the Wesleyan movement arose during the Industrial Revolution in Britain–a time of more massive social disruption than any since the Black Death 400 years earlier. People were leaving their agricultural lives to work in industrial settings, trading much of their old, relative self-sufficiency for long hours, bleak conditions and poverty wages. Social ills like alcoholism plagued this traumatized society like drugs plague our hollowed-out inner cities and rural communities.
While the main branches of the Anglican Church tended to treat these lower and working classes as something close to untouchables, Wesleyanism affirmed their worth and humanity, and as Tooley notes, it played a leading role in the anti-slavery movement.
John Wesley, like the framers of the U.S. Constitution, did not favor one-person, one-vote democracy. But that should not lead anyone to think that Wesley, looking back today, would regret affirming the value and dignity of every human being, and leading a movement that treated everyone accordingly.