The Connectional Table has launched a new series of video interviews called "Tuesdays at the Table." The videos feature conversations with thought leaders from around the United Methodist connect. New videos premier weekly, and previous videos can be viewed online. The first several videos should be of particular interest to UM & Global readers.
The first episode included an interview by Rev. Kennetha Bigham-Tsai of Dr. David N. Field, Ecumenical Staff Officer for Faith & Order and Theological Dialogue for the Council of Bishops and occasional UM & Global contributor. Dr. Field spoke about mission, theology, and his life experiences in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Switzerland.
The second episode featured occasional UM & Global contributor Rev. Dr. Jacob Dharmaraj interviewing Rev. Dr. Kabamba Kiboko. The two spoke about Bible interpretation, with Rev. Dr. Kiboko drawing on her experiences as a Congolese woman serving a multicultural church in Ohio.
The third episode involved an interview by Rev. Dr. Dharmaraj of Dr. Filipe Maia. Dr. Maia, who was born in Brazil and currently teaches at Boston University, spoke about the role of reason in faith and the process of individually and communally putting faith and reason in dialogue.
Dedicated to fostering conversations about the global nature of The United Methodist Church
Showing posts with label David N. Field. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David N. Field. Show all posts
Friday, October 22, 2021
Monday, May 3, 2021
Recommended Reading: David N. Field on Models of Methodism and the Unity of the Church
David N. Field of the European Methodist e-Academy has published a paper online entitled "Models of Methodism and the Unity of the Church: A European Reflection on the Conflict in The United Methodist Church over LGBTQ+ Inclusion and Affirmation." In the paper, Field outlines six different understandings of church within United Methodism: as a US American denomination, as a European free church, as a connection of holiness societies, as a confessional church, as a generously orthodox church, and as a movement of liberation. While Field's main concern in outlining these six views is to explore their implications for understanding current conflicts over LGBTQ+ inclusion, along the way, he highlights the implications of these views of the church for ecumenism and other aspects of theology. Field acknowledges that his work needs to be supplemented by more attention to African and Filipino understandings of the church. Still, and despite its length (18 pages), Field's piece is well worth reading for a better understanding of the complexities of the current UMC.
Friday, May 29, 2020
David N. Field: Connecting Across Europe – the Case of the Methodist e-Academy
Today's piece is written by Dr. David N. Field. Dr. Field is the Academic Coordinator of the Methodist e-Academy in Europe.
The advent of the corona virus covid-19 has sparked an intensification of the move toward online theological education that has been slowly growing over the past decade. It is quite possible that in the aftermath the pandemic online education will have established itself as an integral component of theological education and pastoral formation.
It is appropriate at this juncture to look at one model that has been operating for almost 12 years. The European Methodist e-Academy started operating in 2008 as a response to the specific situation of (United) Methodism in Europe.
European Methodist Churches are all minority churches. In most cases the annual conferences are small with limited resources yet in many cases experiencing steady but limited growth. Establishing theological seminaries in every country was not viable, and it was not practicable or desirable for students to attend one of the existing seminaries.
A decision was taken that students would do their initial theological training at a seminary or university in their own country and that this would be supplemented by an online program focused on Methodist studies. Thus, the Methodist e-Academy was established to offer this program.
The program consists of six modules covering Methodist History (Early Methodism and European Methodism), Methodist Theology (Doctrine and Ethics), and Methodist Ecclesiology (Including polity but focused on the mission in contemporary Europe). Students take one module a semester. In the majority of cases, the students are engaged in ministry either prior to or after ordination during this time.
At present each module in made up of eleven lessons which have of three components.
• Printed and online readings.
• Online exercises
• A weekly webinar
From 2020, each lesson will also include at least one videoed lecture. This was successfully introduced to one course in 2019.
Each module is concluded with a residential block seminar of two to three days, and students have to complete a major essay on a topic related to the course.
The e-Academy operates primarily as a network linking together students and lecturers from diverse parts of Europe. The lecturers are either suitably qualified pastors or professors at one of the Methodist seminaries. The only people employed on a regular basis are the coordinator and an administrator – both of whom are employed in a part time capacity. The work of the e-Academy is overseen by a board comprised of representatives of the four UMC episcopal areas, the Methodist Church of Great Britain, and the independent Methodist Churches.
A new development which, it is hoped, will facilitate the expansion and improvement of the program is a partnership with Cliff College in Britain. This partnership includes access to the TheologyX learning management system, which offers numerous technological advances that will enhance our program.
The key pedagogical features that we strive to implement are.
• Learner centred – It seeks to enable students to learn with and from each other.
• Interactive – It requires interaction between the lecturers and students, and amongst the students.
• Praxis oriented – It is designed to facilitate interaction between academic theological content and thinking with the lived experience of ministry.
• Connectional – It brings together students and lecturers from diverse countries to learn together.
• Communal and relational – It is based on the recognition that the learning best takes place in the context of relationships of commitment and trust. A key element of the program is the building of a community of learning. Here, the residential seminars have been of great importance
• Responsibility and commitment – Community involves mutual responsibility. On the one hand, students are responsible for their own learning, but on the other, they responsible to enhance the learning of other students by participating in the interactional dimensions of each lesson.
The program was designed to meet a particular need – to equip students who had been educated at non-Methodist Institutions with a deep understanding of the Methodist tradition so that they could creatively draw on it as they engaged their ministry. It has however had two unforeseen consequences which have become increasingly important particularly in the present context of The United Methodist Church.
1. The development of deep relationships between church leaders from different parts of Europe. This occurred not only in the organised dimensions of the program but also on the initiative of students. They organised, for example, an online fellowship group, congregational visits, and partnerships between congregations in different countries.
2. The facilitation of inter-contextual learning. While students were united by their common membership in a Methodist, in most cases United Methodist, Church they discovered the dynamic variety of contextual differences that lead to very different understandings of the Methodist tradition and its embodiment. Students came from the richest and some of the poorest nations of Europe. Some came from highly secularised societies others from deeply religious societies, though with different dominant religions – Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Islamic. The nations and the churches had lived through the twentieth century on different sides of the Iron Curtain. The e-Academy provided a community in which students could learn from each other’s contexts and experiences
The Methodist e-Academy has not achieved all its goals and has not fully implemented its desired pedagogy. However, its structure as a virtual connection linking students and lecturers across very different countries and contexts has provided the flexibility to address the particular needs of European United Methodism and provides an example of how online learning can be used to provide inter-contextual and connectional theological education with limited resources, which would not have been possible in a traditional institution.
It is appropriate at this juncture to look at one model that has been operating for almost 12 years. The European Methodist e-Academy started operating in 2008 as a response to the specific situation of (United) Methodism in Europe.
European Methodist Churches are all minority churches. In most cases the annual conferences are small with limited resources yet in many cases experiencing steady but limited growth. Establishing theological seminaries in every country was not viable, and it was not practicable or desirable for students to attend one of the existing seminaries.
A decision was taken that students would do their initial theological training at a seminary or university in their own country and that this would be supplemented by an online program focused on Methodist studies. Thus, the Methodist e-Academy was established to offer this program.
The program consists of six modules covering Methodist History (Early Methodism and European Methodism), Methodist Theology (Doctrine and Ethics), and Methodist Ecclesiology (Including polity but focused on the mission in contemporary Europe). Students take one module a semester. In the majority of cases, the students are engaged in ministry either prior to or after ordination during this time.
At present each module in made up of eleven lessons which have of three components.
• Printed and online readings.
• Online exercises
• A weekly webinar
From 2020, each lesson will also include at least one videoed lecture. This was successfully introduced to one course in 2019.
Each module is concluded with a residential block seminar of two to three days, and students have to complete a major essay on a topic related to the course.
The e-Academy operates primarily as a network linking together students and lecturers from diverse parts of Europe. The lecturers are either suitably qualified pastors or professors at one of the Methodist seminaries. The only people employed on a regular basis are the coordinator and an administrator – both of whom are employed in a part time capacity. The work of the e-Academy is overseen by a board comprised of representatives of the four UMC episcopal areas, the Methodist Church of Great Britain, and the independent Methodist Churches.
A new development which, it is hoped, will facilitate the expansion and improvement of the program is a partnership with Cliff College in Britain. This partnership includes access to the TheologyX learning management system, which offers numerous technological advances that will enhance our program.
The key pedagogical features that we strive to implement are.
• Learner centred – It seeks to enable students to learn with and from each other.
• Interactive – It requires interaction between the lecturers and students, and amongst the students.
• Praxis oriented – It is designed to facilitate interaction between academic theological content and thinking with the lived experience of ministry.
• Connectional – It brings together students and lecturers from diverse countries to learn together.
• Communal and relational – It is based on the recognition that the learning best takes place in the context of relationships of commitment and trust. A key element of the program is the building of a community of learning. Here, the residential seminars have been of great importance
• Responsibility and commitment – Community involves mutual responsibility. On the one hand, students are responsible for their own learning, but on the other, they responsible to enhance the learning of other students by participating in the interactional dimensions of each lesson.
The program was designed to meet a particular need – to equip students who had been educated at non-Methodist Institutions with a deep understanding of the Methodist tradition so that they could creatively draw on it as they engaged their ministry. It has however had two unforeseen consequences which have become increasingly important particularly in the present context of The United Methodist Church.
1. The development of deep relationships between church leaders from different parts of Europe. This occurred not only in the organised dimensions of the program but also on the initiative of students. They organised, for example, an online fellowship group, congregational visits, and partnerships between congregations in different countries.
2. The facilitation of inter-contextual learning. While students were united by their common membership in a Methodist, in most cases United Methodist, Church they discovered the dynamic variety of contextual differences that lead to very different understandings of the Methodist tradition and its embodiment. Students came from the richest and some of the poorest nations of Europe. Some came from highly secularised societies others from deeply religious societies, though with different dominant religions – Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Islamic. The nations and the churches had lived through the twentieth century on different sides of the Iron Curtain. The e-Academy provided a community in which students could learn from each other’s contexts and experiences
The Methodist e-Academy has not achieved all its goals and has not fully implemented its desired pedagogy. However, its structure as a virtual connection linking students and lecturers across very different countries and contexts has provided the flexibility to address the particular needs of European United Methodism and provides an example of how online learning can be used to provide inter-contextual and connectional theological education with limited resources, which would not have been possible in a traditional institution.
Monday, May 14, 2018
Recommended Readings: United Methodist Professors of Mission recent publications
Several United Methodist Professors of Mission and other UM & Global contributors have had recent articles published on topics related to mission and the global nature of the church.
Philip D. Wingeier-Rayo published an article entitled "A Wesleyan Theology of Religions: A Re-Reading of John Wesley Through His Encounters with Peoples of Non-Christian Faiths" in Methodist Review. The article is accessible freely online. The abstract reads as follows:
"This article argues that John Wesley’s contact with and understanding of native peoples and non-Christians can be a helpful model for a Wesleyan theology of religions today, when Christians have greater encounters with adherents of Islam and people of other faith traditions. Over the course of his lifetime Wesley grew in his appreciation of indigenous people and members of other religions from an original innocence to natural depraved man to a universal grace of hopeful eschatology for humanity. The early Wesley can be described as naïve and believing in native peoples as “noble savages.” The second stage, or middle Wesley, believed that native peoples and people of other faith traditions fall into the category of “natural man.” Finally, the mature Wesley believed in an eschatological hope for humanity. One can credit Wesley’s maturation process to at least two important factors. One important factor in his growth was the personal experiences with people of a different life experience that created cognitive dissonance for his previous worldview. The other contributing factor to his growth was Wesley’s reading of travel logs, missionary letters and other accounts of the expanding global awareness in 18th century England. Wesley’s sermon “The General Spread of the Gospel” calls for the Holy Spirit to empower Christians to cease to be stumbling blocks and to witness to Muslims and people of other faiths. This requires personal encounters, similar to those that Wesley had with his Jewish parishioners in Savannah. The article closes with an exhortation to those in the Wesleyan tradition to embrace this practice of personal encounters and continual learning, while at the same time maintaining an expectant eschatology of God’s salvific work through the Holy Spirit."
David W. Scott published an article entitled "The Value of Money: Funding Sources and Philanthropic Priorities in Twentieth-Century American Mission" in Religions. The article is accessible freely online. The abstract reads as follows:
"At the turn of the twentieth century, Western missionaries and mission organizations sought to develop financial strategies that would facilitate the further expansion of the Western mission enterprise. Three such strategies emerged: an increasingly sophisticated, corporatized approach to fundraising by mission boards; faith missions that shifted the economic risks associated with fundraising from mission agencies to missionaries; and self-supporting missions that cultivated economic funding available in the mission field. Each of these strategies had different implications for power configurations in the mission enterprise and allowed the values and views of different groups to prevail. The board approach empowered mission executives and large donors. The faith mission approach empowered missionaries and supporters with a conservative theology. The self-supporting mission approach made missionaries arbiters among a variety of competing interests. This economic approach to the study of mission provides new insights into the complex and contested power arrangements involved in Western foreign mission that extend beyond those gained from traditional political and cultural analyses."
David N. Field has published a book entitled Our Purpose Is Love: The Wesleyan Way to Be the Church. While one must buy the book, an excerpt is available through Ministry Matters. The book description reads as follows:
"We live in a time of great division in the world, and too often we find this polarization mirrored in the church. People sitting in the same pew, working in the same office, and living on the same street find themselves at odds with one another politically and theologically on a variety of issues. Conflict seems to reign supreme. As Christians, we know we are supposed to love one another, but even that mandate has come to mean different things to different people. What does it mean to love God and neighbor today—in both the world and the church—and can this be the answer to the conflict that divides and polarizes us?
"In Our Purpose Is Love, author David Field answers this question with a compelling “Yes!” as he challenges us to recognize and reclaim love as the center of our identity and purpose as the church. Field presents a Wesleyan vision of the church as the embodiment of God’s love in the world and explores the implications of this vision for our life together. In this vision, the church is where we become creatures of love, learning to love God and neighbor ever more completely and authentically through the means of God’s grace. As a result, we bear witness to the world by reflecting God’s love more and more perfectly in the way we treat others and order our common life. With a special focus on the importance of unity for the church’s witness, Field invites us to consider the ways in which embodying God’s love can and should influence how we live as individuals and as communities of faith, calling us to reclaim and recommit to love as the center of who we are."
Know of other books or articles by UM & Global contributors that our readers should know about? Send your suggestions to blogmaster David Scott.
Philip D. Wingeier-Rayo published an article entitled "A Wesleyan Theology of Religions: A Re-Reading of John Wesley Through His Encounters with Peoples of Non-Christian Faiths" in Methodist Review. The article is accessible freely online. The abstract reads as follows:
"This article argues that John Wesley’s contact with and understanding of native peoples and non-Christians can be a helpful model for a Wesleyan theology of religions today, when Christians have greater encounters with adherents of Islam and people of other faith traditions. Over the course of his lifetime Wesley grew in his appreciation of indigenous people and members of other religions from an original innocence to natural depraved man to a universal grace of hopeful eschatology for humanity. The early Wesley can be described as naïve and believing in native peoples as “noble savages.” The second stage, or middle Wesley, believed that native peoples and people of other faith traditions fall into the category of “natural man.” Finally, the mature Wesley believed in an eschatological hope for humanity. One can credit Wesley’s maturation process to at least two important factors. One important factor in his growth was the personal experiences with people of a different life experience that created cognitive dissonance for his previous worldview. The other contributing factor to his growth was Wesley’s reading of travel logs, missionary letters and other accounts of the expanding global awareness in 18th century England. Wesley’s sermon “The General Spread of the Gospel” calls for the Holy Spirit to empower Christians to cease to be stumbling blocks and to witness to Muslims and people of other faiths. This requires personal encounters, similar to those that Wesley had with his Jewish parishioners in Savannah. The article closes with an exhortation to those in the Wesleyan tradition to embrace this practice of personal encounters and continual learning, while at the same time maintaining an expectant eschatology of God’s salvific work through the Holy Spirit."
David W. Scott published an article entitled "The Value of Money: Funding Sources and Philanthropic Priorities in Twentieth-Century American Mission" in Religions. The article is accessible freely online. The abstract reads as follows:
"At the turn of the twentieth century, Western missionaries and mission organizations sought to develop financial strategies that would facilitate the further expansion of the Western mission enterprise. Three such strategies emerged: an increasingly sophisticated, corporatized approach to fundraising by mission boards; faith missions that shifted the economic risks associated with fundraising from mission agencies to missionaries; and self-supporting missions that cultivated economic funding available in the mission field. Each of these strategies had different implications for power configurations in the mission enterprise and allowed the values and views of different groups to prevail. The board approach empowered mission executives and large donors. The faith mission approach empowered missionaries and supporters with a conservative theology. The self-supporting mission approach made missionaries arbiters among a variety of competing interests. This economic approach to the study of mission provides new insights into the complex and contested power arrangements involved in Western foreign mission that extend beyond those gained from traditional political and cultural analyses."
David N. Field has published a book entitled Our Purpose Is Love: The Wesleyan Way to Be the Church. While one must buy the book, an excerpt is available through Ministry Matters. The book description reads as follows:
"We live in a time of great division in the world, and too often we find this polarization mirrored in the church. People sitting in the same pew, working in the same office, and living on the same street find themselves at odds with one another politically and theologically on a variety of issues. Conflict seems to reign supreme. As Christians, we know we are supposed to love one another, but even that mandate has come to mean different things to different people. What does it mean to love God and neighbor today—in both the world and the church—and can this be the answer to the conflict that divides and polarizes us?
"In Our Purpose Is Love, author David Field answers this question with a compelling “Yes!” as he challenges us to recognize and reclaim love as the center of our identity and purpose as the church. Field presents a Wesleyan vision of the church as the embodiment of God’s love in the world and explores the implications of this vision for our life together. In this vision, the church is where we become creatures of love, learning to love God and neighbor ever more completely and authentically through the means of God’s grace. As a result, we bear witness to the world by reflecting God’s love more and more perfectly in the way we treat others and order our common life. With a special focus on the importance of unity for the church’s witness, Field invites us to consider the ways in which embodying God’s love can and should influence how we live as individuals and as communities of faith, calling us to reclaim and recommit to love as the center of who we are."
Know of other books or articles by UM & Global contributors that our readers should know about? Send your suggestions to blogmaster David Scott.
Thursday, September 28, 2017
Recommended Reading: David Field on Wesley's Passion and the Renewal of Methodism
Regular UM & Global contributor Dr. David N. Field has recently published a piece on Ministry Matters entitled "Wesley's Passion and the Renewal of Methodism." In it, Field calls for a United Methodist renewal that follows John Wesley's passion in being missional, counter-cultural, sacramental, marginal, transnational, communal and connectional, and catholic. The piece is worth reading in its own right, and pairs well with Peter Bellini's piece in last week's recommended reading.
Thursday, May 4, 2017
David Field: Response to Wonder, Love & Praise, Part 3
This blog post is one in a series containing responses to the denomination's proposed ecclesiology document, "Wonder, Love and Praise." These responses are written by United Methodist scholars and practitioners around the world. This piece is the third of three written by Dr. David N. Field, the Academic Coordinator of the Methodist e-Academy in Europe.
International Connectionalism and the Ecclesia
In this third blog I will look at three themes addressed to varying extent in WLP and argue that when related to each other they have significant impact on the understanding of the church that is absent from WLP. These themes are the international character of the UMC, the terminology of ecclesia, and connectionalism.
WLP briefly discusses the meaning and associations of the word ecclesia and settles on an interpretation of it as community. While it does note the political associations of the term as the gathering of the voting citizens, it does not explore these associations. I would propose that these political associations, along with its use in the Septuagint, are significant. The early Christians did not adopt the normal terms for religious or voluntary associations but a term with social and political connotations. It is also interesting to note how Paul interplays the geographic political location (polis) of the church with its identity as the church of God in the introduction to his letters.
The connotations of these references suggest that ecclesia is not merely to be understood as a general term for community paralleling koinonia but as the transnational messianic/eschatological community of the people God which manifests itself in a particular polis. Ecclesia is a community distinguished by its loyalty to the crucified messiah which stands in tension with the broader civic community of that particular polis. As the church developed and spread, it came into increasing tension with the civic community and its social and political structures for two reasons. Firstly, its loyalty to its crucified Lord relatavized all loyalty to civic authorities, including the emperor. Secondly, its communal order (its polity) undermined the dominant social hierarchies and divisions.
The UMC claims to be a manifestation of this ecclesia in the contemporary context. A particular feature of the way it manifests this ecclesia is its polity of connectionalism. In one sense connectionalism emerged as a series of pragmatic responses to particular issues confronting the early Methodist movement and the churches that emerged from it. The result, however, is a complex network which has horizontal and vertical dimensions. Methodist congregations are linked together across geographical space. There are vertical relationships between congregations and conferences. The superintendency and itinerancy provide another interrelated set of networks. Binding these networks together is a set of interlocking covenant relationships centered on the covenant with God renewed regularly in a covenant renewal service.
The result is a complex network providing mutual support, mutual responsibility, mutual oversight and mutual decision making but at the same time is directed toward equipping local churches for mission. This interlocking network emerged at a time when nation states were beginning to come into being in Europe and later in the Americas. Hence it is of significance that Wesley described the early Methodists as “the people called Methodist”. Methodist together formed a new corporate community – a people in a way similar to the approach of the framers of the US constitution when they began with “We the people…”
Wesley envisaged Methodism as an international network – in his time covering England, Ireland, and America – in his words “Methodists all over the world are one people.” It is not insignificant that he chose a French-speaking, Swiss immigrant John William Fletcher to be his successor. The UMC as an international church is an embodiment of this Wesleyan vision. The significance of this international character is experienced differently by people in different parts of the UMC connection. And for many the denomination is still experienced as very US-centric despite its growing numbers outside of the USA. In Europe, where Methodists are mostly small minority churches, being part of an international church is of particular significance. For some, the international character is a burden and a hindrance to moving in a more “progressive” direction on the issue of LGBTQ inclusion. In the US, where the UMC is a major denomination, the focus tends to be on the US context as is evidenced in WLP.
In my previous blog, I argued that contextuality is of fundamental significance for ecclesiology as different contexts provide for diverse embodiments of the divine love. The UMC in Congo has sought to embody love in the context of wars and continuing factional conflicts in which millions have been killed and wounded; and in which hundreds of thousands of women have been raped. The UMC in Russia and Ukraine is working out what koinonia means in response to civil war in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea by Russia. European Methodists are gaining new understandings of what it means to embody love as they engage in ministry to the thousands of refugees and other migrants that are arriving in Europe.
These diverse embodiments are invaluable to the church in other contexts modeling alternatives which challenge, compliment and enrich their own embodiment and understanding of the ecclesia. The international character of the UMC provides a unique opportunity for such mutual learning. However, the present structures of the church remain too US-centric and do not allow for sufficient contextual embodiments of the ecclesia; going into the future, it is imperative that the UMC develops new structures which enable both greater contextuality and more fruitful opportunities for mutual learning and growth.
The international connectional character of the UMC has perhaps more important theological significance in that it provides a remarkable embodiment of the transnational character of the ecclesia of God. In an age of globalization, resurgent nationalism and mass migration the significance of this transnational character needs to be emphasized and expounded.
Three points can be noted for our purposes. Firstly, while a certain love for and pride in one’s own nation is legitimate, to affirm the transnational character of the ecclesia is to submit that legitimate patriotism to critique and in particular circumstances to reject it altogether. Paul’s comments in Philippians that the church’s citizenship is in heaven are worth noting not in an other-worldly sense but in the affirmation that the church is the ecclesia of the ascended Lord who was rejected and crucified by the imperial authorities. When loyalty to the nation and its interests or the pursuit of its greatness compromises in any way our prior loyalty to the crucified Lord and the values and purposes revealed in the cross, they must be rejected. It is always the ecclesia of the crucified Christ and its mission first and the interests of our own nation subordinate to it. Why is it that so many Christians experience the presence of migrants as a threat to their national identity rather than as an opportunity to embody God’s love to them?
Secondly, our relational bonds with our fellow Christians ought to be stronger than our bonds with our fellow citizens. As Paul puts it in Colossians, in Christ there is no longer Greek, Jew, barbarian, or Scythian. We are fellow Christians and siblings in Christ with people from diverse nations, cultures and societies. Together we represent the ecclesia of God in the world.
Thirdly, the church always exists as alien community within particular societies and nations. It is never at home – it is an assembly of foreigners – of immigrants who do not belong. When the church begins to be too comfortable in a given culture or society it is in danger of betraying its true identity as the manifestation of the ecclesia of the crucified and resurrected Lord.
The UMC as an international church is in a unique position to embody the transnational character of the ecclesia – both in its explicit ecclesiology and in its denominational praxis. This can only be achieved when the international character is not viewed as a burden and a problem but as a unique opportunity to discover new ways of embodying what it means to be the church. It will also require a radical questioning of the continuing US-centricity in the structures and mindset of many United Methodists and a critical engagement with the colonialist and paternalist legacy of the past.
International Connectionalism and the Ecclesia
In this third blog I will look at three themes addressed to varying extent in WLP and argue that when related to each other they have significant impact on the understanding of the church that is absent from WLP. These themes are the international character of the UMC, the terminology of ecclesia, and connectionalism.
WLP briefly discusses the meaning and associations of the word ecclesia and settles on an interpretation of it as community. While it does note the political associations of the term as the gathering of the voting citizens, it does not explore these associations. I would propose that these political associations, along with its use in the Septuagint, are significant. The early Christians did not adopt the normal terms for religious or voluntary associations but a term with social and political connotations. It is also interesting to note how Paul interplays the geographic political location (polis) of the church with its identity as the church of God in the introduction to his letters.
The connotations of these references suggest that ecclesia is not merely to be understood as a general term for community paralleling koinonia but as the transnational messianic/eschatological community of the people God which manifests itself in a particular polis. Ecclesia is a community distinguished by its loyalty to the crucified messiah which stands in tension with the broader civic community of that particular polis. As the church developed and spread, it came into increasing tension with the civic community and its social and political structures for two reasons. Firstly, its loyalty to its crucified Lord relatavized all loyalty to civic authorities, including the emperor. Secondly, its communal order (its polity) undermined the dominant social hierarchies and divisions.
The UMC claims to be a manifestation of this ecclesia in the contemporary context. A particular feature of the way it manifests this ecclesia is its polity of connectionalism. In one sense connectionalism emerged as a series of pragmatic responses to particular issues confronting the early Methodist movement and the churches that emerged from it. The result, however, is a complex network which has horizontal and vertical dimensions. Methodist congregations are linked together across geographical space. There are vertical relationships between congregations and conferences. The superintendency and itinerancy provide another interrelated set of networks. Binding these networks together is a set of interlocking covenant relationships centered on the covenant with God renewed regularly in a covenant renewal service.
The result is a complex network providing mutual support, mutual responsibility, mutual oversight and mutual decision making but at the same time is directed toward equipping local churches for mission. This interlocking network emerged at a time when nation states were beginning to come into being in Europe and later in the Americas. Hence it is of significance that Wesley described the early Methodists as “the people called Methodist”. Methodist together formed a new corporate community – a people in a way similar to the approach of the framers of the US constitution when they began with “We the people…”
Wesley envisaged Methodism as an international network – in his time covering England, Ireland, and America – in his words “Methodists all over the world are one people.” It is not insignificant that he chose a French-speaking, Swiss immigrant John William Fletcher to be his successor. The UMC as an international church is an embodiment of this Wesleyan vision. The significance of this international character is experienced differently by people in different parts of the UMC connection. And for many the denomination is still experienced as very US-centric despite its growing numbers outside of the USA. In Europe, where Methodists are mostly small minority churches, being part of an international church is of particular significance. For some, the international character is a burden and a hindrance to moving in a more “progressive” direction on the issue of LGBTQ inclusion. In the US, where the UMC is a major denomination, the focus tends to be on the US context as is evidenced in WLP.
In my previous blog, I argued that contextuality is of fundamental significance for ecclesiology as different contexts provide for diverse embodiments of the divine love. The UMC in Congo has sought to embody love in the context of wars and continuing factional conflicts in which millions have been killed and wounded; and in which hundreds of thousands of women have been raped. The UMC in Russia and Ukraine is working out what koinonia means in response to civil war in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea by Russia. European Methodists are gaining new understandings of what it means to embody love as they engage in ministry to the thousands of refugees and other migrants that are arriving in Europe.
These diverse embodiments are invaluable to the church in other contexts modeling alternatives which challenge, compliment and enrich their own embodiment and understanding of the ecclesia. The international character of the UMC provides a unique opportunity for such mutual learning. However, the present structures of the church remain too US-centric and do not allow for sufficient contextual embodiments of the ecclesia; going into the future, it is imperative that the UMC develops new structures which enable both greater contextuality and more fruitful opportunities for mutual learning and growth.
The international connectional character of the UMC has perhaps more important theological significance in that it provides a remarkable embodiment of the transnational character of the ecclesia of God. In an age of globalization, resurgent nationalism and mass migration the significance of this transnational character needs to be emphasized and expounded.
Three points can be noted for our purposes. Firstly, while a certain love for and pride in one’s own nation is legitimate, to affirm the transnational character of the ecclesia is to submit that legitimate patriotism to critique and in particular circumstances to reject it altogether. Paul’s comments in Philippians that the church’s citizenship is in heaven are worth noting not in an other-worldly sense but in the affirmation that the church is the ecclesia of the ascended Lord who was rejected and crucified by the imperial authorities. When loyalty to the nation and its interests or the pursuit of its greatness compromises in any way our prior loyalty to the crucified Lord and the values and purposes revealed in the cross, they must be rejected. It is always the ecclesia of the crucified Christ and its mission first and the interests of our own nation subordinate to it. Why is it that so many Christians experience the presence of migrants as a threat to their national identity rather than as an opportunity to embody God’s love to them?
Secondly, our relational bonds with our fellow Christians ought to be stronger than our bonds with our fellow citizens. As Paul puts it in Colossians, in Christ there is no longer Greek, Jew, barbarian, or Scythian. We are fellow Christians and siblings in Christ with people from diverse nations, cultures and societies. Together we represent the ecclesia of God in the world.
Thirdly, the church always exists as alien community within particular societies and nations. It is never at home – it is an assembly of foreigners – of immigrants who do not belong. When the church begins to be too comfortable in a given culture or society it is in danger of betraying its true identity as the manifestation of the ecclesia of the crucified and resurrected Lord.
The UMC as an international church is in a unique position to embody the transnational character of the ecclesia – both in its explicit ecclesiology and in its denominational praxis. This can only be achieved when the international character is not viewed as a burden and a problem but as a unique opportunity to discover new ways of embodying what it means to be the church. It will also require a radical questioning of the continuing US-centricity in the structures and mindset of many United Methodists and a critical engagement with the colonialist and paternalist legacy of the past.
Thursday, April 27, 2017
David Field: Response to Wonder, Love & Praise, Part 2
This blog post is one in a series containing responses to the denomination's proposed ecclesiology document, "Wonder, Love and Praise." These responses are written by United Methodist scholars and practitioners around the world. This piece is the second of three written by Dr. David N. Field, the Academic Coordinator of the Methodist e-Academy in Europe.
Contextuality and the nature of Koinonia
Wonder, Love and Praise (WLP) places the reflections on the nature of the church within the context of the UMC’s mission today and its particular history. There are two striking aspects of these contextual reflections. The first is that, while the context is described, it plays little if any role in the theological reflection. The result is that the main theological reflection is an a-contextual and universalised presentation. The second feature is the overwhelming focus on the US context and history; this will be the subject of my final blog.
In my first blog I argued that one of the gifts that the UMC brings to the ecumenical table is the particularities of its own history. I also argued that an ecclesial body is a manifestation of the universal church to the extent that it embodies the divine love or, to use another term from WLP, manifests koinonia. Embodiments of the divine love are always historical and contextual. That is, they are always actualized in relation to particular socio-historical and religio-cultural dynamics which enhance, enable or hinder the embodiment of God’s love.
There is thus an important sense in which we only discover what the shape and implications of koinonia and thus the nature of the church as it takes form or does not take form in particular contexts. As the church engages new and different contexts the nature of the koinonia unfolds. Hence, the particular contextual history of a given church is significant as it offers an actualisation of koinonia that is a gift to the church ecumenical that enables a fuller understanding of the nature of the church. There is also a negative dimension in that the failures of a particular church are also instructive. To take a biblical example, the struggle recorded in the New Testament about the conditions for the inclusion of gentiles within the church gave rise to a dramatically new understanding of what it meant to be the people of God – as for example worked out in the letters to the Ephesians and the Galatians. Over its history, the church has encountered new challenges requiring new answers, thus developing new dimensions of what it means to be the people of God.
Two such challenges that have faced the predecessor denominations of the UMC, which are referred to in WLP, and which still have an impact on the UMC today are the confrontation with slavery and racism and the struggle for the ordination of women. The long and painful history of Methodism’s compromised relationship with racism and slavery in America is particularly instructive. Without recounting this history in detail, we can see how the embodiment of koinonia, the complex set of reciprocal relationships between people, was deeply compromised for over a hundred years by racial segregation and discrimination within and without the church. African Americans were treated as less than true siblings in Christ by white Methodists. Their presence was not a source of delight nor were they allowed to be part of a community characterised by genuine reciprocity. This was given structural form in the formation of the various historically African American Methodist Churches and the Central Jurisdiction.
The abolition of the Central Jurisdiction, the increasing levels of racial integration within the UMC and then statements in the constitution of the church that emphasise the inclusiveness of the church and racial justice are pointers to a new enlarged and deepened understanding of koinonia. What some leaders and members of the Methodist Churches regarded as legitimate expressions of fellowship amongst Christians within the church a hundred years ago is now recognised to be a fundamental denial of the nature of the church. Even when racism is not perfectly overcome, its presence, at least in theory, stands under condemnation. This history and its theological outworking needs to be an integral aspect of a document that seeks to describe the identity of the church from a UMC perspective.
The second and equally important contextual dimension is the struggle for full clergy rights for women. It is important to see this not merely as an issue related to the offices of the church; it is an issue that affects our understanding of the nature of koinonia and thus of the identity of the church. WLP does argue that the UMC has an “irrevocable commitment to the full participation of women in ministerial leadership.” This irrevocable commitment is the consequence of a long struggle whose significance is not to be underestimated even if it was not fully recognised at the time. The recognition that women may not be excluded from equal ministry is an unfolding of the meaning of koinonia as it is expressed in Paul’s well known declaration that in Christ there is “no male and female”. It is irrevocable, for to go back on it would fundamentally change the understanding of koinonia and thus of the identity of the church.
This of course raises complex issues in relationships with churches that do not ordain women. These issues need to be honestly acknowledged in the recognition that this is about our understanding of the identity of the church and not just about the nature of ministry. It must also be recognised and confessed that despite the official affirmation of the ordination of women there remains within parts of the church resistance to this.
These are of course not the only issues that the UMC and its predecessor denominations have encountered and continue to encounter in their struggle to embody the divine love in the world. What is important is that these two struggles are not merely issues of church polity, nor are they purely ethical struggles; they are at their core theological struggles about the nature of koinonia and thus of the character and identity of the church.
This raises significant ecumenical questions. While it would be unthinkable for the UMC to engage in ecumenical relationships with a church which enshrined racial qualifications for membership or office bearing, it continues to be in dialogue with churches which have gender qualifications for ordination. Perhaps this is inevitable as the vast majority of churches today reject racism but significant traditions still affirm male-only ordination.
This relationship between our understanding of koinonia and context needs further exploration and theological analysis, not the least in relation to the continuing debate over the nature, conditions and extent of the inclusion of LGBTQ people within the UMC. This debate also raises significant issues about our understanding of koinonia, not only as it relates to LGBTQ people, but also as to what it means to embody God’s love in a community which includes people with contradictory views and practices in relation to LGBTQ inclusion. The way we deal with theological diversity goes to the core of our understanding of the church.
As ecclesiology is the critical examination of what it means to concretely embody God’s love in the world, it is inherently contextual. Given our historical and present struggles to embody the divine love, the critical ecclesiological question and the invaluable contribution that we as the UMC can make to the ecumenical church is a critical theological reflection on what we have experienced and learnt.
Contextuality and the nature of Koinonia
Wonder, Love and Praise (WLP) places the reflections on the nature of the church within the context of the UMC’s mission today and its particular history. There are two striking aspects of these contextual reflections. The first is that, while the context is described, it plays little if any role in the theological reflection. The result is that the main theological reflection is an a-contextual and universalised presentation. The second feature is the overwhelming focus on the US context and history; this will be the subject of my final blog.
In my first blog I argued that one of the gifts that the UMC brings to the ecumenical table is the particularities of its own history. I also argued that an ecclesial body is a manifestation of the universal church to the extent that it embodies the divine love or, to use another term from WLP, manifests koinonia. Embodiments of the divine love are always historical and contextual. That is, they are always actualized in relation to particular socio-historical and religio-cultural dynamics which enhance, enable or hinder the embodiment of God’s love.
There is thus an important sense in which we only discover what the shape and implications of koinonia and thus the nature of the church as it takes form or does not take form in particular contexts. As the church engages new and different contexts the nature of the koinonia unfolds. Hence, the particular contextual history of a given church is significant as it offers an actualisation of koinonia that is a gift to the church ecumenical that enables a fuller understanding of the nature of the church. There is also a negative dimension in that the failures of a particular church are also instructive. To take a biblical example, the struggle recorded in the New Testament about the conditions for the inclusion of gentiles within the church gave rise to a dramatically new understanding of what it meant to be the people of God – as for example worked out in the letters to the Ephesians and the Galatians. Over its history, the church has encountered new challenges requiring new answers, thus developing new dimensions of what it means to be the people of God.
Two such challenges that have faced the predecessor denominations of the UMC, which are referred to in WLP, and which still have an impact on the UMC today are the confrontation with slavery and racism and the struggle for the ordination of women. The long and painful history of Methodism’s compromised relationship with racism and slavery in America is particularly instructive. Without recounting this history in detail, we can see how the embodiment of koinonia, the complex set of reciprocal relationships between people, was deeply compromised for over a hundred years by racial segregation and discrimination within and without the church. African Americans were treated as less than true siblings in Christ by white Methodists. Their presence was not a source of delight nor were they allowed to be part of a community characterised by genuine reciprocity. This was given structural form in the formation of the various historically African American Methodist Churches and the Central Jurisdiction.
The abolition of the Central Jurisdiction, the increasing levels of racial integration within the UMC and then statements in the constitution of the church that emphasise the inclusiveness of the church and racial justice are pointers to a new enlarged and deepened understanding of koinonia. What some leaders and members of the Methodist Churches regarded as legitimate expressions of fellowship amongst Christians within the church a hundred years ago is now recognised to be a fundamental denial of the nature of the church. Even when racism is not perfectly overcome, its presence, at least in theory, stands under condemnation. This history and its theological outworking needs to be an integral aspect of a document that seeks to describe the identity of the church from a UMC perspective.
The second and equally important contextual dimension is the struggle for full clergy rights for women. It is important to see this not merely as an issue related to the offices of the church; it is an issue that affects our understanding of the nature of koinonia and thus of the identity of the church. WLP does argue that the UMC has an “irrevocable commitment to the full participation of women in ministerial leadership.” This irrevocable commitment is the consequence of a long struggle whose significance is not to be underestimated even if it was not fully recognised at the time. The recognition that women may not be excluded from equal ministry is an unfolding of the meaning of koinonia as it is expressed in Paul’s well known declaration that in Christ there is “no male and female”. It is irrevocable, for to go back on it would fundamentally change the understanding of koinonia and thus of the identity of the church.
This of course raises complex issues in relationships with churches that do not ordain women. These issues need to be honestly acknowledged in the recognition that this is about our understanding of the identity of the church and not just about the nature of ministry. It must also be recognised and confessed that despite the official affirmation of the ordination of women there remains within parts of the church resistance to this.
These are of course not the only issues that the UMC and its predecessor denominations have encountered and continue to encounter in their struggle to embody the divine love in the world. What is important is that these two struggles are not merely issues of church polity, nor are they purely ethical struggles; they are at their core theological struggles about the nature of koinonia and thus of the character and identity of the church.
This raises significant ecumenical questions. While it would be unthinkable for the UMC to engage in ecumenical relationships with a church which enshrined racial qualifications for membership or office bearing, it continues to be in dialogue with churches which have gender qualifications for ordination. Perhaps this is inevitable as the vast majority of churches today reject racism but significant traditions still affirm male-only ordination.
This relationship between our understanding of koinonia and context needs further exploration and theological analysis, not the least in relation to the continuing debate over the nature, conditions and extent of the inclusion of LGBTQ people within the UMC. This debate also raises significant issues about our understanding of koinonia, not only as it relates to LGBTQ people, but also as to what it means to embody God’s love in a community which includes people with contradictory views and practices in relation to LGBTQ inclusion. The way we deal with theological diversity goes to the core of our understanding of the church.
As ecclesiology is the critical examination of what it means to concretely embody God’s love in the world, it is inherently contextual. Given our historical and present struggles to embody the divine love, the critical ecclesiological question and the invaluable contribution that we as the UMC can make to the ecumenical church is a critical theological reflection on what we have experienced and learnt.
Thursday, April 20, 2017
David Field: Response to Wonder, Love & Praise, Part 1
This blog post is one in a series containing responses to the denomination's proposed ecclesiology document, "Wonder, Love and Praise." These responses are written by United Methodist scholars and practitioners around the world. This piece is the first of three written by Dr. David N. Field, the Academic Coordinator of the Methodist e-Academy in Europe.
The publication of the initial version of a document on UMC Ecclesiology is to be welcomed, as is the call for responses to it. This is particularly given the present stress that the UMC is undergoing. If the church is to find a way forward as a substantially united body this must be undergirded by well thought out self understanding of its identity as an manifestation of the one body of Christ. The document contains much that is to be affirmed; while I will mention some of this in what I write, I will focus my discussion on areas that appear to me to require critical engagement or are deficient.
A significant feature of Wonder, Love, and Praise (WLP) is that it locates itself within the context of the ecumenical discussion on the identity of the Church by engaging in a dialogue with the WCC document The Church: Towards a Common Vision. This ecumenical engagement is to be affirmed, but a more fruitful approach would have been to adopt Pope John Paul II’s concept of ecumenicism as an exchange gifts. The diverse churches bring their heritages to the ecumenical table to be shared with others. Such an approach recognizes that through the particularities of a church’s history it has come to actualize distinctive facets of what it means to be the Church of Jesus Christ. These particularities are crucial not only for the self identity of the church but also for the ecumenical church.
Hence, I would propose that a document on UMC ecclesiology needs to locate its discussion in the particularities of its heritage and then to bring these into a dialogue with the ecumenical community. So then the question becomes what are the defining characteristics of a UMC understanding of the church that it can bring to the ecumenical table. From my perspective, there are three distinctives that should shape a UMC understanding of the church. They are its Wesleyan theological heritage, its particular history and its international connectional character. All three of these are present to some degree in WLP but do not shape the document in such a way as to articulate the particular gift that the UMC offers to other churches.
In this first blog I will focus on the Wesleyan heritage. WLP clearly does not ignore the Wesleyan heritage. The three “distinctive convictions” – “the saving love of God is meant for all people,” the saving love of God is transformative,” and the saving love of God creates community” are deeply rooted in the Wesleyan tradition. It includes a number of lengthy quotes from Wesley with regard to prevenient grace and disagreements in the church. However, what is missing is the location of these convictions and quotations in the context of Wesley’s understanding of the church and of God’s mission in the world. There is no interaction with Wesley’s sermons “On the Church” and “On Schism,” with his Notes upon the New Testament, nor with his various discussions of the Church of England Article on the Church. The latter is particularly problematic given the discussion of this article in WLP in its UMC form. In what follows I will briefly outline aspects of Wesley’s ecclesiology and note how they are a corrective and enrichment of WLP.
The roots of Wesley’s ecclesiology lie in his understanding of God “whose nature and name is love.” God loves all human beings, who were created to image God’s character by loving God and loving their fellow human beings. Despite human sin, God continues to love all human beings and desires to transform them by love, renewing the divine image within them so that their characters are dominated by love for God and our fellow human beings. God is now active in the world to overcome sin and evil and to transform human beings and human societies so that love reigns throughout the earth. The center of God’s mission work is the transformation of human persons, who then transform the societies in which they live. God unites these transformed persons into the church which is to be the embodiment of the divine love, both in its own life and in its mission in the world. The universal church manifests itself as concrete communities of love in the real world. This participation in, embodiment of and reflection of the divine love distinguishes the church from the broader society, constituting it as a counter cultural community and as a sign and anticipation of God’s final redemption of all things. To participate in this embodiment of God’s love is to “anticipate heaven below.” The three “distinctive convictions” fit within this broader understanding of God’s mission in the world.
That the saving love of God is transformative lies at the center of Wesley’s ecclesiology. The goal of this transformation is creation of a people characterized by a love for God and neighbor. This love for one’s neighbor is expressed in a radical, self-sacrificial commitment to the well-being of friends, strangers, enemies and even those one considers to be the enemies of God. In a particular way, Christians are to delight in their siblings in Christ. The emphasis that God’s love is transformative is only genuinely Wesleyan when it is complemented by the emphasis that this transformation enables and requires a human response. This response is expressed in participating in the full range of the means of grace, a concept which is not to be reduced to the sacraments and is strikingly absent in WLP. Important aspects of the means of grace are “works of piety” and “works of mercy”.
WLP, in explaining the effect of grace, describes how this transformation involves “holiness of heart” and “holiness of conversation” and argues that, while there is a close relationship between the two, in different contexts Methodist have emphasized one or the other. While this is no doubt an adequate description of Methodist praxis, it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of Wesley’s theology. Wesley’s emphasis in his well-known discussions of social holiness and social religion is that these are not just closely related to each other but that they are inseparably integrated with each other – this is the revolutionary genius of Wesley’s theology. The transformation of the heart is primary but a transformed heart will manifest itself in a life of love for others expressed in diverse concrete actions that promote their comprehensive well-being. If there is no “holiness of conversation,” there is no “holiness of heart.” In turn, the life of love for others is a means of grace that leads to the growing transformation of the heart. New contexts and new struggles provide new opportunities for us to grow in holiness of heart and life. Hence, in Wesleyan perspective the mission of the church is always the integrated and holistic embodiment of love.
The emphasis on the transformative love of God has as its consequence that for Wesley the visibility of the church is not constituted by its outward structures but by its embodiment of love in the world. An ecclesial structure that does not embody love is not a visible manifestation of the church regardless of its doctrinal affirmations, sacramental celebrations or orders of ministry. (This emphasis is lacking in WLP.) Hence, Wesley down played the significance of the traditional Protestant marks of the church. It was for this reason that Wesley emphasized discipline in the early Methodist societies – they were open to all who desired salvation but continued membership depended upon lives that demonstrated a commitment to loving God and neighbors described in the General Rules. Wesley was quick to exclude from membership those who failed this standard. His poem “Primitive Christianity” expresses it thus:
That the “saving love of God creates community” is a consequence of the emphasis on love. People transformed by the love of God love each other with a reciprocal love characterized in delight in each other and a mutual concern for the comprehensive well being of each other. WLP rightly roots this community in our common union with God in Christ by the Spirit. This emphasis is not prominent in John Wesley’s writings but is more present in Charles Wesley’s hymns. John Wesley’s practice is a better expression of the community created by God than his theology which has deeply individualistic aspects. WLP points us in an important direction where we need to go beyond Wesley. The network of early Methodist societies with their various small groups gave structural form to a community that embodied the love of God through mutual responsibility and oversight designed to facilitate growth in love.
One of Wesley’s significant contributions was his insistence that the community created by God’s love embodied in mutual reciprocal relationships between Christians is of greater significance than theological differences – it is this which he describes as a catholic love. The challenge then is how churches embody this love in the context of contradictory theological positions within the church and between churches? This is dealt with in WLP but what is important is to insist that the embodiment of a catholic love within a church and the imperative of seeking greater unity between Christians are essential dimensions of a Wesleyan understanding of the church and thus an essential dimension of Methodist identity.
The affirmation that the saving love of God is meant for all people does not do full justice to the universal dynamic of Wesley’s theology. Wesley not only affirmed that God loved all humanity but also emphasized that God in grace is present and at work in all human beings, drawing them to Godself – hence, it would be better to rephrase this as God’s saving love is present in all people. WLP does refer to this in its discussion of God’s work in people outside of the visible church. However, this is a more fundamental affirmation that is the basis both for the mission of the church and its relationship with people of other faiths and no faith. Wesley’s views here are carefully nuanced, recognizing a diversity of situations in which people find themselves, and the affirmation of God’s gracious work in all does not become universalism. It remains the basis for evangelism and mission in the knowledge that this is a participation in God’s mission in the world.
More could be said, but in conclusion let me affirm the core of a Wesleyan ecclesiology is that the church is to be the visible embodiment of God’s love in the world – when it fails to do this it ceases to be a church.
The publication of the initial version of a document on UMC Ecclesiology is to be welcomed, as is the call for responses to it. This is particularly given the present stress that the UMC is undergoing. If the church is to find a way forward as a substantially united body this must be undergirded by well thought out self understanding of its identity as an manifestation of the one body of Christ. The document contains much that is to be affirmed; while I will mention some of this in what I write, I will focus my discussion on areas that appear to me to require critical engagement or are deficient.
A significant feature of Wonder, Love, and Praise (WLP) is that it locates itself within the context of the ecumenical discussion on the identity of the Church by engaging in a dialogue with the WCC document The Church: Towards a Common Vision. This ecumenical engagement is to be affirmed, but a more fruitful approach would have been to adopt Pope John Paul II’s concept of ecumenicism as an exchange gifts. The diverse churches bring their heritages to the ecumenical table to be shared with others. Such an approach recognizes that through the particularities of a church’s history it has come to actualize distinctive facets of what it means to be the Church of Jesus Christ. These particularities are crucial not only for the self identity of the church but also for the ecumenical church.
Hence, I would propose that a document on UMC ecclesiology needs to locate its discussion in the particularities of its heritage and then to bring these into a dialogue with the ecumenical community. So then the question becomes what are the defining characteristics of a UMC understanding of the church that it can bring to the ecumenical table. From my perspective, there are three distinctives that should shape a UMC understanding of the church. They are its Wesleyan theological heritage, its particular history and its international connectional character. All three of these are present to some degree in WLP but do not shape the document in such a way as to articulate the particular gift that the UMC offers to other churches.
In this first blog I will focus on the Wesleyan heritage. WLP clearly does not ignore the Wesleyan heritage. The three “distinctive convictions” – “the saving love of God is meant for all people,” the saving love of God is transformative,” and the saving love of God creates community” are deeply rooted in the Wesleyan tradition. It includes a number of lengthy quotes from Wesley with regard to prevenient grace and disagreements in the church. However, what is missing is the location of these convictions and quotations in the context of Wesley’s understanding of the church and of God’s mission in the world. There is no interaction with Wesley’s sermons “On the Church” and “On Schism,” with his Notes upon the New Testament, nor with his various discussions of the Church of England Article on the Church. The latter is particularly problematic given the discussion of this article in WLP in its UMC form. In what follows I will briefly outline aspects of Wesley’s ecclesiology and note how they are a corrective and enrichment of WLP.
The roots of Wesley’s ecclesiology lie in his understanding of God “whose nature and name is love.” God loves all human beings, who were created to image God’s character by loving God and loving their fellow human beings. Despite human sin, God continues to love all human beings and desires to transform them by love, renewing the divine image within them so that their characters are dominated by love for God and our fellow human beings. God is now active in the world to overcome sin and evil and to transform human beings and human societies so that love reigns throughout the earth. The center of God’s mission work is the transformation of human persons, who then transform the societies in which they live. God unites these transformed persons into the church which is to be the embodiment of the divine love, both in its own life and in its mission in the world. The universal church manifests itself as concrete communities of love in the real world. This participation in, embodiment of and reflection of the divine love distinguishes the church from the broader society, constituting it as a counter cultural community and as a sign and anticipation of God’s final redemption of all things. To participate in this embodiment of God’s love is to “anticipate heaven below.” The three “distinctive convictions” fit within this broader understanding of God’s mission in the world.
That the saving love of God is transformative lies at the center of Wesley’s ecclesiology. The goal of this transformation is creation of a people characterized by a love for God and neighbor. This love for one’s neighbor is expressed in a radical, self-sacrificial commitment to the well-being of friends, strangers, enemies and even those one considers to be the enemies of God. In a particular way, Christians are to delight in their siblings in Christ. The emphasis that God’s love is transformative is only genuinely Wesleyan when it is complemented by the emphasis that this transformation enables and requires a human response. This response is expressed in participating in the full range of the means of grace, a concept which is not to be reduced to the sacraments and is strikingly absent in WLP. Important aspects of the means of grace are “works of piety” and “works of mercy”.
WLP, in explaining the effect of grace, describes how this transformation involves “holiness of heart” and “holiness of conversation” and argues that, while there is a close relationship between the two, in different contexts Methodist have emphasized one or the other. While this is no doubt an adequate description of Methodist praxis, it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of Wesley’s theology. Wesley’s emphasis in his well-known discussions of social holiness and social religion is that these are not just closely related to each other but that they are inseparably integrated with each other – this is the revolutionary genius of Wesley’s theology. The transformation of the heart is primary but a transformed heart will manifest itself in a life of love for others expressed in diverse concrete actions that promote their comprehensive well-being. If there is no “holiness of conversation,” there is no “holiness of heart.” In turn, the life of love for others is a means of grace that leads to the growing transformation of the heart. New contexts and new struggles provide new opportunities for us to grow in holiness of heart and life. Hence, in Wesleyan perspective the mission of the church is always the integrated and holistic embodiment of love.
The emphasis on the transformative love of God has as its consequence that for Wesley the visibility of the church is not constituted by its outward structures but by its embodiment of love in the world. An ecclesial structure that does not embody love is not a visible manifestation of the church regardless of its doctrinal affirmations, sacramental celebrations or orders of ministry. (This emphasis is lacking in WLP.) Hence, Wesley down played the significance of the traditional Protestant marks of the church. It was for this reason that Wesley emphasized discipline in the early Methodist societies – they were open to all who desired salvation but continued membership depended upon lives that demonstrated a commitment to loving God and neighbors described in the General Rules. Wesley was quick to exclude from membership those who failed this standard. His poem “Primitive Christianity” expresses it thus:
Ye different sects, who all declare
‘Lo! Here is Christ!’ or ‘Christ is there!’
Your stronger proofs divinely give,
And show me where the Christians live.
Your claim, alas! Ye cannot prove;
Ye want the genuine mark of love:
Thou only, Lord, thine own canst show,
For sure thou hast a church below
That the “saving love of God creates community” is a consequence of the emphasis on love. People transformed by the love of God love each other with a reciprocal love characterized in delight in each other and a mutual concern for the comprehensive well being of each other. WLP rightly roots this community in our common union with God in Christ by the Spirit. This emphasis is not prominent in John Wesley’s writings but is more present in Charles Wesley’s hymns. John Wesley’s practice is a better expression of the community created by God than his theology which has deeply individualistic aspects. WLP points us in an important direction where we need to go beyond Wesley. The network of early Methodist societies with their various small groups gave structural form to a community that embodied the love of God through mutual responsibility and oversight designed to facilitate growth in love.
One of Wesley’s significant contributions was his insistence that the community created by God’s love embodied in mutual reciprocal relationships between Christians is of greater significance than theological differences – it is this which he describes as a catholic love. The challenge then is how churches embody this love in the context of contradictory theological positions within the church and between churches? This is dealt with in WLP but what is important is to insist that the embodiment of a catholic love within a church and the imperative of seeking greater unity between Christians are essential dimensions of a Wesleyan understanding of the church and thus an essential dimension of Methodist identity.
The affirmation that the saving love of God is meant for all people does not do full justice to the universal dynamic of Wesley’s theology. Wesley not only affirmed that God loved all humanity but also emphasized that God in grace is present and at work in all human beings, drawing them to Godself – hence, it would be better to rephrase this as God’s saving love is present in all people. WLP does refer to this in its discussion of God’s work in people outside of the visible church. However, this is a more fundamental affirmation that is the basis both for the mission of the church and its relationship with people of other faiths and no faith. Wesley’s views here are carefully nuanced, recognizing a diversity of situations in which people find themselves, and the affirmation of God’s gracious work in all does not become universalism. It remains the basis for evangelism and mission in the knowledge that this is a participation in God’s mission in the world.
More could be said, but in conclusion let me affirm the core of a Wesleyan ecclesiology is that the church is to be the visible embodiment of God’s love in the world – when it fails to do this it ceases to be a church.
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
Recommended readings on European migration crisis
One of the biggest international news stories of the past week has been the developing crisis of Europe's response to an influx of mostly Syrian refugees fleeing war and devastation in their home country. This story has been slowly developing over the past several years but with new influxes of migrants, the recent deaths of a number of migrants, and a variety of responses by European governments and leaders, the pattern of migration has intensified and produced renewed calls for appropriate European responses.
To help faithful United Methodists understand this issue, UM & Global offers these recommended readings:
A recent UMNS news story about United Methodist responses to the refugee crisis
UMC.org's topic page on Immigration, including excerpts from our Social Principles on immigration
A webpage of Book of Resolutions language about migration
The UMC in Germany's recent statement on refugees and asylum
UM & Global posts by contributors David N. Field and Michael Nausner about migration, especially in the European context
All UM & Global posts on the topics of migration and immigration
To help faithful United Methodists understand this issue, UM & Global offers these recommended readings:
A recent UMNS news story about United Methodist responses to the refugee crisis
UMC.org's topic page on Immigration, including excerpts from our Social Principles on immigration
A webpage of Book of Resolutions language about migration
The UMC in Germany's recent statement on refugees and asylum
UM & Global posts by contributors David N. Field and Michael Nausner about migration, especially in the European context
All UM & Global posts on the topics of migration and immigration
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
David N. Field: Encountering the Migratory God
Today's post is by regular contributor Dr. David N. Field. Dr. Field is the Academic Coordinator of the Methodist e-Academy in Europe.
In what experts are now claiming is the largest movement of people since World War 2 over 188 000 refugees have arrived in Europe so far this year. The influx of migrants has placed a significant challenge on the resources of countries through which they are passing as well as their destination countries. At an event discussing migration at the UMC’s Switzerland, France and North Africa Annual Conference, Ivan Abrahams, the General Secretary of the World Methodist Council, argued that mass migration is a Kairos for Churches in the Twenty First Century – a moment of challenge and opportunity to discover again what it means to be the people of God. This is particularly acute for European churches.
Abrahams challenged Methodist churches to become “churches of the stranger”. This has begun to happen in many Methodist Churches across Europe. The Italian Methodist Church supports refugees as part of Italian Federation of Protestant Churches’ project Mediterranean Hope. The conference of the British Methodist Church passed a motion calling on churches to offer sanctuary to refugees and calling on the British government to continue providing financial assistance for refugees, to adopt a more generous and compassionate approach to them, and to accept an increased number of refugees. The arrival of migrants in Germany is inspiring a new sense of mission and social engagement in many Methodist congregations. The small Methodist Churches in Serbia and Macedonia are providing for the needs of migrants passing through their countries.
This engagement with migrants is particularly significant when seen in the perspective of John Wesley’s understanding of “entertaining strangers” as a “work of mercy”. Works of mercy were for Wesley a means of grace – a means through which we grow in the transforming knowledge of God. Hence this Kairos offers the opportunity to discover again what it means to be the people of God as we come to know God in a new way.
Migration is a significant component of the great revelatory narratives of the Bible. God calls Abraham and Sarah to leave their homeland and migrate across the Near East and later appears to them as a nomadic stranger to reaffirm the promise of a son. After dining with Abraham and Sarah the divine company then leaves to go to Sodom where it is threatened with gang rape. Later God hears the cries of an oppressed and exploited migrant community in Egypt and accompanies them on their journey to a new land. During their wanderings the Israelites construct the archetypal sanctuary – a tent that can be packed up and moved when God movers on. The era of David and Solomon was associated with the building of a fixed sanctuary and the identification of God with one place – Jerusalem. Yet David is portrayed as the decedent of the Moabite migrant Ruth and he becomes a refugee amongst the Philistines. The forced migration of the Exile shattered the identification of God with Israel’s national interest and gave rise to new understandings of God. Ezekiel dramatically portrays its significance in his vision of God enthroned on surreal chariot who later leaves the temple to going into exile with the people. Much of the Old Testament reached its final shape or was written in the shadow of the Exile.
In the New Testament Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus mentions four women, two Canaanites, one Moabite and one who was the wife of a Hittite. Matthew describes Jesus as recapitulating Israel’s experience of being migrants in Egypt. Jesus grows up to become a wondering homeless preacher whose life culminates in his being rejected by the religio-political leadership, handed over to the foreign rulers, and crucified outside the city, thus symbolically excluded from his people. For the Romans, crucifixion was the ultimate act of rejection and degradation, and for the Jews, it was a sign of God’s rejection. The resurrection is the declaration that this excluded and degraded one is the ultimate revelation of God in history. In the language of John’s gospel the life of Jesus is the journey of the Son/Word of God from the presence of the Father into the distant country where he sets up his tent amongst us. The incarnation is thus the redemptive migration of God into the world.
The biblical portraits of the migratory God are not to be interpreted in an exclusivist or totalizing manner restricting God’s migration to past narratives and confining God within traditional interpretations of these narratives. Israel’s experience as migrants became the motivation for laws providing for the wellbeing of migrants. Deuteronomy 10:18 (CEB) declared that the Lord “loves immigrants, giving them food and clothing.” Amos declared that the Exodus was not a unique event for God had been present in the migrations of the Philistines and the Arameans. In the parable of the sheep and the goats the nations’ rejection of strangers is a rejection of the divine judge. Hence the biblical narratives are paradigms through which we can interpret where God is present and what God is doing in our contemporary contexts. God is still on the move in the midst of suffering migrants, accompanying them on their journey, entering into their suffering, rejection and exclusion, identifying Godself with them. To be the people of the migratory God is to accompany God into the midst of migrating people to allow our ideas of God and God’s purposes to be challenged, deepened and enriched through the encounter with these suffering, rejected and excluded “strangers”.
In what experts are now claiming is the largest movement of people since World War 2 over 188 000 refugees have arrived in Europe so far this year. The influx of migrants has placed a significant challenge on the resources of countries through which they are passing as well as their destination countries. At an event discussing migration at the UMC’s Switzerland, France and North Africa Annual Conference, Ivan Abrahams, the General Secretary of the World Methodist Council, argued that mass migration is a Kairos for Churches in the Twenty First Century – a moment of challenge and opportunity to discover again what it means to be the people of God. This is particularly acute for European churches.
Abrahams challenged Methodist churches to become “churches of the stranger”. This has begun to happen in many Methodist Churches across Europe. The Italian Methodist Church supports refugees as part of Italian Federation of Protestant Churches’ project Mediterranean Hope. The conference of the British Methodist Church passed a motion calling on churches to offer sanctuary to refugees and calling on the British government to continue providing financial assistance for refugees, to adopt a more generous and compassionate approach to them, and to accept an increased number of refugees. The arrival of migrants in Germany is inspiring a new sense of mission and social engagement in many Methodist congregations. The small Methodist Churches in Serbia and Macedonia are providing for the needs of migrants passing through their countries.
This engagement with migrants is particularly significant when seen in the perspective of John Wesley’s understanding of “entertaining strangers” as a “work of mercy”. Works of mercy were for Wesley a means of grace – a means through which we grow in the transforming knowledge of God. Hence this Kairos offers the opportunity to discover again what it means to be the people of God as we come to know God in a new way.
Migration is a significant component of the great revelatory narratives of the Bible. God calls Abraham and Sarah to leave their homeland and migrate across the Near East and later appears to them as a nomadic stranger to reaffirm the promise of a son. After dining with Abraham and Sarah the divine company then leaves to go to Sodom where it is threatened with gang rape. Later God hears the cries of an oppressed and exploited migrant community in Egypt and accompanies them on their journey to a new land. During their wanderings the Israelites construct the archetypal sanctuary – a tent that can be packed up and moved when God movers on. The era of David and Solomon was associated with the building of a fixed sanctuary and the identification of God with one place – Jerusalem. Yet David is portrayed as the decedent of the Moabite migrant Ruth and he becomes a refugee amongst the Philistines. The forced migration of the Exile shattered the identification of God with Israel’s national interest and gave rise to new understandings of God. Ezekiel dramatically portrays its significance in his vision of God enthroned on surreal chariot who later leaves the temple to going into exile with the people. Much of the Old Testament reached its final shape or was written in the shadow of the Exile.
In the New Testament Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus mentions four women, two Canaanites, one Moabite and one who was the wife of a Hittite. Matthew describes Jesus as recapitulating Israel’s experience of being migrants in Egypt. Jesus grows up to become a wondering homeless preacher whose life culminates in his being rejected by the religio-political leadership, handed over to the foreign rulers, and crucified outside the city, thus symbolically excluded from his people. For the Romans, crucifixion was the ultimate act of rejection and degradation, and for the Jews, it was a sign of God’s rejection. The resurrection is the declaration that this excluded and degraded one is the ultimate revelation of God in history. In the language of John’s gospel the life of Jesus is the journey of the Son/Word of God from the presence of the Father into the distant country where he sets up his tent amongst us. The incarnation is thus the redemptive migration of God into the world.
The biblical portraits of the migratory God are not to be interpreted in an exclusivist or totalizing manner restricting God’s migration to past narratives and confining God within traditional interpretations of these narratives. Israel’s experience as migrants became the motivation for laws providing for the wellbeing of migrants. Deuteronomy 10:18 (CEB) declared that the Lord “loves immigrants, giving them food and clothing.” Amos declared that the Exodus was not a unique event for God had been present in the migrations of the Philistines and the Arameans. In the parable of the sheep and the goats the nations’ rejection of strangers is a rejection of the divine judge. Hence the biblical narratives are paradigms through which we can interpret where God is present and what God is doing in our contemporary contexts. God is still on the move in the midst of suffering migrants, accompanying them on their journey, entering into their suffering, rejection and exclusion, identifying Godself with them. To be the people of the migratory God is to accompany God into the midst of migrating people to allow our ideas of God and God’s purposes to be challenged, deepened and enriched through the encounter with these suffering, rejected and excluded “strangers”.
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
David N. Field: The world is coming to our parish
Today's post is by regular contributor Dr. David N. Field. Dr. Field is the Academic Coordinator of the Methodist e-Academy in Europe.
I am a migrant and the descendant of migrants - a South African living in Europe. The majority of my ancestors left Europe to make a new life on the Southern tip of Africa; they fled wars, political uncertainty, poverty, and persecution for their religion. A few were shipwrecked off the coast of the Cape. At least one was fleeing from the law. Another was brought as a slave.
Yet until recently this migrant identity has not been part of my theological reflection. Being involved in planning and teaching a course dealing with the church and migration stimulated me to begin to reflect on the theological challenge posed by the movement of people across the world as an integral and pervasive feature of globalization. The recent sinking of a ship drowning over 800 refugees in the Mediterranean, the outbreak of xenophobic violence in South Africa, and reports of refugee boats being turned away from Malaysia and Indonesia have sharpened this challenge for me.
To rephrase Wesley’s famous quote from a European perspective: “The world is coming to our parish.” What does this mean for the church? In a recent Blog Michael Nausner discussed some aspects of this challenge. I plan to continue the discussion in a few blogs reflecting theologically on different aspects of this challenge.
The presence of “the world in our parish” provides an often ignored but profoundly radical challenge to the way we think about what it means to be the church. It is radical because it confronts us with a long forgotten understanding of the identity of the church that is ironically hidden in the word “parish”. In contemporary English parish refers to a small bounded local area. The related word “parochial” refers to being focused on a local area to the exclusion of the broader world.
The irony is that the word parish comes from the Greek word parokia which means a stranger or a sojourner. It was a word used by the early church to describe itself (see I Peter 2:11) as communities of foreigners who were never fully at home in the societies in which they lived. They were strangers because they owed an ultimate loyalty to the One who was rejected by the religious and political establishment and then tortured and executed as an enemy of the empire.
The presence of the world in our parish is a call to remind us that our primary identity and loyalty can never be defined by citizenship of a particular nation state. The church can never be “at home” in any country or socio-political system, for we are citizens of the dominion of the Crucified One. The church is always to be a restless community of foreigners looking for and embodying in a partial way the coming dominion of the Jesus. It is from this identity that we should address the ethical challenge posed by migrants, refugees and asylum seekers (a topic for a later blog).
The presence of the world in our parish reminds us that the community of the Crucified transcends national and geographic. Significant numbers of the migrants coming to Europe and North America are Christians – many are Methodists; in fact, many are United Methodists. To be a Christian, to be a Methodist, to be a United Methodist, is to be part of an international community of communities. We are part of the “catholic” church, in the words of the Apostles creed, or to use a more contemporary word, “ecumenical” church; that is, the church that is present across the whole inhabited world.
The presence is a summons to break out of a “parochial” mindset (in its contemporary English meaning) and discovers our spiritual siblings in other countries and continents, people who live in such situations of need that they engage in long, potentially deadly journeys in search of a new life. Many of us are ignorant of the lives of these fellow members of the church – these strangers who come and those strangers who die on the way.
It is a particular challenge to the UMC as a church that affirms its identity as an international or even global church. To be an international or global church is not merely about participating in mission trips, nor about sending finances and resources to people in need, nor about the logistic and theological complications of having people from other countries at General Conference; it is about the challenge to recognize these people as our spiritual siblings, fellow members of the body of Christ whose lives, sufferings and joys ought to be part of our primary concern. The question is how can we embody this in the structures of the UMC, in the lives of our local congregations, and in the programs of our General Boards, agencies and other institutions, not as an extra concern, but as integral to our identity?
I am a migrant and the descendant of migrants - a South African living in Europe. The majority of my ancestors left Europe to make a new life on the Southern tip of Africa; they fled wars, political uncertainty, poverty, and persecution for their religion. A few were shipwrecked off the coast of the Cape. At least one was fleeing from the law. Another was brought as a slave.
Yet until recently this migrant identity has not been part of my theological reflection. Being involved in planning and teaching a course dealing with the church and migration stimulated me to begin to reflect on the theological challenge posed by the movement of people across the world as an integral and pervasive feature of globalization. The recent sinking of a ship drowning over 800 refugees in the Mediterranean, the outbreak of xenophobic violence in South Africa, and reports of refugee boats being turned away from Malaysia and Indonesia have sharpened this challenge for me.
To rephrase Wesley’s famous quote from a European perspective: “The world is coming to our parish.” What does this mean for the church? In a recent Blog Michael Nausner discussed some aspects of this challenge. I plan to continue the discussion in a few blogs reflecting theologically on different aspects of this challenge.
The presence of “the world in our parish” provides an often ignored but profoundly radical challenge to the way we think about what it means to be the church. It is radical because it confronts us with a long forgotten understanding of the identity of the church that is ironically hidden in the word “parish”. In contemporary English parish refers to a small bounded local area. The related word “parochial” refers to being focused on a local area to the exclusion of the broader world.
The irony is that the word parish comes from the Greek word parokia which means a stranger or a sojourner. It was a word used by the early church to describe itself (see I Peter 2:11) as communities of foreigners who were never fully at home in the societies in which they lived. They were strangers because they owed an ultimate loyalty to the One who was rejected by the religious and political establishment and then tortured and executed as an enemy of the empire.
The presence of the world in our parish is a call to remind us that our primary identity and loyalty can never be defined by citizenship of a particular nation state. The church can never be “at home” in any country or socio-political system, for we are citizens of the dominion of the Crucified One. The church is always to be a restless community of foreigners looking for and embodying in a partial way the coming dominion of the Jesus. It is from this identity that we should address the ethical challenge posed by migrants, refugees and asylum seekers (a topic for a later blog).
The presence of the world in our parish reminds us that the community of the Crucified transcends national and geographic. Significant numbers of the migrants coming to Europe and North America are Christians – many are Methodists; in fact, many are United Methodists. To be a Christian, to be a Methodist, to be a United Methodist, is to be part of an international community of communities. We are part of the “catholic” church, in the words of the Apostles creed, or to use a more contemporary word, “ecumenical” church; that is, the church that is present across the whole inhabited world.
The presence is a summons to break out of a “parochial” mindset (in its contemporary English meaning) and discovers our spiritual siblings in other countries and continents, people who live in such situations of need that they engage in long, potentially deadly journeys in search of a new life. Many of us are ignorant of the lives of these fellow members of the church – these strangers who come and those strangers who die on the way.
It is a particular challenge to the UMC as a church that affirms its identity as an international or even global church. To be an international or global church is not merely about participating in mission trips, nor about sending finances and resources to people in need, nor about the logistic and theological complications of having people from other countries at General Conference; it is about the challenge to recognize these people as our spiritual siblings, fellow members of the body of Christ whose lives, sufferings and joys ought to be part of our primary concern. The question is how can we embody this in the structures of the UMC, in the lives of our local congregations, and in the programs of our General Boards, agencies and other institutions, not as an extra concern, but as integral to our identity?
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
David Field: Methodist Identity and Ecumenical Commitment - Reflections from a European Context
Today's post is by regular contributor Dr. David N. Field. Dr. Field is the Academic Coordinator of the Methodist e-Academy in Europe.
European Methodists face particular opportunities and challenges; they are minority churches, often small minorities, within contexts dominated by other confessional traditions. The interaction between Methodist Churches and these traditions varies from country to country but the asymmetric relationship raises fundamental issues about Methodist identity and mission. These are intensified in the broader society where Methodism is not only not known but placed in the amorphous category “free churches,” which are perceived be to be fundamentalist and sect like.
In this context Methodists must ask: What does it mean to be a Methodist? Why is it important to be a Methodist? Does Methodism have particular mission in the contemporary world? The answer to these questions can contribute to international discussions about Methodist identity.
A further challenging dimension of this context is the pervasive secularization that is characteristic of the majority European countries. Church membership is rapidly declining, the influence of Christianity on culture and society is rapidly shrinking, and for increasing numbers of people Christianity is irrelevant to their daily life. It can no longer be presupposed that people have a working knowledge of the Christian faith and what is known is often regarded as an irrelevant relic of only historical interest. People live contentedly without God and have no sense of this being a loss. The danger of this situation is that churches fall into the trap of preoccupation with self-preservation rather than taking up the challenge of articulating the gospel in word and life in a way that addresses secularized people.
Methodism’s minority status pressurizes Methodists to justify their existence in relation to major churches, yet in the face of pervasive secularism such concerns seem irrelevant to the larger task of articulating the relevance of Christianity. Is an emphasis on fostering a Methodist identity a waste of time and resources that could be better spent on ecumenical co-operation in mission? Does the particular identity of the Methodist tradition have any continuing relevance? Is an emphasis on Methodist identity an exercise in self-preservation that is bound to fail in the long run?
These questions demand responses not the least from those who are preparing people for the ordination. A creative response to this challenge needs to re-frame the question of the Methodist identity from a different perspective. The starting point is not our differences from, nor our commonalities with, other churches. The starting point must be the challenge of mission in the context of pervasive secularization. Hence the question becomes: “What are the particular gifts that Methodists bring form our heritage that contribute to equipping all Christians to articulate the gospel in this context?” The question of identity thus becomes a significant contribution to ecumenical commitment and mission.
Historically a central dimension of Methodist self-understanding has been the calling to practice and proclaim “holiness”. However, in a pervasively secular context “holiness” not only lacks resonance but appears bizarre, esoteric and alienating. In the ecumenical context locating holiness as “our” distinguishing characteristic appears arrogant. Yet paradoxically, I propose that it is precisely a recovery and reconceptualization of holiness as central to Methodist identity that offers a potential way forward. This is not the mere reiteration of historical theological affirmations about sanctification as doctrinal distinctive; rather, it is a critical retrieval of the concept from the Wesleyan heritage in order to creatively reconceive and rearticulate it for the present.
Borrowing ideas from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is it possible to develop a “non-religious” interpretation of holiness for a “world come of age” that is a pervasively secular society? For Bonhoeffer, a central aspect of a “non religious” interpretation of theological concepts is that the gospel embodied in praxis has priority over theological formulation. This resonates with the emphasis in Wesley’s writing on Methodist identity that the distinguishing mark of Methodism is not a doctrine, not even a doctrine of holiness, but transformed character and lifestyle.
In Wesley’s understanding persons are transformed by encountering the love of God in Christ that liberates and empowers them to love God and their fellow humans. This transformation affects both inner attitudes and motivations and outward behavior. There is a dynamic relationship between outward behavior and inner attitudes – inner transformation leads to outward transformation and active engagement on behalf of others leads to inner transformation. This dynamic relationship suggests that holiness can be conceptualized as love embodied in praxis.
Wesley often described the outward dimension by the triad of justice, mercy and truth. This triad was particularly interpreted in terms of the relationships with those he described as “the outcasts of men”. Hence in a “non-religious” interpretation, outward holiness is the embodied practice of justice, compassion and integrity on behalf of and in solidarity with the marginalized, the victims and the vulnerable. This embodied practice arises out of and leads to inner transformation by the Spirit of God.
It is this which should be the key identity marker of Methodism. Our particular theological formulations only have significance to the extent that they undergird and interpret this embodied practice. They have no value independent of this.
The understanding of holiness as love embodied in praxis also opens a new approach to ecumenical (and inner Methodist) relationships. In Wesley’s thought, holiness is only possible in the context of interpersonal interaction; as embodied love it only exists as it is concretely expressed in the diversity, conflicts, and complexity of human relationships. It is through this expression that inner attitudes are transformed.
Analogously Methodist churches only embody holiness in dynamic relationships with other churches, not because we agree with each other or we share common practices, but because we disagree from each other and have contradictory practices. It is only as we live with each other and engage in mission together in our diversity and disagreements that we embody love for each other. Holiness as Methodism’s gift to ecumenical relationships is not primarily a theological affirmation but the embodied praxis of love. In this way we manifest our particular identity.
European Methodists face particular opportunities and challenges; they are minority churches, often small minorities, within contexts dominated by other confessional traditions. The interaction between Methodist Churches and these traditions varies from country to country but the asymmetric relationship raises fundamental issues about Methodist identity and mission. These are intensified in the broader society where Methodism is not only not known but placed in the amorphous category “free churches,” which are perceived be to be fundamentalist and sect like.
In this context Methodists must ask: What does it mean to be a Methodist? Why is it important to be a Methodist? Does Methodism have particular mission in the contemporary world? The answer to these questions can contribute to international discussions about Methodist identity.
A further challenging dimension of this context is the pervasive secularization that is characteristic of the majority European countries. Church membership is rapidly declining, the influence of Christianity on culture and society is rapidly shrinking, and for increasing numbers of people Christianity is irrelevant to their daily life. It can no longer be presupposed that people have a working knowledge of the Christian faith and what is known is often regarded as an irrelevant relic of only historical interest. People live contentedly without God and have no sense of this being a loss. The danger of this situation is that churches fall into the trap of preoccupation with self-preservation rather than taking up the challenge of articulating the gospel in word and life in a way that addresses secularized people.
Methodism’s minority status pressurizes Methodists to justify their existence in relation to major churches, yet in the face of pervasive secularism such concerns seem irrelevant to the larger task of articulating the relevance of Christianity. Is an emphasis on fostering a Methodist identity a waste of time and resources that could be better spent on ecumenical co-operation in mission? Does the particular identity of the Methodist tradition have any continuing relevance? Is an emphasis on Methodist identity an exercise in self-preservation that is bound to fail in the long run?
These questions demand responses not the least from those who are preparing people for the ordination. A creative response to this challenge needs to re-frame the question of the Methodist identity from a different perspective. The starting point is not our differences from, nor our commonalities with, other churches. The starting point must be the challenge of mission in the context of pervasive secularization. Hence the question becomes: “What are the particular gifts that Methodists bring form our heritage that contribute to equipping all Christians to articulate the gospel in this context?” The question of identity thus becomes a significant contribution to ecumenical commitment and mission.
Historically a central dimension of Methodist self-understanding has been the calling to practice and proclaim “holiness”. However, in a pervasively secular context “holiness” not only lacks resonance but appears bizarre, esoteric and alienating. In the ecumenical context locating holiness as “our” distinguishing characteristic appears arrogant. Yet paradoxically, I propose that it is precisely a recovery and reconceptualization of holiness as central to Methodist identity that offers a potential way forward. This is not the mere reiteration of historical theological affirmations about sanctification as doctrinal distinctive; rather, it is a critical retrieval of the concept from the Wesleyan heritage in order to creatively reconceive and rearticulate it for the present.
Borrowing ideas from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is it possible to develop a “non-religious” interpretation of holiness for a “world come of age” that is a pervasively secular society? For Bonhoeffer, a central aspect of a “non religious” interpretation of theological concepts is that the gospel embodied in praxis has priority over theological formulation. This resonates with the emphasis in Wesley’s writing on Methodist identity that the distinguishing mark of Methodism is not a doctrine, not even a doctrine of holiness, but transformed character and lifestyle.
In Wesley’s understanding persons are transformed by encountering the love of God in Christ that liberates and empowers them to love God and their fellow humans. This transformation affects both inner attitudes and motivations and outward behavior. There is a dynamic relationship between outward behavior and inner attitudes – inner transformation leads to outward transformation and active engagement on behalf of others leads to inner transformation. This dynamic relationship suggests that holiness can be conceptualized as love embodied in praxis.
Wesley often described the outward dimension by the triad of justice, mercy and truth. This triad was particularly interpreted in terms of the relationships with those he described as “the outcasts of men”. Hence in a “non-religious” interpretation, outward holiness is the embodied practice of justice, compassion and integrity on behalf of and in solidarity with the marginalized, the victims and the vulnerable. This embodied practice arises out of and leads to inner transformation by the Spirit of God.
It is this which should be the key identity marker of Methodism. Our particular theological formulations only have significance to the extent that they undergird and interpret this embodied practice. They have no value independent of this.
The understanding of holiness as love embodied in praxis also opens a new approach to ecumenical (and inner Methodist) relationships. In Wesley’s thought, holiness is only possible in the context of interpersonal interaction; as embodied love it only exists as it is concretely expressed in the diversity, conflicts, and complexity of human relationships. It is through this expression that inner attitudes are transformed.
Analogously Methodist churches only embody holiness in dynamic relationships with other churches, not because we agree with each other or we share common practices, but because we disagree from each other and have contradictory practices. It is only as we live with each other and engage in mission together in our diversity and disagreements that we embody love for each other. Holiness as Methodism’s gift to ecumenical relationships is not primarily a theological affirmation but the embodied praxis of love. In this way we manifest our particular identity.
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