Darryl W. Stephens: Facing the Empire Within

Today's post is by Rev. Dr. Darryl W. Stephens. Rev. Dr. Stephens is Director of United Methodist Studies at Lancaster Theological Seminary and is author of, among others,Reckoning Methodism: Mission and Division in the Public Church (2024). This post is taken with permission from Rev. Dr. Stephens' blog, Ethics Considered.

On Monday, the United States of America inaugurated the reign of a president who said he would not rule out the use of military force to seize control of the Panama Canal and Greenland. Such international aggression would be a blatant attempt to expand the not-so-hidden empire of the USA. To my fellow United Methodists in the USA: Do not retreat in resignation! We must face the empire within.

Empire assumes many guises. The 2024 Social Principles of the UMC defines Donald Trump’s threat as colonialism: “the practice of establishing full or partial control of other countries, tribes, and peoples through conquest and exploitation.” Empire can also be conducted through neocolonialism, exercised through economic, political, and social control of other peoples. More expansively, empire refers to any coercive power that controls people’s lives—often without their realizing it.

The United Methodist Church (UMC) and its predecessor institutions have a long history of supporting and building empire. The UMC was born of a state church, the head of which controlled the largest world empire at the time. When the US colonies won political independence from the British crown, Methodism in the US also became independent of John Wesley and the Church of England. US Methodism, however, retained the structures and attitudes of empire.

White US Methodists, in particular, have a lot to reckon with. We exercised empire through chattel slavery, forced relocation of indigenous peoples, and missionary expansion. Methodists defended these practices with biblical proof-texts and theological arguments, claiming their actions to be God’s will. Indigenous boarding schools, for example, were cast as education and Christianization. Jim Crow laws were depicted as maintaining public order. Methodists justified their participation in projects of empire through powerful rhetoric and jurisprudence, such as Manifest Destiny and the Doctrine of Discovery.

Trump’s territorial aspirations mirror in some ways the UMC’s decades-long agenda to become a “global church.” Both efforts involve structures of empire, with control residing in the United States. The UMC’s central conferences, for example, are directly modeled after the Church of England’s structure from 1867—during the height of Western colonialism. Regarding Anglican churches overseas, the Church of England sought “the binding of the Churches of our colonial empire and the missionary Churches beyond them in the closest union with the Mother-Church.” The US-based UMC has been slow to dismantle this inherited form of empire, making its largest overseas acquisition in 2008 (a relationship that unraveled in 2024).

Facing “the empire within” requires a long process of repentance. For example, the UMC began facing up to its past mistreatment of Native Americans in 1988. General Conference confessed the church’s sin and offered a formal apology in 1992, supported restitution to some tribes in 1996, offered an act or repentance in 2012, and published an in-depth report of Methodist involvement in the Sand Creek massacre in 2016. The work of repentance continues. In 2000, General Conference adopted an Act of Repentance for Racism—and the work is not done. Repentance involves confessing sin, ceasing wrongdoing, turning from old patterns of behavior, and intending to do better. Repentance also requires restitution and active resistance to further harm.

If only we could face down empire with a quick apology and a simple vote! Neither is sufficient, and yet both are important steps. In 2025, annual conferences in the UMC have the opportunity to vote on several constitutional amendments that address the harms of empire.

• Proposed is adding the words “gender” and “ability” as protected categories to Paragraph 4, Article 4, which proclaims the “inclusiveness of the church.” Behind this proposal is the awareness that Methodism has a long history of discrimination against persons because of gender and physical and mental (dis)abilities.

• Proposed is a revision of Article V, “Racial Justice.” Through this amendment, United Methodists must decide if “The United Methodist Church commits to confronting and eliminating all forms of racism, racial inequity, colonialism, white privilege and white supremacy, in every facet of its life and in society at large.” An affirmative vote would be a significant step toward dismantling these forms of empire.

• The most complex package of constitutional amendments addresses the most complex form of empire with the UMC: the role and power of the United States. The “regionalization legislation” proposes decentering US conferences by putting them on equal legislative footing with conferences around the world. No longer would the denomination’s General Conference be dominated by legislation pertaining only to the United States.

While I am in favor of the above constitutional amendments, I know that they will not solve the problem of empire. To face the empire within, we must reckon with our past, repair relationships, and create more just structures for all. The project of decolonizing church and society requires collaboration in material projects of shared concern through which we can craft new narratives of solidarity and belonging. We cannot achieve this goal by serving “the needy” from our position of perceived privilege. Rather, we must roll up our sleeves and get to work alongside each other as equals in the kin-dom of God.

If you, your reading group, or congregation is invested in facing the empire within, consider reading together the following books:

Stephens, Darryl W. Reckoning Methodism: Mission and Division in the Public Church. Cascade, 2024.

Scott, David W., and Filipe Maia, eds. Methodism and American Empire: Reflections on Decolonizing the Church. Abingdon, 2023.

2024 Publications on Methodist Mission and Evangelism

As the year winds down, we are taking a moment to review scholarship on Methodist mission and evangelism from 2024. The following is a list of books and articles published since the beginning of the year by scholars in the Association of Methodist Professors of Mission, friends of the blog, and other scholars about topics related to Methodist mission and evangelism. Readers are encouraged to consult these sources for the latest in scholarship about Methodist mission and evangelism.

Peter J. Bellini, “John Wesley, the Almost Charismatic,” in Heirs of Pietism in World Christianity: The 19th to the 21st Centuries, edited by Wendy J. Deichmann & Scott T. Kisker (Wilmore, KY: First Fruits Press, 2024).

Brian J. Chalmers, Methodist Revivalism and Social Reform in the Paradise of Dissent 1838-1939 (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2024).

Paul W. Chilcote, “Charles Wesley and the “Peaceable Reign” of Christ,” Holiness 9 (2024).

Paul W. Chilcote, Cultivating Christlikeness: Loving as Jesus Loved (Nashville: Abingdon, 2024).

Paul W. Chilcote, The Fullest Possible Love: Living in Harmony with God and Neighbor (Nashville: Abingdon, 2024).

Paul W. Chilcote, The Quest for Love Divine: Select Essays in Wesleyan Thought and Practice (Cambridge: Lutterworth, 2024).

Paul W. Chilcote, “Songs of renewal: The language of renewal in the hymns of Charles Wesley,” The Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture 10:2 (2024).

Sara Ashencaen Crabtree, An Historiography of Twentieth-century Women's Missionary Nursing through the Lives of Two Sisters: Doing the Lord's Work in Kenya and South India (New York: Routledge, 2024).

Taylor Denyer, “Ecclesiastic Empires: American Conflict and the UMC in Africa,” in Methodism and American Empire: Reflections on Decolonizing the Church, ed. by David W. Scott and Filipe Maia (Nashville: Abingdon, 2024).

Norma Dollaga, “The Diaconal Spirituality of Activism in the Philippines,” in Diaconal Studies: Lived Theology for the Church in North America, edited by Craig L. Nessan and Darryl W. Stephens (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2024).

David N. Field, “Engagements with Non-British Cultures,” in The Routledge Companion to John Wesley, ed. by Clive Murray Norris and Joseph W. Cunningham (London: Routledge, 2024).

Benjamin L. Hartley, “John R. Mott amidst the students: Historical and missiological gleanings for today,” Missiology: An International Review (2024).

Benjamin L. Hartley, “The Problem and Promise of the Diaconate,” in Diaconal Studies: Lived Theology for the Church in North America, edited by Craig L. Nessan and Darryl W. Stephens (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2024).

Arun W. Jones, “From courtesan to King: The conversion of Farzana,” Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies 9:1 (2024).

Filipe Maia, Decolonizing Wesleyan Theology: Theological Engagements from the Underside of Methodism (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2024).

David L. McKenna, Seeing All Things Whole My Calling to Fulfill (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2024).

Martin Mujinga and Onias Chagudhuma, “Meaning beyond symbols!: A theological interpretation of the Methodist Church in Zimbabwe’s logo,” Pharos Journal of Theology 105 (2024).

Eben Kanukayi Nhiwatiwa, By the Grace of God: My Life as an African Bishop (Nashville: Abingdon, 2024).

Joon-Sik Park, “The Worldwide Nature of The United Methodist Church: A Historical and Missiological Reflection,” in Methodism and American Empire: Reflections on Decolonizing the Church, ed. by David W. Scott and Filipe Maia (Nashville, Abingdon, 2024).

Angel D. Santiago-Vendrell, “Popular Catholicism Puerto Rican Style: The Virgin of Rincón, Human Agency, and Miracles,” Religions 15 (2024).

David W. Scott, “American Power in the Global Church in Ecumenical Methodist Perspective,” in Methodism and American Empire: Reflections on Decolonizing the Church, ed. by David W. Scott and Filipe Maia (Nashville: Abingdon, 2024).

David W. Scott and Filipe Maia, eds., Methodism and American Empire: Reflections on Decolonizing the Church (Nashville: Abingdon, 2024).

David W. Scott, “Review of Dana L. Robert, Allison Kach-Yawnghwe, and Morgan Crago, Creative Collaborations: Case Studies of North American Missional Practices,” Missiology, 52:1 (2024), 118-119.

Howard A. Snyder, Consider the Lilies: How Jesus Saves People and the Land: The Theology and Ecology of Salvation (Wilmore, KY: First Fruits, 2024).

Darryl W. Stephens, “Developing a Trauma-Informed Diaconal Praxis,” in Diaconal Studies: Lived Theology for the Church in North America, edited by Craig L. Nessan and Darryl W. Stephens (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2024).

Darryl W. Stephens and Craig L. Nessan, eds., Diaconal Studies: Lived Theology for the Church in North America (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2024).

Darryl W. Stephens, “A Global Ethic for a Divided Church,” in Methodism and American Empire: Reflections on Decolonizing the Church, ed. by David W. Scott and Filipe Maia (Nashville: Abingdon, 2024).

Darryl W. Stephens, Reckoning Methodism: Mission and Division in the Public Church (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2024).

Darrell L. Whiteman, Crossing Cultures with the Gospel: Anthropological Wisdom for Effective Christian Witness (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2024).

Darrell L. Whiteman, Forward to Jerusalem Burning: The Terror and Promise of the "Wrath of Love," by Robert L. Canfield (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2024).

Philip Wingeier-Rayo, “The Autonomous Process of Latin American Methodism: A Critical Review,” in Methodism and American Empire: Reflections on Decolonizing the Church, ed. by David W. Scott and Filipe Maia (Nashville: Abingdon, 2024).

Philip Wingeier-Rayo, “Latin America and the Caribbean,” in The Routledge Companion to John Wesley, ed. by Clive Murray Norris and Joseph W. Cunningham (London: Routledge, 2024).

Philip Wingeier-Rayo, “Review of In the Hands of God: How Evangelical Belonging Transforms Migrant Experiences in the U.S. by Johanna Bard Richlin,” Politics, Religion & Ideology 25 (2024).

Philip A. Wingeier-Rayo: Puerto Rico and Cuba: Diverging Religious and Cultural Histories

A Cuba

Cuba y Puerto Rico son
de un pájaro las dos alas,
reciben flores o balas
sobre el mismo corazón

Cuba and Puerto Rico are
As two wings of the same bird,
They receive flowers and bullets
Into the same heart ...

Excerpt of a poem entitled “A Cuba” by Puerto Rican journalist and poet Lola Rodriguez de Tío

Recently, I had the opportunity to travel to Puerto Rico to visit historical Protestant churches. After serving as a missionary in Cuba in the 1990s, I was struck by both the uncanny similarities and stark differences between the two Caribbean islands. Obviously, the inhabitants of both islands speak Spanish, have similar food and music that are a mix of Spanish and African influences, and both cultures have a joyous warm enthusiastic Latin flair. 

Both islands were inhabited by the Taino tribe, a subgroup of the Arawak people of South America, before being colonized by Spain for nearly 400 years. Africans were brought as slaves to work on Spanish haciendas, or plantations, that produced sugar, rum, and tobacco that were exported back to Europe. 

The Roman Catholic Church was dominant on both islands until Protestant missionaries arrived following the Spanish-American War of 1898. Protestantism spread on both islands and built churches, schools, and hospitals that shared an expression of American Christianity. Both islands have vestiges of the Spanish American War with U.S. military bases: Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba and Buchanan in Puerto Rico.

Cuba fought for its independence from Spain with several insurrections and slave rebellions during the nineteenth century, beginning with the “Ten Year War” from 1868-1878. The final push was led by José Martí, known as “The Apostle,” who founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party in 1892 to fight for independence. 

During their independence war, the U.S. feared regional instability and dispatched the USS Maine. It mysteriously exploded while anchored in the Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, killing 267 sailors aboard and giving the U.S. a motive to intervene. The U.S. troops, known as the “Rough-riders” and led by Teddy Roosevelt, came to the aid of the Cuban insurgents and sieged a Spanish fort in Santiago on July 1, 1898 – known as the Battle of San Juan Hill. On July 25^th of the same year, the U.S. invaded Puerto Rico. The last Spanish troops retreated on October 18^th. 

Collectively known in U.S. history books as “the Spanish-American War,” the conflict ended with Spain relinquishing the rights to Cuba, and ceding the islands of the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico to the U.S. in exchange for $20,000.

The U.S. President during the Spanish-American was William McKinley, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC). At first, he didn’t know what to do with these new territories. McKinley shared his plans for the Philippines with the General Missionary Committee of the MEC:

“When I next realized that the Philippines had dropped into our laps I confess I did not know what to do with them…and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me this way—I don’t know how it was, but it came (1) That we could not give them back to Spain—that would be cowardly and dishonorable; (2) that we could not turn them over to France and Germany—our commercial rivals in the Orient—that would be bad business and discreditable; (3) that we could not leave them to themselves—they were unfit for self-government—and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain’s was; and (4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died.”[1]

A similar logic was applied to Cuba and Puerto Rico.

In coordination with President McKinley and the American military presence, Protestant mission boards signed comity agreements to coordinate their outreach in these new U.S. colonial possessions. Missionaries from the Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Disciples of Christ, among other denominations, such as the Lutherans, established churches, schools, and hospitals on the islands. The United Brethren Church of Christ articulated the task in Puerto Rico:

“To inaugurate a work that assures the Americanization of the island, similar to the work of welcoming individuals into the joys and privileges of being a Christian disciple… we should inaugurate schools that will reach hundreds of children who can be formed through these institutions in the responsibilities of being an American citizen.”[2]

Methodist missionary Sterling Augustus Neblett arrived in Cuba in 1902 and compared the U.S. military occupation of Cuba to Protestant missions: “The entrance of God’s messengers, who were few in number and who came to bring peace and safety to the Cuban people, was militant but not military.”[3] He also referred to the expansion of Methodism following the Spanish-American war as “occupation.”[4]

The mission work in Cuba was well organized and resourced. By the end of the first decade of Methodist missions, there were 33 preachers, 15 of them Cuban, serving in 32 churches with a total membership of 3,000 people.[5] The mission work in Puerto Rico enjoyed similar success.

In the early 20^th century, the history, culture, and religious contexts of both islands were amazingly similar. However, fast forward 100 years to the 21^st century, and the realities of both islands are night and day. Today, the religious and political contexts are very different. Puerto Ricans, who are U.S. citizens, tend to be politically progressive and vote Democrat, while Cubans, despite the Socialist government, tend to be more conservative—especially those who immigrated to the U.S. They tend to vote more Republican. Puerto Ricans tend to be more open-minded on social issues such as LGBTQ inclusion, while Cubans are more conservative. Ironically, Cubans tend to be pro-American, while Puerto Ricans are suspicious of the United States’ colonial past.

Even though both islands have very similar political and religious histories--both being colonized by the Spanish and the United States, the Puerto Ricans and Cubans today live in completely different social, political and religious realities. One would never guess that the islands are only 750 miles apart. Much of these differences stem from the islands’ different histories since the Spanish-American War.

Cuba was granted its independence through the Platt Amendment, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1903, which included the right for the U.S. to interfere in Cuban affairs. Today, Cuba is an independent nation, but it has been ruled by the Communist Party for the last 65 years following the 1959 Socialist Revolution led by Fidel Castro. Puerto Rico, on the other hand, is still a U.S. territory.

An example of the fate of two mission initiatives describes the differences between the two trajectories. MEC Bishop Warren Candler traveled to Cuba in 1898 to plan mission efforts. The following year, a Methodist school was established in Havana, which would eventually expand to a university known as Candler College. Similarly, Presbyterian missionaries John and Eunice Harris sailed to Puerto Rico in 1906 and established a polytechnical school. That school expanded to become InterAmerican University, which today has eight extension sites, in addition to the main campus in San German, and a total enrollment of 5,000 students. By contrast, Candler College was intervened by the Cuban government and is used as a public school today.

Religiously and culturally, both islands were heavily influenced by the Roman Catholic Church, and many people remain nominally Catholic today. There is also an underlying influence of African religions, such as Spiritism and Santería. This has been attacked by Catholics and Protestants alike as being demonic, but it has experienced a surge in recent years. 

The Protestant churches are strong in both islands, but there are stark differences. The churches in Puerto Rico do a lot of social outreach to the marginalized, while the Cuban churches tend to focus more on evangelization. This is due, in part, to the government restrictions on social services. The Cuban Socialist Revolution, allied to Soviet Russian, implemented an atheist constitution, which repressed religion in Cuba and created a decline in religious affiliation from the 1960s through the 1980s. Religious schools and hospitals were nationalized and are run by the state. 

In 1991, Cuba amended its constitution from an official atheist state to a secular state, and restrictions against church participation were eased. After the fall of the Soviet bloc, a religious revival began in Cuba, and a generation of young people, curious and spiritually hungry, converted to Christianity.

Recent comments about Puerto Rico in the news are a reminder that Americans in general and United Methodists in particular have a responsibility to understand the role of the U.S. and U.S. denominations such as Methodism in shaping the histories of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and other lands.

---

[1] This quote specifically referred to Philippines, but could be applied to Cuba and Puerto Rica, as well. General James Rusling, “Interview with President William McKinley,” The Christian Advocate 22 January 1903, 17. Reprinted in Charles Sumner Olcott, The Life of William McKinley, Volume 2 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), 109-111.

[2] Samuel Cruz, Masked Africanisms: Puerto Rican Pentecostalism (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co., 2005), 23

[3] Sterling Augustus Neblett, Methodism’s First Fifty Years in Cuba, Wilmore, KY: Asbury Press, 1976, 6.

[4] Sterling Augustus Neblett, Methodism’s First Fifty Years in Cuba, 6.

[5] La Disciplina de la Iglesia Metodista en Cuba, Havana, Cuba, v.

Robert J. Harman: Evangelical Church Disciplines

Today's post is by Rev. Robert J. Harman. Rev. Harman is a mission executive retired from the General Board of Global Ministries and was ordained in the Evangelical United Brethren Church.

David Scott’s postings on the subject of the UMC Book of Disciple stirred me to do a little historical research into the origins of the book in the history of the Evangelical Association, a forerunner of the Evangelical Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church, which is my denominational heritage. My source is Raymond Albright’s A History of the Evangelical Church (1942).

The concept of a published Discipline occurred to founder Jacob Albright thanks to his personal association with the Methodist beginnings in his eastern Pennsylvania home. Unsatisfied with the outreach among his German heritage population by the English-bred circuit riders of Methodism, he began recruiting his own German speaking preachers into his Evangelical Association, which was dedicated to mission on that cultural frontier.

The first Discipline of the Evangelical Association had a single purpose. Albright knew that the success of the church’s mission would depend solely upon the quality of its circuit riding preachers. They were recruited from among the house churches and camp meeting revivals he was conducting. They included those who responded to the spirit filled messages they heard in their native tongue but had no formal training in biblical studies or church history.

So, included in the first published Discipline in 1809, along with a general introduction to the Christian church and organizational rules for conducting General Conferences, was a key ingredient. The first order of business of each General Conference would be a required examination of the moral standard of every preacher newly recruited and already active in the connection. 

When English speaking evangelists began appearing in the ranks of preachers, the examination process was heightened. Soon sessions of the General Conference had to decide when and how much of the German speaking texts needed translation. The audience for such was the growing segment of second-generation families among German settlers as well as confronting the more rapidly growing English-speaking populations addressed by the evangelistic outreach of the circuit riders’ movement westward and into urban centers.

The bilingual project was slowed down by controversy in those General Conference sessions over who among the leaders of the Evangelical Association was qualified to make accurate translations. By 1830, the text of the Discipline appeared in both German and English.

Over time, the contents of the Disciplines expanded to include revised articles of faith and the naming of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper. The doctrinal standards emerged largely by borrowing from the Methodist Discipline, often adopting language on controversial themes such as Christian perfection. That was followed by new commentary on matters of Christian behavior. Details for electing bishops and appointing pastors (by presiding elders, no longer by Albright or successor bishops) were spelled out. Paragraphs on local church matters included election of class leaders, organization of Sunday Schools, and support for disabled pastors.

Statements on public issues were preceded by an overview of Christian social responsibility in the 1825 edition: To be “One in accord with Christian regulations to labor together with upright Christians for the building of His glorious kingdom on earth.” That was followed by personal guidance on temperance, tobacco, Sabbath, and dress in the text of the 1830 publication. And a profoundly prophetic statement addressed the impending leanings toward a civil war, stating: “We believe that war and the shedding of blood are incompatible with the Gospel and Spirit of Christ.” The Evangelical Church never sanctioned slavery.

In the growing reality of a developing bilingual or cross-cultural ministry, the priority of a publishing house emerged to corner official treatment of controversial subjects and offer uniform lessons for catechism and adult education. For the circuit riders on the frontiers, there was only room in their saddle bags for a Bible, a hymnal and a Discipline. Thus, those texts were their sole library, forging the foundation of faith presented to the adherents of a growing denomination.

The quest for finding the “relationship between discipline and discipleship,” as David Scott wrote in his essay, had early beginnings in this Evangelical tradition of our denominational heritage. As for success in applying “rules vs. norms and boundaries vs. ideals as ways of influencing behavior,” that effort awaits further inquiry.

Philip Wingeier-Rayo: Was John Wesley a Missionary to Georgia?

Today's piece is by Dr. Philip Wingeier-Rayo. Dr. Wingeier-Rayo is Professor of Missiology, World Christianity and Methodist Studies at Wesley Theological Seminary and author of the forthcoming book, John Wesley and the Origins of Methodist Missions.

It is widely assumed that John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, was a missionary to Georgia. I have seen this matter-of-fact statement multiple times in biographies about John Wesley’s life and ministry. If, indeed, Wesley was a missionary, was he commissioned? What entity or missionary agent sent him? This blog will reflect on this assumption and raise some questions about its veracity.

Background

Wesley graduated from Christ Church, University of Oxford, in 1724 and was ordained a deacon in the Church of England in 1725. After assisting his father in parish ministry in Epworth and Wroot, he was ordained an elder in 1728. When Wesley’s father, Samuel Wesley, became ill in 1734 he unsuccessfully attempted to convince his son to succeed him as rector in Epworth. As John wrestled with whether or not to go to Epworth he wrote his father on November 15, 1734 with his decision: “The question is not whether I could do more good to others there or here, but whether I could do more good to myself; seeing wherever I can be most holy myself, there, I am assured, I can most promote holiness in others. But I am equally assured there is no place under heaven so fit for my improvement as Oxford.”

Epworth, Georgia or remain in Oxford?

Another of Samuel Wesley’s connections, John Burton, was a trustee of the Colony of Georgia and entered into correspondence with Wesley about America. The trustees were unhappy with the ministry of missionary Quincy Adams and wished to replace him.

Meanwhile, John Wesley had returned to Oxford where he was leading a group of students, including his younger brother Charles, on their spiritual quest for holy living. The group, known as the Holy Club—and later Methodists—sought to renew themselves and the church in the spirit of Primitive Christianity. The spiritual quest of the Oxford Methodists, including the Wesley brothers, could be described as mysticism. Wesley’s goal was to work out his salvation by faith and trembling (Phil. 2: 12-13). He also felt a sense of persecution and the desire to suffer on his faith journey.[1] When John Burton proposed mission work in Georgia, Wesley saw this as an opportunity to suffer and work out his salvation.

So, Wesley turned down his father’s invitation to succeed him at Epworth because he felt that Oxford was the best place to pursue his spiritual growth. Burton’s invitation, on the other hand, captured Wesley’s imagination. When General Oglethorpe, the de facto governor of Georgia, brought the Yamacraw chief, Tomochichi, to England to meet with King George, Wesley became even more fascinated with the idea of evangelizing Native Americans. This opportunity aligned with his vision of self-sacrifice and recovering the spirituality of early church in Jerusalem, who shared all things in common. While Europeans had been corrupted, Wesley held the belief that Native Americans were pure and closer to Primitive Christianity, embodying a communitarian lifestyle.

Motivation to go to Georgia

After his father’s passing on April 25, 1735, Wesley consulted his mother, Susanna, about going to Georgia as a missionary, to which she responded, “Had I twenty sons, I should rejoice they were all so well employed, though I should never see them more.”[2] With his mother’s approval, he recruited his younger brother Charles and Oxford Methodists Charles Delamotte and Benjamin Ingham, and they embarked for Savannah on December 10, 1735. On board the ship, Wesley wrote John Burton about his motivation for going to America:

“My chief motive, to which all the rest are subordinate, is the hope of saving my own soul. I hope to learn the true sense of the gospel of Christ by preaching it to the heathens…But you will perhaps ask, Can’t you save your own soul in England as well as in Georgia? I answer, No, neither can I hope to attain the same degree of holiness here which I may there, neither, if I stay here knowing this, can I reasonably hope to attain any degree of holiness at all.”

In other words, Wesley’s motivation for going to preach to Native Americans was intimately tied to his own spiritual journey toward holiness. Of this momentous vocational decision, Kenneth Collins writes in his biography, John Wesley: A Theological Journey: “upon further reflection and prayer, Wesley finally decided to accept the invitation to become a missionary…” (p. 55).

Was John Wesley a missionary?

John Wesley volunteered to go to Georgia to evangelize Native Americans without any conversation of official missionary status. At the time, there were many volunteer societies functioning in England, but two primarily had to do with overseas missions: The Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Both of these societies were formed by Thomas Bray, in 1698 and 1701, respectively. The former provided Christian literature for priests and the later focused on supporting priests to minister among the colonists. Bray was an Anglican priest who traveled to Maryland and saw the need for spiritual care among the colonists, as well as the enslaved Africans and Native Americans in the British colonies.

While Wesley knew of these societies, he did not go to Georgia under their auspices. Rather, his invitation came from the Georgia Trustees via John Burton and General Oglethorpe. During his voyage and unbeknownst to him, however, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts held its annual meeting on January 16, 1736, and approved John Wesley, retroactively, as a missionary in Georgia. The SPG recorded in its journal: “…he had nearly arrived in Georgia by the time he was approved without consultation as a SPG missionary.”[3] The SPG re-assigned Adam’s £50 missionary salary to Wesley, but he did not accept these terms and saw himself as a volunteer missionary. His vision was to evangelize the Native Americans, and he did not consider himself an SPG missionary. After Quincy Adams was dismissed from his post, General Oglethorpe asked Wesley to not leave Savannah “destitute of a minister.” Meanwhile, Charles became an assistant of Oglethorpe and Secretary of Indian Affairs for the colony and did not seek a missionary designation either.

Conclusion

The SPG Journal for the following year, 1737, lists John Wesley as an SPG missionary, but with no salary. The 1738 SPG journal states that “Wesley thought of himself as an independent volunteer missionary.”[4] Wesley also did not fulfill all the requirements of SPG missionaries, for example, sending regular reports and updates to the society. He did, however, receive funding and books from the SPCK, which he utilized, and he gave an account with receipts. Although John Wesley did not receive a salary as a missionary, the SPG continued to include his name in their journals. So, was Wesley a missionary to Georgia? In spite of multiple unqualified accounts, this assumption joins the list of Wesleyan hagiography. While the SPG would like to claim him, Wesley saw himself as a volunteer missionary and not an official missionary of the SPG.

[1] Geordan Hammond, “John Wesley’s Mindset at the Commencement of His Georgia Sojourn: Suffering and the Introduction of Primitive Christianity to the Indians,” Church History, October 2008, vol.47, No. 1, pp18-25.

[2] Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. I, p.234.

[3] SPG Journal, 16, January, 1736, vol.6, fo.305, SPG Archives, Rhodes House Library, Oxford, p.146.

[4] SPG Journal, 21 July 1738, vol.7, fos.26:1-2. Also see Wesley letter to the SPG, July 6, 1737, Works of John Wesley, Bicentennial Edition, 25:516.

Philip Wingeier-Rayo: The Mission of the Church in the World

Today's piece is by Dr. Philip Wingeier-Rayo. Dr. Wingeier-Rayo is Professor of Missiology, World Christianity and Methodist Studies at Wesley Theological Seminary. This piece was originally published on United Methodist Insight and is republished here with the permission of the publisher.

Every other year I have the privilege of teaching a course for aspiring United Methodist elders and deacons entitled “Mission of the Church in the World.” Along with Evangelism, Old and New Testament, Church History, Theology, United Methodist History, Doctrine and Polity, this is one of nine courses that is required for ordination in our church.

I love the title of the class—in fact I love everything about the class. I have taught this course in various settings, modalities, and institutions over the last two decades. Before Covid-19 this course was taught face-to-face both in semester-long and intensive formats. Since the pandemic, I have taught it online and hybrid (some in-person and some online). One of my favorite ways to teach the class is experiential. I have taught the class at Brooks Howell Home in Asheville, North Carolina, and students interviewed retired United Methodist missionaries and deaconesses, as part of the course requirements.

We have combined reading and writing assignments with experiential learning and field trips to ministries that prioritize those who are overlooked by society. We have invited guest speakers participating in God’s mission around the world, and used tools like “Mission Insite” to understand mission opportunities in one’s local community. During these days of reorganizing and refocusing the mission of the church considering our colonial history, it is helpful to reflect on the mission of the church in the world.

The title of the course reflects a change in the way that mission has traditionally been understood. Historically mission has been a one-way street from the center to the periphery. The western Church inherited the traditional mission model from Christendom when the Church and the State were fused together in Western Europe. Following Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the West Indies and the subsequent “Doctrine of Discovery,” the missionaries accompanied colonial expansion to newly settled territories to teach native peoples western civilization. Mission became centered within Christendom and went out to the margins. Mission was an overseas task from “us to them.” Mission started in the Church and went out to the unchurched. This was still the missiological view at the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland with the goal to spread Christianity from Christendom to non-Christian lands.

This traditional understanding of mission started to change midway through the 20th century following World War II. Following Edinburgh a continuation committee formed and the international missionary community gathered every ten years or so to reflect on the mission of the church. There was an inherent imbalance of power between mission-sending and mission-receiving churches that gradually began to change. The self-determination movement and independence movement of formally colonized nations awakened a new understanding of mission.

Six years prior to the 1938 Tambaram (India) Conference, Karl Barth read a paper at the Brandenburgh Missionary Conference where he described missions as an activity of God. A couple years later Karl Hartenstein articulated a similar understanding and coined the term “Missio Dei” to emphasize that it is God’s mission and not the mission of the church (“missio ecclesiae”).[1] The Church also shifted its understanding of mission to be God’s mission. Karl Barth was one of the first theologians to state that mission was God’s activity.[2] About the same time frame Emil Brunner wrote: “The Church exists by mission, just as a fire exists by burning. Where there is no mission there is no Church; and where there is neither Church nor mission, there is no faith.”[3]

The next meeting of the International Missionary Council in 1952 was held in Willingen, Germany in the aftermath of World War II. The conference built on the concept prevalent at Tambaram that mission is derived from the very heart of God, especially within the Trinity. The conference findings viewed God as the source of missions. Hartenstein’s concept of the “Missio Dei” or a missionary God influenced the conversations. David Bosch summarized the image of mission developed at Willingen as “…participating in the sending of God.”[4] In other words, God is the source of mission, not the church. This theme continued the movement away from an ecclesio-centric understanding of mission to a mission-centered church.[5] Instead of the church being the one who sends, the church itself is sent.[6]

One of the unexpected twists of missions in the 20th century was that the so-called “younger” or “receiving” churches grew stronger meanwhile secularism weakened the “sending” churches in the West. After the Great Depression, two world wars, and colonial wars, the West was not in an economic or moral position to claim that they had the exclusive right to do mission. In 1961 the International Missionary Committee was dissolved, and the World Council of Churches formed with younger and established churches having equal representation. A Scottish theologian and missionary, Leslie Newbigin, was the General Secretary of the International Missionary Committee and stewarded the transition into the World Council of Churches, where he became Associate General Secretary. He returned to his home country of Scotland in 1974, after serving as a missionary in India for more than three decades and was astounded the decline of Christianity and the secularization in the United Kingdom. He had left Scotland during an era of Christendom, but upon his return found a society that was post-Christian or even anti-Christian.[7] He realized that the West is a mission field. This broke down the traditional paradigm of mission “from the West to the rest.”

In 1983 Newbigin published "The Other Side of 1984: Questions for the Churches" in which he built upon the theological consensus of the “missio Dei.” Newbigin’s work that emerged in the late 20th century with a focus on moving beyond Christendom, seeing the West as a mission field, and the Missio Dei. This is the historical background of the shift to seeing the Church as an instrument of God’s mission in the world.

As we reflect on the mission of The United Methodist Church in the aftermath of schism and division, it is important to go back to our mission “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” I treasure the opportunity to reflect with aspiring United Methodist clergy about the mission of the church in the world.

^[1] Hartenstein, Karl (1934). "Wozu nötigt die Finanzlage der Mission". Evangelisches Missions-Magazin. 79: 217–229.

^[2] David Bosch, Transforming Mission, Orbis Press, 1991, 389.

^[3] Emil Brunner, The Word and the World, 1931.

^[4] Ibid.

^[5] Bosch, 370.

^[6] Ibid.

^[7] Darrell Guder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998, 3.

Recommended Listening: Un-Tied Methodism on Regionalization

UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott was a recent guest on Un-Tied Methodism, the podcast of the General Commission on Archives and History (GCAH), hosted by General Secretary Dr. Ashley Boggan D. Scott joined Boggan D. and other guests Rev. Dr. Izzy Alvaran and Rev. Dr. Betty Kazadi Musau to discuss regionalization in The United Methodist Church in an episode titled "Reimagining unity: Regionalization and the UMC."

During the conversation, Scott shared some insights from Methodist history, including work associated with the book Methodism and American Empire: Reflections on Decolonizing the Church, which he co-edited with Dr. Filipe Maia, and to which Alvaran contributed a chapter.

Given the significance of discussions of regionalization at General Conference next week, the episode is sure to be of interest to readers.

The UMC is a Rural Church in an Urbanizing World

The UMC is a rural church in an urbanizing world.

This is perhaps a bit of hyperbole, but it underlines important facets of the history and present of The United Methodist Church in many locations around the world, facets that have significant implications for the mission and ministry of the UMC in the present age.

In this post, I will share some historical and anecdotal evidence to support the two components of the argument: first, that the UMC is in many ways a rural church, and second, that the world is urbanizing. In a future post, I will look at the missional, financial, cultural, and other implications of this thesis.

The UMC Is a Rural Church

I know of no database that has yet been compiled that conveniently provides the percentage of UMC congregations or congregants in rural vs. urban areas. This is true both in the United States and even more so around the world. Thus, my argument will be more historical and anecdotal than statistical.

In the United States, the classic elements of Methodist history - circuit riders, class meetings, camp meetings - were all associated with Methodism's spread along the rural frontier of the new United States. Circuit riders were a successful innovation to bring religion to small, widely dispersed rural settlements. Class meetings kept the faithful going between visits from the circuit riders. And camp meetings provided a place for rural people to gather together for religious (and secular) experiences not available in scattered communities of a few dozen people. These elements combined to allow Methodism to spread well across the new republic, mostly in rural areas. While Methodism would eventually get into urban missions (at the end of the 19th century), and while there were some areas (such as New York City) that had early urban Methodist congregations, the focus for most of US Methodism's early history was on the rural hinterlands, not the cities.

The success of this rural strategy is still apparent in the distribution of UMC congregations in the United States today. Prior to disaffiliation, the UMC had more churches than the US had post offices. This was not largely the result of plentiful churches in urban and suburban areas but rather the continuation of the many rural congregations started by early Methodists, especially east of the Great Plains (where almost all the population lived prior to the Civil War and where the majority of the US population lives still today).

Indeed, if you compare a map of congregations per county in 2020 of United Methodists and Catholics, you can easily tell the more rural composition of United Methodists (on top below) and Catholics (on bottom). The Catholic map allows you to clearly identify Dayton, for instance, because of the urban nature of US Catholicism. The United Methodist map includes many congregations per county in entirely rural parts of Appalachia.

If a rural focus, rural distribution, and rural character has marked US United Methodism, this is true in many other countries around the world.

The current largest episcopal area in the entire UMC is the North Katanga Episcopal Area. The portion of that episcopal area in the DR Congo is almost entirely rural in its composition. There are, to my knowledge, no cities of over 200,000 in an area that contains almost a million United Methodists. These United Methodists, like many in the United States, live in small towns and villages.

In Zimbabwe, although there are now United Methodists throughout the country, an early comity agreement with the British Methodists meant that the British Methodists focused on the cities during the early evangelization of the country, while the predecessors of the UMC focused on the rural area. It was only after United Methodists migrated from rural areas to cities that the denomination opened churches in urban areas.

In Mozambique, there was no United Methodist congregation in the capital and largest city of the country until decades after the church was established, a testimony to the early rural focus of the church on one district of eastern Mozambique.

In Nigeria, the UMC has a strong presence in Jalingo, a state capital about the size of Des Moines, Iowa. But, like Des Moines, Jalingo is merely an anchor for Methodism that is spread throughout the rural areas of the territory as well.

Manila is a huge metropolitan area, and the UMC has always had a presence there, and one of the three Filipino episcopal areas is focused on Manila. But the Baguio Episcopal Area to the north includes mostly rural areas and small cities. Baguio itself, the urban center of the area, only has a population of about 345,000.

The UMC in Norway has congregations in the nine largest cities in Norway. But it also has congregations in three small villages north of the Arctic Circle. If the UMC there is perhaps concentrated near Oslo, it has by no means shunned rural areas.

This is not a comprehensive survey, and there are, of course, counter examples. I have already acknowledged United Methodism in metro Manila. And The United Methodist Church in Liberia, for instance, has a urban flavor to it because of its historic base among Americo-Liberian settlers, who were originally based in Monrovia and other newly formed urban areas.

Still, looked at broadly, I think it is fair to say that The United Methodist Church at very least has strong rural roots in many places throughout the globe and that these roots remain evident in the geographic distribution of the church to this day.

The World Is Urbanizing

Many of the historic, rural roots of the UMC described above were set during the 19th century. It is fair to point out that most of the world lived in rural areas in the 19th century. A rural focus for the UMC was notable but not out of line with the experiences of the majority of humanity.

But there has been a dramatic transformation of where and how humans have lived in the past century, as ever larger numbers and percentages of people congregate in urban areas, a process social scientists refer to as urbanization.

The United States became a majority urban country about a century ago, in the early 1920s. At the present, almost 80% of the US population lives in urban or suburban areas. Only 21% remain in rural areas of the country. The trend in other developed countries was similar, a steady march to the cities beginning in the late 19th century and continuing on such that the vast majority of the population lives in urban areas at present.

Yet urbanization has not only been a process in developed countries. Over the past half century, there has been a massive population shift in developing countries as well, as people flock to cities. The majority of the world's population now lives in urban areas. The World Bank predicts that by 2050, 70% of the world's population will live in cities.

This move from rural to urban areas (and the creation of many new urban areas) represents a fundamental change in human societies that has implications for all areas of human life. But religion is certainly one of the areas impacted by the shift to cities. And The United Methodist Church, as a church with rural roots that is facing a rapidly urbanizing world, would do well to be cognizant of the missional, financial, cultural, and other implications of this process of urbanization and what they mean for the mission and ministry of the church. I will explore that further in a subsequent piece.

Philip Wingeier-Rayo: Celebrating 150 Years of Methodism in Mexico: Napoleon, Cinco de Mayo, and Reform

Today's post is by Rev. Dr. Philip Wingeier-Rayo. Rev. Dr. Wingeier-Rayo is Professor of Missiology, World Christianity and Methodist Studies at Wesley Theological Seminary.

What does Cinco de Mayo have to do with Methodism in Mexico? Restaurants, schools, and breweries in the U.S. have made the holiday popular—mostly for commercial gain. However, few can articulate the history or significance of the Cinco de Mayo holiday. Some people wrongly assume that it is Mexican Independence Day. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mexico launched its war on September 16, 1810, and won its independence from Spain in 1821, while the Battle of Puebla happened over 50 years later on May 5, 1862. Mexico’s victory was against the French army. 

Now what were the French doing in Mexico? This brings us to our topic of Methodists in Mexico. But first a little background.

Ever since Hernan Cortez and Spanish conquistadors conquered the Aztecs and Emperor Moctezuma in 1521, politics in Mexico have been intimately intertwined with religion. The Spanish arrived with the sword in one hand and the Bible in the other. The Roman Catholic Church and clergy enjoyed broad ranging power, influence, and wealth – owning approximately 1/3 of Mexican land.

This began to change when President Benito Juarez (1806-1872) and the liberals advocated for the separation of church and state and freedom of religion. They fought for a constitutional federal state, subjugation of the army to civil authorities, public education, freedom of religion, and the equal distribution of wealth through the sale of unused church property. In 1856, the liberal government headed by Juarez passed the Ley Lerdo, which ordered the sale of church lands (monasteries, cemeteries, etc.) not used for religious purposes. The Catholic Church and clergy fought back in the War of Reform (1858-1860). The liberals won this war and recaptured Mexico City in 1860, passing the freedom of religion law, which allowed other denominations besides Catholics to legally operate in Mexico. The government carried out reforms, nationalizing Catholic properties and secularizing charitable institutions (e.g., hospitals). The liberals turned around and sold these properties to the public, which allowed for the creation of a Mexican middle class.

The Roman Catholic clergy and conservative allies were on the losing end of these reforms and encouraged French Emperor Napoleon III to intervene, which he did under the pretext of an outstanding national debt to France. The French invaded Mexico in 1862, and Napoleon named Maximiliano I to be emperor of Mexico. A sense of national pride and sovereignty rallied Mexican troops, who initially defeated the French army on May 5 at the Battle of Puebla. The victory was short-lived as the better-equipped army advanced and entered Mexico City in 1864. Maximiliano I tried to create a unified government, but he was caught between the competing claims of liberals and the coalition of conservatives and clerics. In 1867, Maximiliano was defeated by Benito Juarez and executed, marking a victory for the liberals and for the Reform. 

What does this have to do with Methodism? 

The liberal government found an ally in North American and European Protestants who believed in literacy, public education, health care, democracy, and ministry in rural areas—especially to the indigenous populations. A former Franciscan convent on Gante Street in Mexico City was one once of the properties confiscated and sold by the liberal government. It was and is a majestic site. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish, the lands had been used by Emperor Moctezuma as a garden before it became the first and largest Franciscan convent in New Spain. Between 1862 and 1873 after being sold during the Reforma, this building had various owners and was used for different purposes. In 1865, it was home to the Chiarini Circus, which Emperor Maximiliano once attended with his wife, Carlota. While the National Palace was under repair during 1868-9, this site became a place of legislation as temporary home to the Chamber of Deputies. It was also used as a theatre, restaurant, and cantina, among other functions. 

In 1871, the Missions Committee of the Methodist Episcopal Church approved $10,000 for missions in Mexico. The following year, William Butler, missionary and founder of the Methodist Church in India, was named secretary of the American and Foreign Christian Union and was tasked with mission work in papal lands, specifically in Latin America. Ms. Matilda Rankin, a Congregationalist based in Brownsville, Texas, invited the Butlers to go to Mexico, and so on February 1, 1873, the family sailed for Veracruz and took a train to Mexico City. The Butlers purchased the former Franciscan monastery for $16,300 to start the first Methodist Church. They began an orphanage with 37 girls, and Mrs. Butler established a support group for mothers every Tuesday night. 

Alejo Hernández became the first Mexican to be ordained by the MEC, South in December of 1871. Born in Aguascalientes, Hernández came to Brownsville, Texas, in search of a Protestant Bible and was ordained a deacon by Bishop Enoch Martin in Corpus Christi, Texas, and then he traveled back to Mexico City to assist Butler to help the new Methodist mission on Gante Street in 1873. The same year, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South sent Bishop JC Keener, and he purchased the former chapel of St. Andrew on the corner of San Andres and Callejon 57 streets in Mexico City. 

The liberal reforms and defeat of the French army created a window of opportunity for the Methodists, along with the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and other Protestants, to begin mission work in Mexico—150 years ago this year. To honor this history, the Methodist Church of Mexico will hold a celebratory conference later this year with the theme “Renovation and Future,” to be held at the Santisima Trinidad Methodist Church at Gante Street 5, November 30 – December 2.

Regionalization and Connectionalism: The Era of Globalization and World Christianity

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian at the General Board of Global Ministries. It is the fourth in a five-part series based on a presentation by Dr. Scott to the Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

Questions of local relevance and trans-local connection and of connection and power within the church have played out for Methodists in three separate historical eras: the colonial mission era, the era of political independence and church autonomy, and the era of globalization and world Christianity.

The last national church to become autonomous as part of the second era indicated was the Methodist Church in India in 1980. One quadrennium later, the UMC would absorb formerly autonomous churches in Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Burundi, symbolically ushering in the third era, that of globalization and world Christianity.

Secular globalization has its roots in the 1970s, further developed under the neoliberal policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, and really came into its own as a concept and reality in the 1990s, promoting a wave of critique and backlash by the 2000s.

Definitions of globalization vary, but there is broad consensus that it reflects increasing connections in political, economic, technological, cultural, social, and religious matters. Globalization also entails increased movement of people, goods, money, and ideas around the world, movements that are made possible by new technologies.

Secular globalization has always had its critics, but promoters of globalization have seen it as ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity for all, based on spreading acceptance of free-market liberal democracy and human rights, made plausible by the collapse of Soviet communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Whatever its merits, the increased international connections that were part of globalization certainly ushered in a new awareness of the international sphere, an awareness that was reflected in the increased popularity of terms such as “global” and “multinational.” While globalization was a multinational phenomenon, the role of American power in shaping and promoting globalization must be acknowledged.

Within The United Methodist Church in the United States, this era saw an increased interest in the church outside the United States. The balance between autonomy and international structural connection swung back in the direction of structural connection. The UMC absorbed churches in not only Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Burundi, as mentioned, but also eventually Cote d’Ivoire. In the 1990s, United Methodists began new mission work in other countries for the first time in almost 70 years. That work included post-Soviet Russia and the Baltics, as well as Southeast Asia and other areas of the world.

Along with this renewed appetite for international expansion came growing numbers of members in African branches of the church that had long been part of the UMC. These two trends led to a new discussion of the “worldwide nature of the church” and what it meant to be a “global” denomination, a conversation launched at the 1992 General Conference.

Prior to this conversation, in the 1980s, some structural changes were made to allow for greater equality between US bishops and bishops in the central conferences and to allow the various agencies of the denomination to work internationally. GBHEM was the first additional agency granted authority by General Conference to work outside the United States, in 1984, a move which led to the founding of Africa University in 1992.

More sweeping changes, including the creation of some sort of regional structure for the United States, were put forward multiple times in the course of this work on the “global” or “worldwide” nature of the church. The 2008 General Conference, the same one that accepted Cote d’Ivoire into the UMC, adopted a series of amendments that would have accomplished such a restructuring, but the amendments were voted down at the annual conference level. Conservatives stoked fears that such a restructuring would allow for recognition of gay clergy in the United States, and such fears doomed the amendments.

As the number of missionaries declined and as funding shifted to prioritize the central conferences that continued in structural relationship with United Methodists in the United States, connections with autonomous churches atrophied. Autonomous churches were not absent from conversations about the worldwide nature of the church, but the focus of the conversation was clearly on the structural relationship between the church in the United States and the church in the central conferences.

As in previous eras, alongside these concerns for structural relationships, other means of connection fostered international relationships as well. As the boards became more international, they began to include United Methodists from more regions of the world in their membership.

Migration continued to be an important factor of connection and a key one in launching mission in Southeast Asia. The number of long-term missionaries declined, but the number of short-term mission participants from the United States skyrocketed, capitalizing on faster, cheaper, easier travel. Students from around the world continued to study in the United States, and new educational ventures such as Africa University and the Methodist e-Academy brought together students from across Africa and Europe, respectively.

American, and to a lesser extent, European money continued to create forms of connection and cooperation, and these connections were increasingly directly between annual conferences or churches rather than mediated through the boards and agencies. Writings drawing from the new academic field of world Christianity became a new way for United Methodists in the United States to understand their fellow United Methodists from elsewhere.

For all this increased interest in the worldwide nature of the church and these new initiatives in connecting the church, the church did not make significant advances towards connection without control. There was increasing talk of mutuality and decolonization, but there were little structural changes in how annual conferences (the basic units of the church) related to one another.

While United Methodists worked with other, autonomous Methodist churches to establish a new autonomous church in Cambodia, this did not prompt a larger conversation about the nature or value of autonomy in the church. As scholar Darryl Stephens has argued, although the number of members involved were similar, the joining of Cote d’Ivoire to The United Methodist Church did not provoke the same sort of rethinking of structure as the 1968 merger that created The United Methodist Church. The church in Cote d’Ivoire was absorbed into the UMC; it did not negotiate a merger.

The United States continued to set the parameters in terms of structure, funding, program, and focus for the denomination, with other areas adapting, often in an unofficial manner. Fears persisted in the church that adaptation might go too far and allow freedoms that were opposed by majorities at the General Conference, and thus the General Conference, with its US-dominated membership and its legislative and judicial processes based on US models, continued to be the central decision-making body for almost all major issues.

Yet, burdened by highly conflictual questions from the American context that had no other venue in which to be debated, General Conference itself struggled to function effectively as a decision-making body for an increasingly multicultural, multilingual, and international body.

Thus, the era of globalization and world Christianity saw the church struggle anew with questions about local relevance and trans-local connection, with questions about relationship and structure, but these questions were never satisfactorily resolved. In this regard, this era was similar to those that came before it. Even satisfactory answers to questions about local relevance and trans-local connection would need to be renegotiated anew in each new era.

For three subsequent eras, The United Methodist Church and its predecessors have failed to really resolve such questions even within the context of that era. As we will talk more about in a few minutes, we are coming to a new era, and so the question remains: Will we do better in this new era than we have in the past?

Regionalization and Connectionalism: The Era of Political Independence and Church Autonomy

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian at the General Board of Global Ministries. It is the third in a five-part series based on a presentation by Dr. Scott to the Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

Questions of local relevance and trans-local connection and of connection and power within the church have played out for Methodists in three separate historical eras: the colonial mission era, the era of political independence and church autonomy, and the era of globalization and world Christianity.

The second era in which questions about local relevance and trans-local connection were fiercely debated was the era of political independence and church autonomy, beginning after World War II, but coming to its full force in the 1960s and early 1970s. In this era, the international structures—whether political or churchly—that had been established in the first era were critiqued as a form of dominance and, in some instances, dismantled.

In the secular context, this took the form of nationalism and decolonization leading to political independence for formerly colonized nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Leaders in politics and society critiqued the structures of European and American empires and the unjust exploitation and lack of self-determination that were a part of these structures.

The solution to this problem was seen as the creation of independent nations, a process that required developing a sense of nationhood within colonies, even when the boundary lines of those colonies cut across historic groupings of tribe and religion.

Thus, while nationalism rejected international connections through colonial systems, new nationalisms in the 1960s often bound people together across religion, culture, and ethnicity. Moreover, nationalist movements in one country drew inspiration from nationalist movements in other countries. There was an international edge to 1960s nationalism. While at times nationalism could result in violence or exclusion, commentators of the age spoke of “healthy” versus “unhealthy” forms of nationalism.

This push toward self-government was reflected in the church as well. Branches of Methodism outside the United States were not content to remain dominated by mostly American missionaries, an American mission board, American bishops, and an overwhelmingly American General Conference.

This same trend would impact British Methodism as well, along with other American expressions of Methodism such as the AME Church, AME Zion Church, Free Methodists, Wesleyan Church, and Nazarenes. The British responded to this movement by eventually granting autonomy to branches outside Britain associated with the British church’s mission agency. Other American denominations all made adjustments to their polities to ensure greater international equity within their structures.

For its part, the Methodist Church launched the Commission on the Status of Methodism Overseas, or COSMOS, as it was called. COSMOS was charged with rethinking the relationship between Methodists in the United States and those elsewhere around the world. Through several quadrennia of study and international conferences in Green Lake, WI in 1966 and Atlantic City, NJ in 1970, COSMOS explored models of international connection and responded to requests for autonomy by branches of Methodism outside the United States.

COSMOS considered several possibilities for international structure: national autonomy for all branches of the church, continued central conference status for churches outside the United States, the creation of a central conference for the United States with corresponding changes to General Conference, and the creation of a worldwide council of Methodist Churches.

Ultimately, only the first two possibilities—autonomy or central conference status—were pursued, and COSMOS recommended its own disbanding in 1972. The Methodist Church/EUB Church merger in 1968 took away attention from COSMOS’ work, and other polity possibilities were seen as too difficult and costly. The Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters is the successor to COSMOS.

When offered the choice of autonomy or central conference status, most branches of the church in Asia and all branches in Latin American requested autonomy from The Methodist Church or United Methodist Church between 1964 and 1980. For the Evangelical United Brethren tradition, autonomy and ecumenical merger were the expectation for branches outside the United States, though churches in Switzerland and Germany remained part of the newly created United Methodist Church in 1968.

In all countries, autonomy reflected a desire for greater local decision-making to ensure local relevance. In some countries, it also reflected a desire for greater ecumenical connection within that country. In all instances, conferences choosing autonomy were promised that connection with the UMC would continue after autonomy, both through the mission board and the bishops. The World Methodist Council also helped to foster on-going relationships between the newly autonomous churches and the remaining Methodist and then United Methodist Church.

While the focus of this time period was on questions of structure, including what autonomy meant for the ability to choose one’s own episcopal leadership and make decisions locally in one’s own conference, we must not forget other, more relational forms of connection that bound the church together.

As in the earlier era, missionaries, missionary writings, and mission funding continued as important forms of connection, especially after autonomy, though the number of missionaries deployed around the world began to decline, especially outside Africa. Students from outside the United States studying in the United States became an increasingly important form of international connection and relationship-building in this period, as did migrants to the United States following changes in US laws in 1965.

Theological exchange continued to happen through writings, including through the rise of new liberation and contextual theologies around the world. Such theological exchanges again illustrate the connection between means of local relevance and means of trans-local connection. Contextual theologies were developed for the sake of local relevance, but they also generated a great deal of international interest and discussion.

Despite such innovations in maintaining connection and local relevance, the failure of The Methodist Church and subsequently The United Methodist Church to really make changes to its structures of connection meant that, as in the earlier era, the church continued to be characterized by US dominance. Formal, structural connection meant control by US United Methodists. The General Conference, Judicial Council, and Council of Bishops all continued to be controlled by US Americans. The United States continued to set the pattern and the agenda for the denomination, and the church in other areas could perhaps adapt or adjust as they saw fit.

Central conferences did slowly win increased powers of adaptation, but the range of officially recognized adaptation was still small. Moreover, the church continued to operate with a center-periphery style of thinking in which the church in the United States was the center, and all other branches were peripheral.

The next post will look at the era of globalization and world Christianity.

Regionalization and Connectionalism: The Colonial Mission Era

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian at the General Board of Global Ministries. It is the second in a five-part series based on a presentation by Dr. Scott to the Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries. 

In this and the next two posts, I want to lay out how questions of local relevance and trans-local connection and of connection and power within the church have played out for Methodists in three separate historical eras: the colonial mission era, the era of political independence and church autonomy, and the era of globalization and world Christianity.

The first era is the colonial mission era. This is the age, lasting from the early 19th century to the early 20th century, during which Methodism spread from North America to other places in the world, usually following the lines of secular colonial and commercial expansion.

European colonization of other parts of the globe stretches back to the late 15th century, but the period from the middle of the 19th century through the World Wars is often referred to as the period of “high” colonialism, the era in which Western colonialism achieved its furthest geographic spread and greatest degree of political and economic control over other lands.

Emblematic of this period of high colonialism was the “scramble for Africa,” the competition among European countries to control portions of the African continent, leading to the Berlin Conference in 1884-85, at which Europeans, without African input, agreed among themselves on how to partition Africa.

Of course, colonialism existed in Asia and Latin America as well, and indeed, European colonialism developed in these contexts earlier than it did in central Africa. And we must remember, too, that the United States entered the act of holding foreign colonies in 1898 with its victory in the Spanish-American War.

Along with the extension of European (and American) political control over other areas went the extension of Western economic networks. Often, political control and economic exploitation were deeply intertwined. This phenomenon of economic expansion was one in which the United States participated vigorously after its Civil War, especially in Latin America. As part of both colonialism and commercialism went the extension of various new technologies of transportation and communication: trains, steamships, telegraphs, and even postcards.

This was the context in which American Methodist missions began to spread, first to returned former slaves in West Africa, next to American businessmen in Latin America, then to immigrant homelands in Europe, and then to populous nations in Asia, and so on.

By 1919, when American Methodists from the North and the South celebrated the centenary of their mission agencies, Methodist churches had hundreds of missionaries and tens of thousands of converts in dozens of nations across five continents. Mission work included not only evangelism, but also education, healthcare, literacy, agriculture, and the promotion of democracy and Western culture. This wave of founding new branches of Methodism in new countries crested in the mid-1920s, when financial problems with mission fundraising and budgeting forced consolidation and retrenchment of mission efforts.

These missionaries organized their converts into new branches of their denominational structures, especially in the Methodist Episcopal Church and Methodist Episcopal Church, South. As mission historian Wade Crawford Barclay wrote, “There is no record of the Missionary Society having given instructions to their missionaries to transfer to their respective fields the exact pattern of church organization existing at home. It was assumed by all, without question, that this would be done.” That is, missionaries, mission executives, and bishops all assumed that connections across geography must include structural connections.

Nevertheless, founding new branches of the church in new geographic and cultural locations did raise questions about the process of trying to establish “the exact pattern of church organization existing at home.” How exactly should these new branches of the church relate to existing branches? What should be done if local conditions made some elements of the home pattern of church organization impractical, or even impossible? How could the church maintain connection—and often, control—over long distances that made travel and communication slow?

The answers that the church developed, slowly, through experimentation, and often outside the boundaries of existing polity, reflected the means of connection and local relevance that characterized the early church. Missionaries were a form of itinerants and the most important link in holding the various branches of the church together. They were not the only such link—migrants, traveling preachers, and even tourists also made connections across geographic regions of the church.

Nevertheless, missionaries were the most important such link, both in their own travel to the mission field and home for furloughs, and in their voluminous amount of writing. They wrote letters, newspaper articles, magazine articles, books, pamphlets, even calendars, and this volume of writing served to communicate about the home field to those they encountered around the world and to communicate about mission, including the lives and customs of people on the mission field, back to their friends, family, and supporters at home.

Often inspired by visits and letters from missionaries, church members in the United States (and Europe) in turn sent money to the mission field, both through denominational mission structures and directly through personal relationships with missionaries. This generosity underwrote the development of the church around the world, though it also often established long-standing traditions of dependence. Some mission leaders such as William Taylor attempted to cultivate self-support on the mission field, opting for local relevance instead of international financial connection.

As the church outside the United States grew, the structures of the church grew there as well, including both conferences and bishops. Annual conferences outside the United States were formed quite early, already in the 1830s, though initially in an adapted form as “missionary annual conferences.” Central conferences were added later in the 1880s, originally on the local initiative of missionaries in India, though eventually adopted into the regular practice and polity of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and carried over to successor denominations, including the UMC. Jurisdictions in The Methodist Church and The United Methodist Church were modeled in part on central conferences.

Questions about episcopal supervision and the availability of ordination also arose from the church outside the United States, first in Liberia and then elsewhere. This led to a variety of polity experiments in providing episcopal supervision, including travel by general superintendent bishops from the United States, missionary bishops limited to areas outside the United States, and general superintendent bishops appointed to live outside the United States. None of these arrangements were fully satisfactory to both areas of the church outside the United States and to decision-making centers of the church in the United States.

Several branches of the church outside the United States, starting with Japan in 1907 and continuing through Korea, Mexico, and Brazil in 1930, became autonomous churches, structurally separate from their parent denominational bodies, though still connected through missionaries, writings, and money. The desire to unite separate branches of Methodism, local political considerations, and, in the case of Brazil, disputes over episcopal supervision motivated these moves to autonomy. These developments, however, did not initiate a new wave of rethinking the relationship between autonomy and connection. Instead, with the 1939 merger of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and Methodist Protestant Church, the international polity of the new Methodist Church took on a settled character.

In the attempt to ensure both local relevance and trans-local connection, the Methodist churches of this era tended to emphasize trans-local connection over local relevance. Moreover, this was usually connection as a form of control by those in the United States, who in this era exercised dominance over other branches of the church, especially those in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Methodists in the United States set the standards, and others were occasionally allowed to adapt those standards to a greater or lesser degree. But Methodists in the United States were slow to recognize the need to adapt the practices of the church to ensure local relevance outside the United States.

When adaptation did happen, it usually did so through American missionaries taking initiative outside the regular system of polity, and even American missionaries were often suspicious of local control by native leaders. American Methodists in this era spread the gospel to others around the world, but the relationships and structures they created to do so stressed connection as control instead of connection as an aid to local relevance.

The next post will look at the era of political independence and church autonomy.

Regionalization and Connectionalism: The Early Church

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian at the General Board of Global Ministries. It is the first in a five-part series based on a presentation by Dr. Scott to the Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

The Book of Discipline introduces the Standing Committee thus: “Section XVI. Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters, ¶2201. General Provisions¬¬--1. The General Conference recognizes the differences in conditions that exist in various areas of the world and the changes taking place in those areas…” This introduction raises two questions: How should we understand “the differences in conditions that exist in various areas of the world”? And, how should we understand “the changes taking place in those areas”?

This series of posts will be talking about regionalization, or how the church responds to “the differences in conditions that exist in various areas of the world,” especially as this practice is shaped by “the changes taking place in those areas” – that is, current events within and beyond the church.

Questions about regionalization in today’s United Methodist Church connect to two related problems in church history that go back to the early years of Christianity: How should Christians uphold the local relevance of the church and the unity of the church (or, we might say, connections among local churches) amid cultural and regional diversity? And, how should Christians preserve connection among churches in a way that avoids control of the weaker by the more powerful?

Related to the question about local relevance and trans-local connection, Andrew Walls wrote about the “indigenizing principle,” that impulse in Christianity which pushes Christians to relate to their surroundings, and the “pilgrim principle,” that impulse in Christianity that reminds Christians that they are part of something broader than their local surroundings. For Walls, these two principles stood in dialectic tension with one other and have since the early days of the church.

Indeed, while we often think of the early church in idealized terms, it was a church with a great deal of cultural diversity, which mapped onto geography and theology. There were Jews from Judea and from the Jewish diaspora in Jerusalem at Pentecost, Jewish and Gentile believers in the time of Paul, Greek-speaking and Latin-speaking theologians among the so-called “Church Fathers,” and five major episcopal sees by the fifth century, each leading a branch of the church. Each of these geographic differences reflected varying cultural, linguistic, and theological traditions.

Amid this cultural, linguistic, and theological diversity, how did the church maintain its local relevance and its broader connection? First, it must be said that diversity helped ensure local relevance. Diversity meant that believers in different locations could not only worship God in their own languages but also bring their own cultural traditions to their practice of Christianity and use the resources of theology to speak to the issues around them.

At the same time, there were various means of unity that connected these local or regional expressions of unity with one another. I will mention five, and I will return to these five means of connection throughout my posts.

The first means of connection is itinerants, those who travel. Obviously, Paul and other early missionaries did much to knit the very early church together. Later, itinerant teachers and eventually monks would take up similar tasks of traveling from one region to others to build up the church. Migrants, either temporary or permanent, also created linkages among regions.

We know Paul not only from his travels but his letters, which point to another form of linkage: writings, whether these be letters or the exchange of theological essays. Writing allows people to be in conversation with one another, even when not face-to-face.

Money also connected Christians across cultural and geographic differences. Paul’s collection from among the Gentile churches for the poor of the Jewish church in Jerusalem is the most notable instance, but it gets at something important: money can be a form of connection and potentially a way of uniting different Christian groups.

As the church continued to develop, bishops became important symbols of the unity of the church, its connection across geography. Through their collegial recognition of one another, bishops recognized that their churches were not merely local institutions but part of a broader community of faith.
Eventually, the church began to call together bishops and theologians for church councils, first on local or regional bases, and eventually on a much broader basis starting with the council of Nicaea in the fourth century.

Interestingly, these means of connection could also be means of ensuring local relevance. Itinerants could help each church they visited speak directly to its setting, as Paul did at the Areopagus. Paul’s writings were writings to specific communities, intended to help those communities address specific issues in their lives of faith. Money was shared not only across churches, but at least occasionally among the rich and poor within local church communities. Bishops not only upheld the unity of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church throughout the world, but also worked to ensure the unity of the church within the local areas under their supervision by mediating a host of day-to-day conflicts. And while we think of the grand ecumenical councils, councils happened in local areas as well. Thus, means of upholding the connection of the church may also be means of upholding the local relevance of the church.

While these five means of connection and local relevance have recurred throughout church history, there is no one permanent or normative solution to the question of how to ensure both local relevance and trans-local connection. This is a question that each generation must answer for itself, a driving tension throughout church history.

The second question I raised—How should Christians preserve connection in a way that avoids control of the weaker by the stronger?—is deeply related to the first question about relevance and connection. Too often, connection has been achieved by the exercise of power. The more powerful dominate those with less power, forcing them into unity on their terms.

In this way, questions about relevance and connection are deeply tied to the secular settings of the church. We may think, of course, relevance is about relating the church to its secular setting. But we must be aware of how secular power also impacts the practices of unity in the church.

We see examples here in the early church as well. Cultural chauvinism drove the Judaizers to try to insist that Christian unity be achieved through the imposition of Jewish practices onto Gentile believers. Economic power in the church in Corinth turned the practice of Holy Communion, perhaps the deepest expression of the unity of the church, into an exercise of class distinction. And political empire under Constantine ensured that the edicts of the Council of Nicaea were promulgated not just as teachings but with the force of the state.

Thus, as we consider how relevance and unity are to be achieved together, we must pay attention to how cultural, economic, and political power—in the church and in the world—influence the development of the church itself.

One last framing comment is in order. Note that connection or unity can be understood in various ways. For most of the early church, the concern was with spiritual unity, that is, mutual recognition of one another as siblings in Christ and fellow members of Christ’s body, the church.

With the gradual development of the hierarchy of the church, alongside this concern for the spiritual unity of the church arose a concern for the structural unity of the church – that is, not only recognizing one another as fellow members of the body of Christ in a spiritual sense, but recognizing one another as belonging to the same church organization or structure.

In modern times, the rise of the concept of denomination as a means for understanding the nature of Protestant churches tends to put the emphasis of the question of unity on structural or organizational considerations, since denominations are themselves organizations. This has implications not only for the connection of the church, but for the relevance of the church as well, since structure brings with it questions of authority and decision-making, which have an impact on relevance.

But this structural side of questions of connection and relevance is only one side. When I discussed the means of connection and relevance, at least two of them—itinerants and writings—are largely relational and not structural. Money may be an expression of either structure or relationship. We must keep this relational dimension to the questions of relevance and connection in mind.

In the remaining posts in this series, I will look at how these dynamics played out in the history of Methodism and continue to play out in the church today.