The Filipino UMC Link Between Revival, Unity, and Mission

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology at the General Board of Global Ministries. 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 a previous post, I recounted the story of the Lito Tangonan-led split in the Philippines UMC in the early 2010s. I argued that politically this split has made those in the UMC more committed to the global church and more averse to the possibility of further splits in the UMC in the Philippines.

Yet there has also been a significant theological development that has come out of the aftermath of the Tangonan split. For the Philippines UMC, revival, unity, and mission go together. One can best see the connection between these three theological concepts in the Revive events held in the Philippines.

The first Revive event was held in November 2012. It was a revival gathering of 8,000 United Methodists from across the Philippines. It was organized by lay Methodists, especially retired Philippines Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato Puno.

The event was intended as a direct response to the Tangonan split. Puno referred to the event as an attempt to heal “our wounded church,” a reference to wounds incurred during the split.

The event also came just two weeks before the Philippines Central Conference met to elect bishops. 16 out of the 26 candidates for episcopal election spoke at the event. I am sure that part of the reason for holding a revival and prayer meeting at which the episcopal candidates spoke was to ensure that the Spirit would guide delegates two weeks later in making good choices of episcopal leaders, thereby avoiding another harmful saga like that set off by Tangonan’s election four years earlier.

The event drew on and sought to reignite Filipino Methodist holiness piety, which have its roots in a holiness theology shared among the Philippines and the US in the early 20th century, one that has proven to be more enduring in the Philippines than in the US. Yet in addition to the focus on holiness, there was also a focus on unity, an important theme for an event organized to respond to the Tangonan split. American speaker Scott Kelso, one of the main presenters, spoke about “praying for healing and unity.”

Unity continued to be a main focus for Revive 2, held in November 2016, just before the next meeting of the Philippines Central Conference. That event was even more popular than the first, drawing 10,000 Filipino United Methodists, including participants from across the Filipino theological spectrum. The theme for Revive 2 was “Go in Faith, Go in Power, Go in Unity,” making even clearer the connection for Filipino United Methodists between revival, unity, and mission.

Reynato Puno was again a major organizer of the event, and he again connected it to unity in the wake of the Tangonan split. In a UMNS interview for the 2016 event, he explained the origins of the event in 2012 by saying, “Some of the churches were breaking away because of some issues not being reasonably resolved. As laymen, we thought that the proper response to the crisis was to have a revival.”

And although the church was past the worst of the split in 2016, the issue had by no means faded from memory. In testimonies by current bishops shown at the revival, Bishop Rudy Juan, then bishop of the Manila Episcopal Area, mentions the AIMP split in his description of the challenges and goals in the work of his episcopal area (see minute 13).

Nor was Puno the only one to make the connection between revival and unity. Several videos were produced for the event, including interviews with retired Filipino bishops. The opening video for the event includes several retired bishops speaking of the connection between revival, unity, mission, and evangelism.

A history of the UMC in the Philippines produced for the event (worth a watch in its own right) concludes with remarks by retired Bishop Soriano linking unity, revival, and mission. In those remarks, he specifically mentions the debate over sexuality as an issue of disagreement, but one that need not preclude unity for the sake of mission.

Moreover, there is evidence that this theological linking of revival, mission, and unity has continued to have currency among Filipino (and Filipino-American) United Methodists since the Revive events. In announcing the formation of the Global Filipino United Methodists Movement earlier this year, Rev. Edgar De Jesus again made the connection between revival, unity, and mission, saying “This [mission] movement is a wakeup call to the people called Methodists to keep the main thing the main thing — the centrality of our faith in Jesus Christ, the humble servant and the risen one, who draws us into profound community with one another in love and unity.”

To grasp the significance for the UMC connection as a whole of this linking of revival, unity, and mission by Filipinos, consider some of the American alternatives.

For American centrists, there is a strong link between unity and mission, but that linkage typically lacks the inclusion of revival. Thus, unity is primarily understood in structural terms – we as United Methodists are united because we are part of one organization. For Filipinos, however, unity has less of structural connotation and more of a spiritual one – we are united because of our connection in Christ and our love for one another. That spiritual dimension to unity is evident in de Jesus’ quote above.

For American traditionalists, there is a strong link between revival and mission, but instead of these two being linked to unity, they are linked to purity. American traditionalists believe that revival will lead to mission, especially in the form of evangelism. But American traditionalists believe that for such revival to occur, the church must be pure, especially pure in its teachings around sexuality, which is to say, of one mind about those teachings. For American traditionalists, purity leads to spiritual power, whereas for Filipinos, unity with one another leads to spiritual power.

American progressives are less likely to use language of revival and mission, though they do have a vision of a future church where cherished spiritual values are in greater abundance (revival) and in which the church has an impact on social issues in the world around it (mission). They are, however, often antagonistic to language of unity, seeing it as a term used to justify continued oppression. It is clear that for progressives, as for traditionalists, purity is the theological virtue that will lead to the church they want, not unity. For progressives, this purity means a church that is pure from anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

There are also different understandings of mission among American centrists, American traditionalists, American progressives, and Filipinos. Centrists are most likely to think in terms of charity, traditionalists in terms of evangelism, and progressives in terms of social justice. Filipinos are more likely to have a wholistic view of mission which encompasses all three, since all three have been important to the UMC in the Philippines, not just through separate constituencies, but through overlapping concern.

Thus, the Philippines again represents a different starting point from which to think about the nature of the global church, one that could potentially lead to different conclusions about the future of that global church, were others willing to listen to Filipino theology and history and see where thinking alongside them might lead.

Wesley Didn't Say It

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

Today, I'm joining in the Methodist blogosphere past-time of debunking John Wesley quotes. Within the last couple of years, I have seen increased used of a quote attributed to John Wesley that reads, “I continue to dream and pray about a revival of holiness in our day that moves forth in mission and creates authentic community in which each person can be unleashed through the empowerment of the Spirit to fulfill God's creational intentions.” The problem with this quote? Wesley didn't say it.

The quote appears to come from a book entitled, How To Pray: The Best of John Wesley on Prayer, where it is attributed to Wesley. I'm not sure where the editor or compiler of this book came up with this quote, but it is false to say it came from Wesley.

First off, it should be noted that the language of this quote is very modern. This can be documented with Google Books' Ngram tool. According to the Ngram, use of the word "unleashed" doesn't start to grow until the 1900s. The phrase "authentic community" does not start to appear in the English language until the mid-1960s. And the word "empowerment" is even more recent, not catching on until the 1980s. Certainly the language doesn't fit an 18th century Britishman.

Does this quote reflect sentiments in keeping with John Wesley? Yes and no.

Certainly, Wesley did pray for a revival of holiness in his day. In an authentic quote, Wesley mused, "Q. What may we reasonably believe to be God's design in raising up the Preachers called Methodists? A. To reform the nation and, in particular, the Church; to spread scriptural holiness over the land." For Wesley, the whole point of Methodism was a revival of holiness.

As for whether Wesley expected that revival to "move forth in mission," it depends on how one understands mission. Wesley did expect that scriptural holiness would show forth in works of mercy that include caring for the poor, sick, and imprisoned in Methodists' local settings. But as Monday's post on Thomas Coke mentioned, other than his ill-fated trip to Georgia, Wesley wasn't very interested in foreign mission. He was focused on the revival of holiness in the British Isles.

Would Wesley have expected his holiness revival to "create authentic community in which each person can be unleashed through the empowerment of the Spirit to fulfill God's creational intentions"? That's a bit harder to say, because not only is the language contemporary, some of the concepts behind it is as well. Wesley did believe that Christian fellowship, or community, was an necessary means to grow in holiness. His theology did give a significant role to the work of the Spirit in the process of sanctification. Wesley did believe that the process of sanctification, or growth in holiness, restored people to the image of God in which they had been created and allowed them to live in the way that God had created them to do before sin crippled their ability to do so.

At its best, then, this quote is mostly congruent with John Wesley's theology and interests in language that is not at all congruent with his style. Rather than use this quote, Methodists would be better off using Wesley's quote about "spead[ing] scriptural holiness" to talk about Wesley's theology and vision for early Methodism and using Thomas Coke when they want to talk about international mission and the global church.

Recommended Reading: Oxford Institute of Methodist Theological Studies

This week, dozens of Methodist scholars and leaders from around the world are in Oxford, England, for the Oxford Institute of Methodist Theological Studies. This conference, held once every five years, is a major event in the academic life of global Methodism.

The theme for this meeting is "“THY GRACE RESTORE, THY WORK REVIVE”: Revival, Reform, and Revolution in Global Methodism." A description of that theme is available on the webpage for this year's meeting.

The theme is interpreted in ten different "working groups," including ones on topics of interest to this blog such as mission and evangelism, history, and interreligious studies. Descriptions of how that theme is interpreted in each of these working groups are available here.

In addition, the Institute includes a number of keynote addresses for all participants. The names of presenters for these keynotes are available on the Institute schedule.

For those who are interested in more, about the Oxford Institute, archives of previous meetings are available on the website. Moreover, GBHEM just published a book containing papers from the previous Oxford Institute meeting in 2013.