And like that, the 50th anniversary came and went without fanfare. April 23, 2018, marked 50 years of The United Methodist Church, a union that meant a great deal to a small amount of people in the tumult of 1968, where the world at large seemed to be coming apart at the seams. T0 that small group of people, it was a witness that coming together was possible, that the church was stronger together, that we grow in Christ-likeness when we come to table with people unlike us.
For the majority of us who don’t go to General Conference or read the literature put out by Methodist sub-groups, it feels like we’re stuck between two bibles. On one extreme you’ve got this insistence that everyone has always read the Bible only one way, the “orthodox” way, and there’s really no room for discussion. On the other extreme, it feels like the Bible is just an outdated book that isn’t super useful to our post-modern problems. So you get this inability to talk to one another, this “You’re my enemy because your opinion about the bible is not mine.”
I draw a comic about two dudes that started a movement in the 1700’s, and it’s weird to think that people are actually ready to divide property and draw lines between friends over who has the truest understanding of John Wesley and the Bible. Wesley’s Plain Account of The People Called Methodists was his early explanation of what it was that set apart the Christians in his movement. I like the way Rev. Ivan Tan summarizes Wesley here:
The Methodists wanted to share with others what “true Christianity was, and to persuade them to embrace it.” By true Christianity they meant having the mind of Christ evidenced by inward righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit; being repentant towards God and having faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; being justified freely by his grace; and experiencing a “taste of heaven,” i.e. being holy and happy, treading down sin and fear, and sitting in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus… No one could live out their faith by themselves. (Read the full summary here: asburyseminary.edu)
Wesley and his followers took their faith seriously, and seriously attempted to hold together the inward/personal transformation with the outward/social transformation of a community committed to discipleship. Belief and doctrine matter, but everyone must acknowledge that human understanding is fallible. While we hold tightly to our beliefs, we also hold on loosely enough to admit that our human understanding of doctrine should not be mistaken to be the truth itself. It was very important for Wesley that faith lead to action, and therefore, certainty of dogma was not much use to the believer if it did not lead to transformed living. (Read Randy Maddox’s brilliant academic assessment called, “John Wesley on Theological Integrity).
It’s really difficult to take a man’s lifelong evolution of thought and say that your subgroup of Methodism has full claim to Wesleyan orthodoxy, and that the other group (which believes that they better understand what Wesley really meant) somehow just doesn’t get it at all. We’re all fallible. Wesley himself was fallible. No one said keeping a denomination together would be easy. The truth is, society at large is indifferent to what happens in the church…any church. Society at large doesn’t care much about which group has grasped the truest form of Wesleyanism.
And that can be freeing. Because while it feels like SO MUCH IS ON THE LINE from the inside of The United Methodist Church and The Way Forward Commission, the reality is, God’s Kingdom endures, and the Holy Spirit will continue to awaken disciples. We’ll continue to get it wrong sometimes and right other times. I admit I would like to sit at table fellowship with Christians who I think just get it wrong, not to judge that I have more Holy Spirit than them, but to better appreciate and understand how the Holy Spirit is truly alive in them.
Maybe then I’ll see a little bit better my own fallibility. Maybe if we all admit to our own fallibility, we’ll get a clearer picture of Christ together than apart.