"Holy Jumpers" to the End

This is my third and final installment reviewing Bill Kostlevy's book called Holy Jumpers: Evangelicals and Radicals in Progressive Era America. Here are the first and second installments. Keith Drury and Bob Black were reading through the book, and Dave Ward and I joined Keith for some lunches to discuss it.

1. The last three chapters of the book were somewhat sad, as we watched this powerful phenomenon of the Metropolitan Church of America (MCA) slowly unravel and wither away. At the same time, we continue to see that it was right there in the mix as some of the most significant Christian movements of the twentieth century were forming.

One of the founders, E. L. Harvey, had been a successful businessman and owner of eleven hotels in the Chicago area. But he came to believe that God demanded Christians to sell all their property if they were to be true Christians. I've already mentioned that this was the point of entire sanctification for Harvey and his wife. He did not "get the victory" until he sold all his hotels and moved onto the Chicago campground.

Of course he believed that Jesus was coming back to earth any day, and this played a significant role in this notion that only those who sold everything could make it to heaven. In about 1922, the debt of the MCA community had risen to about $200,000 (it apparently peeked at $300,000). Harvey was convinced that the debt would be irrelevant because of the return of Christ.

Harvey even kiboshed a great money making/sustaining venture that Frank Messenger had started. Messenger is the one who had once managed the textile industry of North Grosvenor, Connecticut. The MCA was putting out a very successful Scripture Text Calendar, along with its songbooks and magazine, The Burning Bush.

But Harvey came to see the calendar in particular as a money-making venture and in 1913 killed the very thing that might have kept the MCA afloat.

Harvey had a heart attack while preaching in 1922 and would be dead by 1926. Messenger meanwhile became a Nazarene and continued the Scripture calendar elsewhere. The company still exists today in Auburn, Indiana, primarily serving the funeral industry.

He seems to have been a warm-hearted, well-intentioned man. He was just theologically ignorant. The emotion burned brightly for a moment, then it burned out.

2. Messenger's administrative skill kept this communal group going for a while. Keith and I both agree that the real turning point of the group was in 1906 when they left Chicago and set up a commune in Waukesha, Wisconsin. In the old Fountain Spring House, the people lived and worked in common. No one took a wage, and the community sent out evangelists to speak to anyone who asked.

But with the financial woes, the pressure to get people to sell all their property and give it to the community became a distraction. Intentions were good--they truly believed people should sell their farms and move into the community. But family members saw these evangelists as preying on old people and trying to take their farms away from them.

Basically, socialism is almost always a complete failure. It's noble. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." It sounds very Christ-like indeed. It just doesn't work. The MCA is yet another testimony to its utter bankruptcy as an economic system. (Dave Ward called it a Ponzi scheme.)

3. Money increasingly became the central preoccupation of the community, as it became overcrowded with individuals, many of whom could not give anything back. In 1925, W. S. Hitchcock took over to fix the situation.

At least from the description in the book, I don't like the man. Mind you, he had eliminated the community's debt by the early 1930s, in the middle of the Great Depression. That's no mean feat! And of course E. L. Harvey and Duke Farson were ultimately blame for moving the community in a property-less direction in the first place.

Farson went belly up in 1918 because his money was in municipal bonds and the war shifted the market to war bonds. As he tried to make internal changes in Wakesha, the Farsons blocked him and he was expelled. He started a group that died with him in LA in 1929.

Hitchcock did what no doubt needed to be done. He kicked a lot of people out of the commune. What is so disturbing about this move is the fact that some of these were old people who had been convinced God wanted them to sell all their property, give it to the MCA, and then come live in Wakesha. Instead they ended their lives in public homes for the aged.

Hitchcock sent out every able bodied person to go door to door, not as evangelists, but as a sales force. But what I find most detestable about this man is that he humiliated the leaders who had been willing to give everything up for the community. He made the economic troubles of the community a spiritual problem for which they needed to repent rather than what it was--economic and theological ignorance. One leader walked around the service with a teapot on his head.

It had a curious effect. It energized the children of the leaders. High school youths who had been a growing problem were now sold on the mission of the MCA. That's about the only good thing I could see in this man, and that was despite his seeming vileness.

4. Messenger ended up joining the Nazarenes. The Nazarenes feature heavily in these last chapters. They come across as the sane holiness denomination and one of the fastest growing Protestant churches of the day. One of the secrets to IWU's growth is that it hit distance education at just the right time. I wonder if the Nazarenes hit these holiness revivals at just the right time.

They were middle of the road enough to gather the reasonable, leaving these other kooky groups. They were out west and so somewhat removed from these intrigues. And they were perfectly okay with being a denomination for a decade before WW1 hit, two decades before the Great Depression.

The Nazarenes were the targets of a good deal of The Burning Bush's wrath in the teens. Messenger, interestingly enough, would end up setting up the Nazarene pension plan, despite the fact that he had mocked insurance and such things when he was part of the MCA.

The MCA mocked the Nazarenes for allowing the "innocent party" in a divorce to remarry. They believed you were married in God's eyes for life to the first person you married. So even if your spouse divorced you and remarried someone else, if you then remarried, you would commit adultery every time you had sex. You were expected to remain celibate for the rest of your life. This is a position that I have heard even within my lifetime.

The MCA also mocked the Nazarenes and many others on tithing. Because they believed in giving everything to the Lord literally by selling all your possessions and becoming part of their end times community, tithing wasn't giving enough. Under Hitchcock, of course, they would adopt tithing, a tenth, as the least you should give.

There is some fun history on tithing in chapter 6. The practice did not enter American Christianity until after the Civil War as America shifted from a trade economy to a monetary society. This was also, I believe, part of a wave of biblical interpretation that considered Old Testament law as more or less binding on Christians just as much as New Testament instruction. The importance of keeping the Sabbath is another example of this hermeneutical wave.

When I was at SWU in college, churches in the southeast could ask for a team of ministry students to come sing and preach for them. I don't know how the funding worked, whether the church had to pay for gas and lodging or whether the school paid for it. But it was truly one of the highlights of my college days.

I remember one Sunday that a church asked for someone to come preach on tithing from the New Testament, and I was the one sent to preach. I quickly realized that the only text that really mentions a tithe in the NT is in Matthew 23:23 where Jesus commends the Pharisees for tithing their spices but then condemns them for missing the weightier parts of the Law. So you can imagine how difficult a sermon that was!

Tithing was controversial when it was introduced, but those churches that adopted it as a practice found themselves on a much surer financial basis than those that didn't, despite the fact that the NT never indicates that it is part of the new covenant.

5. We also get in these chapters the birth of tongues in America and the Azusa Street revivals. Interestingly enough, both the holiness movement and the MCA intersect with its beginnings (see also Don Dayton's work here). The real spark behind the Azusa Street revivals was a man named William Seymour.

He was an African-American who had studied at God's Bible School and then had gone out to California, stopping on the way at the Pillar of Fire community in Denver. Denver is where Alma White had ended up after she split with the MCA in 1906.

An aside here that I haven't fully managed to work in. These were truly communities where women were fully spiritual leaders. These were in many cases communities where African-Americans could play full spiritual role alongside those of European descent. These were truly egalitarian movements, truly progressive movements. These were radicals.

I want to mention also after last week that God's Bible School is alive and well, probably doing better than it ever has. God's Revivalist is still being published even after all these years.

6. The MCA had dispatched A. G. Garr to LA to work there. But when that work entered difficult waters, Garr closed the doors and sent his congregation to the mission on Azusa Street, where Seymour was preaching that the Acts 2 church included speaking in other languages. By then, tongues had already begun to take place but was not in full force yet. It was a fully integrated experience at that time, blacks and whites worshiping together, with several of the blacks speaking in tongues. The founder of COGIC was part of those days.

Farson had ordered Garr not to go to the mission without permission, but Garr ignored and in 1906 became one of the first white people at the mission to speak in tongues. Kostlevy wonders if the speaking had actually plateaued at that time and if, in effect, the addition of the new MCA worshipers rekindled the fire that would not stop until the whole world was ablaze with Pentecostalism.

Garr himself was convinced that he was speaking in an Indian or Chinese language. But when he actually arrived in India, apparently not. His presence in northern India proved to have a very negative attitude toward tongues in the MCA community there. Eventually he would reinterpret the experience as a heavenly language rather than an earthly one.

Of course the personal dynamics between Farson and Garr led to The Burning Bush going inflammatory, and one wonders if the rest of the holiness movement was poisoned against tongues as a result. It has only been in the last couple decades that holiness churches have even begun to consider the possibility that their members might privately speak in tongues at home.

7. Healing was a major part of the holiness movement at the turn of the century and we still believe in it on paper. And of course it continues to be a major element of the Pentecostal movement to this day. I hope you can see that Pentecostalism grew out of these same waters of the holiness movement.

The MCA did not believe in medicine. Medicine was seen as contrary to faith. There is a story in these chapters about two men who went to India as missionaries. One was secretly inoculated against smallpox, the other wasn't. The one who wasn't inoculated died. The other one didn't.

8. The MCA petered out. Hitchcock was removed as president in 1950. In 1956 it sold its Waukesha property. The last MCA church in North America sold its building in 2004. But there are still perhaps as many as 50,000 members still in India. There are some 1600 members in Africa and twenty churches still in Mexico.

When I was a boy, Arthur Bray was pastor of the Brooksville Wesleyan Church in Florida. Little did I know his story at the time. He was one of those youths who dedicated their life to God under Hitchcock. His father was one of those leaders who went on evangelistic missions teaching people that they needed to give everything they had to the Lord.

Arthur became a Wesleyan Methodist in 1941, and was president of the Illinois conference from 1950 to 1968. His son Don was Secretary of World Missions for The Wesleyan Church for many years, and his son John just retired from pastoring one of the largest churches in The Wesleyan Church.

Ruled out of Oord-er

Yesterday, Northwest Nazarene confirmed its decision to let Thomas Oord go. My initial post on this situation is here. Tom has recorded and posted a civil response here and his video version here.

1. I have greatly mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I suspect Dr. Oord could win a lawsuit against NNU. It is overwhelmingly clear to any fair-minded person that this lay off is for ideological reasons rather than NNU's economic situation. And given that Kevin Timpe is leaving for Calvin, there is a theology/philosophy spot open anyway. In short, this is exactly why tenure was invented and about the only thing it is actually good for.

2. On the other hand, I sympathize with the board and administration, because having professors that are radical for their clientele is not good for a desired trajectory or potentially for business. This may seem Cro-Magnon to say, but universities do have to have students to stay open, and what parents think of a university is a significant factor in whether you have students.

Yes, I like to think of universities as "liberating" the minds of youth. Yes, I see universities as one of the best hopes for the future of Western civilization.

But there is a balancing act here. Woody Allen once wrote, "If it bends, it's funny. If it breaks, it's not." The same might be said of a "niche" educational institution such as Christian colleges are. You can stretch students and their parents will tolerate some stretching if it is within tolerable limits. But there is also a break point, where faculty are just not mission fit and "bad for business."

Most of the time, truth is not this objectively obvious thing. Those who think all universities should just hire the best scholars are several decades behind the curve. If postmodernism is good for anything, it has shown us that there is no such thing as the Spock-like, objective scholar. This is especially the case in the liberal arts and subjects like theology.

3. Who a university hires sets a trajectory not only for the university but for generations of students. I'll use Dr. Martin at IWU as an example. His thinking had significant elements of Reformed epistemology to them, IMO. As a Wesleyan I didn't like it, even though he was a godly man, a great professor, and an incredible mentor.

He had an immense impact on generations of IWU students. I sometimes hear his voice even in Steve Deneff's preaching (truth is revealed rather than discovered). Who a university hires can have an immense impact on generations, especially at small colleges, especially when they are forming the leaders of a denomination.

So you think of the fact that open theism seems very prevalent in the Nazarene Church. Why is that? Is it not because there are a number of influential Nazarene professors who teach it? Again, I don't think open theism is the boogie man. As heresies go, I put it in the category of heresy-light, the kind that most of us have rattling around somewhere in our thinking.

So I feel for the board and administration in that sense. Tom is obviously a great guy and a great professor, but they very likely see him as a bad influence on the denomination. This is why it is essential to hire the right people to teach on the front end.

4. But lastly and mostly, I feel for Tom and the faculty at NNU. Here is one of the Nazarene church's best scholars and brightest minds. One model for a university is as a place where experts on particular topics push the boundaries of knowledge and understanding on that topic. In some cases, a university is a place where the brightest minds of a particular generation become masters of truth.

But there are other models that are also legitimate and more dominant for obvious reasons. There's the model of college as a place to learn a skill to get a job. There's college as a place for students to be formed according to the particular virtues and ideology of a particular group. Christian colleges tend to fall especially in this last "formational" category, IMO.

Most professors unthinkingly assume that their role is the first one--to pursue the bounds of knowledge and enlighten students. By contrast, parents (especially at Christian colleges) assume that the point of the college is the last two--to form students in some particular Christian set of ideas and values and to equip them to get a job.

Of course the ideological pinch is also present at secular institutions, but with different boundaries. There are boundaries you just can't push there either, just different ones. And social media is lynching secular professors these days too.

The leadership of NNU has soundly located it yesterday in the formation/vocation camp with this decision, not the research/push the bounds of truth camp. They've implicitly said, "Send your kids here to be formed along traditional Nazarene lines." They've rejected, "Send your kids here to be cutting edge thinkers." I accept this decision as the nature of the game, even if it saddens me.

5. So its just a bad situation all around. Tom is an excellent thinker and professor. He should be teaching somewhere. I was hoping maybe United in Dayton would hire him, since Jason Vickers is leaving there for Asbury Memphis. (nudge, nudge) I think there are students who would go to a particular graduate school just to study with him (including a LOT of angry young Nazarenes right now).

The world needs thinkers who push the boundaries. They just need to be at the right schools. They need to be at places where it's okay to push their particular boundaries of choice.

RIP: Nazarene Publishing House

News is slowly trickling out about the shocking demise of Nazarene Publishing House (NPH) yesterday. Here are some articles:

• Earlier rumblings
• Background
• Taken over by Nazarene Board of General Superintendents
• Building emptied

At the center of the controversy seems to be a "gift" to NPH by the previous president of the publishing house elected in 2012. He did not seek re-election earlier this year in February, but the strong impression I get is that this was polite speak for "don't even think of seeking re-election because you don't stand a chance."

It looks like this "gift" in particular involved about 1.4 million dollars of debt and a commitment to pay $36,000 a month for the "gift" property. So the Kansas City Star compares the gift to the Trojan horse of Homeric fame.

The rumor is that all the employees were given a month's notice and varied severance packages. VERY sad for them by all appearances. I hope the Nazarenes will rally around these individuals. The ones I know are really good people.

Lessons:
1. I'm reminded of something said to me in relation to academic institutions about a year ago. In this climate, one false move can take a solid institution and tank it. NPH was not on good financial ground anyway but this seems to illustrate the point. The money apparently runs out by the beginning of next year.

2. Everyone knows that the traditional way of doing publishing business is pretty much over. Church publishers need to shift to a print-on-demand model with mostly outsourced editing. I sense that drastic measures were needed to turn NPH around anyway, even if they hadn't been torpedoed. Now this is REALLY drastic. The new model is, "has to break even with only one copy."

Thoughts:
1. First, a lament. NPH has been the flagship for resources in the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition. The Beacon Hill commentary series is the most significant commentary series for the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition by far, indeed practically the only one. The Nazarenes are the ones who produced the Wileys and their most significant successors in theology. They are pretty much the last man standing with Wesleyan-Arminian Sunday School literature.

Although I've always hated to admit it, NPH is really the only Wesleyan-Arminian contender against the Calvinist hegemony of Christian publishing. They are about the only ones putting out serious Wesleyan-Arminian scholarship. [However, I might add that I am involved with a project that seems likely to happen and will be dedicated to publishing scholarship in the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition and to resourcing Wesleyan-Arminians in areas like theology, Bible, and church history. I have jokingly said that it will be dedicated only to publishing the irrelevant.]

2. Second, I firmly believe that a phoenix will rise from the ashes. I have no doubt that the General Board of the Nazarene Church will maintain key pieces of NPH. But they will re-establish them on a basis that gives them a long term sustainability. In the meantime, I doubt there will be any break in our ability to purchase books from the Nazarenes. I actually received Romans 1-8 in the mail yesterday from NPH. But I fully believe that I will still be able to purchase Romans 9-16 whenever I'm ready.

I hope they will finish this series. It is really the only thing we have in the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition that is a serious alternative to the sea of Calvinist-leaning evangelical commentaries out there on the market.

Mennonites, Nazarenes, and Neo-Evangelicals in the 50s (5)

Continuing to unclog my blogging backlog, here are some thoughts on chapter 4 of Molly Worthen's, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism. Reviews of previous chapters include:

Introduction
Chapter 1 (Birth of Neo-Evangelicalism)
Chapter 2 (Evangelicals on the Edges)
Chapter 3 (The Strivings of Christianity Today)

Now chapter 4, "Reform and Its Discontents."

This chapter finishes the first section of the book, "Knights Inerrant."My take-away from this chapter is that "evangelicals" like Mennonites and Nazarenes didn't fit neatly with Reformed "neo-evangelicals" like Henry and friends.

John Howard Yoder features as the prominent Mennonite reaction to neo-evangelicalism in this chapter. Yoder apparently was no moral model. In fact, his life seems to have been an anti-type of his theology. He is best known for his advocacy of non-violence, yet he was an abusive personality. The fact that his thinking was the opposite of his life suggests there may be something redeemable in it.

His words to C. F. H. Henry are worth quoting:

"Your ultimate criteria are your idea of reason... in theology the chances are great that they will get in the way of Christ as the only source of knowledge" (75).

Worthen concludes, "Yoder had hit on the crux of the divide between Reformed evangelicals and many other evangelical traditions." For Mennonites, "discipleship more than dogma, was the the primary way to follow Christ" (76).

The neo-evangelical and a fundamentalist worldview, according to Worthen, were making great strides in churches like those of the Mennonites and the Nazarenes. I have noted to myself that is it incredibly easy to make a pre-modern into a fundamentalist, and I fear it of my own time. You take someone who knows little of reading the Bible in context and sprinkle historical scholarship on them in a threatening way.

So I picture it being in the 50s. Scholars like Harold Bender in the Mennonite tradition and H. Orton Wiley in the Nazarenes walked these careful political lines. The Mennonites strove to make sure that their belief in pacifism did not get displaced in the middle of crises like Vietnam. They strove to strengthen their own institutions so that their ministers did not become allured of mainline institutions. They strove to maintain the importance of experience in the Christian life. The neo-evangelicals largely ignored them.

The Wesleyan Theological Society was founded as a Wesleyan version of ETS and was very neo-evangelical in its founding. Interestingly, Nazarenes did not feel very welcome at first. In the words of one Nazarene theology professor in 1967, "A 'Wesleyan' society should make Holiness its main point and not get involved in this fundamentalistic shibboleth of inerrancy" (92). Things have changed dramatically since then as WTS underwent a broadening something like Fuller did.

If the Mennonites strove not to lose distinctives like pacifism, Nazarenes fought to maintain elements like social justice amid outside influences. Mildred Bangs Wynkoop clarified the nature of holiness in terms of love and, in my opinion, provided important language to translate the doctrine of holiness into terms that would speak to a new generation.

By contrast, Reformed fundamentalism threatened to sever the link between personal piety and social justice, as it still does today. William Greathouse led a "back to Wesley" movement to try to get Nazarenes back in touch with their theological roots. These efforts would spill over into thinkers in the Free Methodist and Wesleyan Methodist church as well.

Restorationist and Pentecostals are briefly mentioned. Influenced by Reformed presuppositionalism but remaining on the periphery. Influenced by worldview language but on the periphery. Treating Scripture as a compilation of ideas and objective facts was the neo-evangelical way. There was a great fusion of elements in each tradition going on in the mid-twentieth century.

Another element in the midst (and I'm not really sure what makes this chapter hold together) is the fact that a lot of budding young scholars in this time period ran off to Europe to do their doctoral work. Yoder went to Basel to study with Barth. Paul Jewett at Fuller ran off to study with Emil Brunner at Zurich. George Ladd and Dan Fuller went to Basel. "Evangelicals who spent time at Basel and other European universities usually did not convert to more liberal forms of the faith, but they sometimes revised their views of biblical inerrancy and eschatology" (80).

It is interesting that this same phenomenon was taking place in England when I did my doctorate in the 90s. British universities neither had the biases against conservatives that a lot of American universities did, yet they were not as biased against liberals as a lot of American evangelical institutions were. In short, there was a freedom to British universities in the 90s to have faith and yet explore ideas freely as well.

My sense is that the era of conservatives running to Europe for education has slowed down significantly. Part of it is the fact that the market for experts in biblical studies, theology, and church history has dried up. I think there are also more and more accessible doctoral programs here in the US. The British universities of the 90s were doing very well with part-time doctorates, with the allure of going to Europe. But American institutions are catching on or dying.

I think I'll leave the chapter with that. It was a chapter full of emotion for me. I am thankful for the opportunities I have had to study with some truly great minds and to think through ideas with anyone who was interested. I used to say I would "teach" (or at least banter together) for free if I had some other means of supporting my family.

Yet people don't pay for what some teacher wants to say, even if the teacher thinks they need to hear it. People pay to hear what they want to hear. Institutions that forget this fundamental dynamic die, IMO.

Nazarenes and "Detailed Inerrancy"

The Nazarenes voted today to keep their Statement of Faith the same in a couple regards.  First, they voted to keep the current wording that describes the Bible as "inerrantly revealing the will of God."  Then they declined adding the word "meritorious" to their wording on atonement. You can see the report of their Scripture study commission here.

I personally think it is best not to adjust the faith statements of a denomination unless you've really, really thought it through.  Some Nazarenes wanted to adjust the statement on inerrancy to a more thoroughgoing wording along the lines of the 1970s debates.  The committee concluded that the fundamentalist sense of inerrancy, which they termed "detailed inerrancy," was not Wesleyan but Calvinist in origin, that Wesleyan theological giants like H. Orton Wiley didn't jump on that bandwagon (the classic Wesleyan systematic theology author), and that it would create a massive split in the denomination (with most of its leaders in every area having to leave).  And, after all, you can still believe in the fundamentalist version with the current wording.

Keith Drury had this to say in his Facebook blow by blow: "This report on Scripture would probably be embraced by virtually all Bible scholars in The Wesleyan Church... I suspect neither denomination is going to change their statements on scripture--though in practice both denominations have about the same functional position. The report lays down the gauntlet arguing that 'detailed inerrancy' is a Calvinist fetish and not truly Wesleyan."

I've argued here before that the Wesleyan Church operates with a broad rather than restrictive understanding of inerrancy.  God has not erred in any truth he has revealed in Scripture. The real task is to work together to determine exactly what he has said and is saying.

On the other issue, the Nazarene church opted not to single out penal substitution as a more central or important perspective on atonement than any other.  Again, the pressure is coming from Calvino-fundamentalist influences on the Church of the Nazarene.

Very interesting...

Nazarenes and Globalism

The Nazarene Church is having its four year general assembly.  To be frank, I don't envy a lot of the decisions they're making.  It's a sign of how big they are.  It's a sign of where they are in their life cycle.

Yesterday they rejected adding a statement against process theology.  Hmm, that one has never come up at Wesleyan General Conference. I suppose the argument against making a statement was along the lines of, "You can't kick every barking dog."  I think they made a choice not to be that kind of church--you know, the one that defines itself by always saying what it's against.

One of the more interesting decisions was not to divide up the world into separate but equal conferences, like we Wesleyans have.  Years ago, in the name of Wesleyans overseas being equal partners in faith, the WC created the possibility of other regions of the world becoming general conferences in a Wesleyan World Fellowship.  So far, we have the Philippines, the Carribean, and the Pacific has moved into a partial status.

What no one anticipated at that time (who knows, maybe KDrury did :-) was that the "next Christendom" would quickly shift to the third world.  We have seen in Anglicanism, for example, that the third world has become a powerful ballast to the American church, leading to fracture in the Episcopal church. While the North American church still has most of the money, the power has significantly shifted.

The Nazarene Church, by contrast, still has only one general assembly internationally.  Further, North America has a much more significant representation on its general board, although it looks like a man from Guatemala will be elected as a General Superintendent today.  The assembly yesterday rejected restructuring.

I don't envy them. There is a real clash of cultures within the church.  Knowing some of what lies ahead, I probably will post more later in the week...

P.S. The Southern Baptists actually had a very good conference this summer with some decisions I really like.  I might mention here sometime...

Nazarene Statement on the Bible

The Nazarenes met last week at NNU to clarify the words we so often use in talking about the Bible and to do so from a Wesleyan position informed by the lead of Wesley himself.  Below are five statements they came up with.  I've included a few comments in red interspersed.

1. The Bible has its origin in the heart of God. God inspired the authors and inspires readers of Scripture across the ages. God uses the Bible to call us to faithful response.

I like the fact that the Nazarenes recognize the importance of inspiration for readers along with the original inspiration.  From a pragmatic perspective, unless a reader or group of readers can experience God in the words, then the text does no good whatsoever for that reader.  For precision, something might also have been said about the contextual nature of the original inspiration.

2. The Bible consistently witnesses to, reveals, and teaches the Church regarding God's purpose of salvation and holy life. It is consistently confirmed by the Christian community, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

The role of the Church in the first five centuries was incredibly important in establishing the core interpretations Christians make of Scripture in relation to Christology and the Trinity.  This statement begins to get at how crucial a role the Church has played in God's gift of Scripture to us, but is much weaker than it might be.

3. The Bible is inerrant in what it does: the Spirit is at work revealing through human words the character and purposes of God to redeem, in Christ, all creation.

Perhaps this statement is an attempt to re-steer language of inerrancy from the past.  A more precise wording might say that the Bible is infallible in what it does.  Nevertheless, this statement reflects some of the brilliant understanding speech-act theory has brought to such things.  Words do things, and stating ideological truth is only one thing that words can do.  This statement indicates that the primary thing that the Bible "does" is reveal the character and purposes of God.  Perhaps we might more accurately say that the primary thing God does through Scripture is to transform us into his likeness (or Keith Drury would say, "to form a holy people").

4. We interpret the Bible in a dynamic process. This requires that Christians interpret in community, in prayerful humility, and relying upon the Holy Spirit. Good interpretation is informed by the tradition, anchored by essential Christian beliefs, and informed by the best contributions of saints and scholars today.

This statement strikes me as "theological interpretation" speak.  I agree with what this language "does."  I have recently used the analogy of a good golf swing.  This statement gives key elements in a good golf swing, in the proper appropriation of Scripture.  I just don't think the scholars who crafted this language fully understand their own swing.


This statement blurs two quite different activities.  There is original meaning interpretation, which is squarely a function of the range of meanings words had at the time the books were written.  An atheist historian could interpret the original meaning soundly, although it is certainly appropriate for us to pray for the illumination of our minds and to be informed by the best contributions of saints today.  


But it is theological interpretation and theological appropriation that appropriately bring along extra-biblical elements like tradition and humility.  And the Holy Spirit is essential if we are to appropriate Scripture properly today, the essential ingredient that an atheist does not bring to the text.  This statement blurs together appropriate, but distinct interpretations of biblical language.

5. Christians have always engaged and interacted with the cultures in which they live. Yet the essential message of the Bible remains consistent. Christians in humility endeavor to engage the postmodern world by listening to, speaking with, living among, and embodying Christ-like love to this generation.

This is about the importance of contextualization of the message.  Jesus and Paul modeled an approach to Scripture that took into account the context into which it spoke.


So those are some of my takes.  Does anyone know if Maddox's talk on Wesley's use of Scripture is available?  Of course Wesley was not the founder of the Nazarene Church any more than he founded the Free Methodists or the Wesleyans.  We are free to be more profound than Wesley was.

In any case, here is the website about the conclusion of the conference.

World Wesleyan Web

What if Wesleyan denominations didn't exactly merge but formed (as Devin Rose put it) a kind of "UN of Wesleyan denominations"? Then the more it worked, the less the current denominations would need to function until eventually, in effect, we had a new uber-Wesleyan connection.

Here are some things I've heard as suggestions or brainstormed myself:

1. What if it was something that individual Wesleyan, Nazarene, FM, etc. local churches joined as the real "atoms," with the denominations themselves only setting it up and providing initial leaders? Maybe something like the Willow Creek Association?

2. What if this uber-connection provided services to these local churches like pension, health care, insurance, etc. so that the individual denominations no longer needed to fund these things?

3. What if those churches who joined were excused from a certain amount of denominational "tax," such as that for educational institutions? What if those educational institutions that could support themselves became more associated with the connection than with their current denominations?

4. What if, as soon as the connection reached a critical mass, these local churches elected a council of leaders from regions and/or some other groupings?

Any thoughts?

Why Merge?

This is my third post in relation to recent decisions of the General Board of Administration 1) to explore connection/merger with groups like the Nazarenes, Free Methodists, CCCU, Bible Methodists, etc... and 2) to peal off two general superintendents in preparation for such mergers/connections and to streamline for our own effectiveness in the meantime.

Today I want to start a list of reasons why I think connecting on some significant organizational level is (mostly) a no-brainer, the kind of thing to which we should immediately say, "Of course," on the conceptual level and only turn down if the details would somehow put it off.

First, I should mention that I think the legitimate purposes of denominations are twofold: 1) to proclaim or preserve particular understandings of faith and practice for which God raises groups up and 2) to pool and focus resources toward common goals and purposes. There may be others, but this is my list.

If this is the list, then the following are some of the reasons for significant organizational connection I can think of:

1. It would be silly not to!
Given my two-fold sense of the purposes of denominations, I can't think of any principled reason for us to be separate:

• We share the same focuses of faith and practice and
• We are wasting significant resources by the multiplication of infrastructure between us.

2. Principle of Unity
The principle of the unity of the church pushes us to unify in identity if we do not have good reason not to. As far as I can tell, the only reasons not to would be logistical or financial, and surely God has given some people out there enough wisdom to figure out such details.

3. Easier to Fix Things
It is easier to make significant organizational shifts in the process of a merger than to do it out of the blue. I know some people have wanted a single general superintendent for decades. It would never have happened apart from the current financial situation coupled with talk of merger. The same goes for matters of stewardship, apportionments, collegiate allocations, etc. These things generally continue on their merry way until there is a crisis. A merger/organizational connection is a much more desirable catalyst for fixing these sorts of imperfections.

4. Pooling of resources
Each piece of the Wesleyan puzzle has something to contribute. Each has something missing apart. The voice of the Wesleyan tradition hardly seems a major player within Christendom and in that sense we can question whether any of us are truly fulfilling the legitimate reasons for us to exist as denominations in the first place. Perhaps the Nazarenes are a little known (although our condolences on the weird name).

But the rest of us are, to be honest, peons who have little impact on anything. The Wesleyan Church has 1700 churches in North America (big whoop=relatively insignificant) and the Nazarenes, despite having more buildings, apparently only have about twice our attendance in church on a Sunday morning(=problematic). The Free Methodists have interestingly decentralized quite a bit already.

What are some reasons you can think of for us all to reorganize ourselves together in some way? Reasons against?