I was thinking about the different "ideological groups" in the WC today yesterday and came up with three:
1. What I thought would be the bulk of traditional Wesleyans out there, conservative in thought and action, small churches, etc...
2. Those who have leaned fundamentalist, particularly in the western part of the church, not including California, tend to lean against women in ministry, follow Dobson and Republican politics somewhat actively.
3. The emergents who are struck by the diversity of the world and the church. They're very open minded to new ideas and things. It's a small group but their internet savvy has given them significant influence.
In conversation around the coffee pot here at IWU, a fourth group was added:
4. Us... The IWU type that is very much in continuity with the larger church scene of our denomination.
So after the conversation was over, the straw demographic of the WC was shuffled a little in my mind into this format:
1. The fundamentalizing element, mostly out West
2. The traditional Wesleyan element, the largest number of churches (mostly small), but perhaps a little less than half the people in the denomination
3. The "large church"/most Wesleyan college constituency, which probably also makes up about half the people in the denomination (some of our large churches could fit 50 smaller ones in them).
4. The emergent crowd, that is experimenting on the edges
What do you think?
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6 comments:
The Wesleyan Church may just be a reflection of the evangelical church at large. I could subsitute my own denomination, the Southern Baptists and probably have a very similar listing. Although "the fundamentalizing element" wouldn't be just out west, but scattered here and there all over and may be a larger group in the SBC.
But it can difficult for this non-fundamentalist, non-Calvinist SBCer to find the right place. If I had to describe the kind of SBC church I attend in parallel to your list, it's probably in the second group you cite. And I often have some similar sentiments to those in the emerging group--at least in regard to what you say about being "struck by the diversity of the world and the church."
Dr. Schenck, on a mildly related note, since I teach as an adjunct at the IWU branch in Louisville, I often get asked what makes the Wesleyan Church distinctive from other "Wesleyan" groups. Could you point me to a source to better answer that question?
With due warning that you are getting my own, self-fulfilling descriptions, here is
1. a piece I wrote on the essence of the WC: http://www.kenschenck.com/wesleyans.htm
and 2. a piece I wrote on the essence of a Wesleyan college: http://www.kenschenck.com/wesleyanuniversity.htm
I would add another group. That is the "we don't even know we are wesleyans". My church is full of them. They are often new converst or imports from mainline denominations. They don't know dobson, they aren't emergent, they aren't fundamentalist, they literally can't spell wesleyan let alone name where the headquarters are or any such thing. Maybe they are more of an un-group. I would say they constitute about 25% in this part of the world.
Thanks for the links. That helps
I'm ending my sabbatical from blog posting with this comment. Here are a few thoughts.
1.) I'm interested in the relationship between the fundamentalist group and what you call the "traditional Wesleyan element." Since I have moved down south, I have come into contact with an aweful lot of people who match the criterea of the former term not with standing the western factor. I'm guessing that the groups you devised are not static and leave room for overlap.
2.) In which group would you guess the racial minorities represented in the Wesleyan Church tend to congregate? We have a growing Hispanic Church out west (not including CA) so do they tend to be in the fundamentalizing group? I suppose Asians and Blacks are harder to pin down due to their underepresentation in the Wesleyan Church (another post topic entirely).
3.) AJ Thomas made an interesting observation. Could it be that this 'We don't know we're Wesleyan" group is fueled by a tendency of larger Wesleyan Churches (who often attract such people) sometimes downplay the "Wesleyan Factor" in that they remove Wesleyan and all things related from their name, literature, doctrine , preaching, and hiring processes?
4.) So can you tell a Wesleyan Church a part from a Southern Baptist or pan-evangelical Church? Probably not in some cases. While supporters of ecumenicalism might find this notion as a reason for celebration, such an instance could ostensibly only occur if both churches were ultimately untrue to their ecclesiology and doctrinal convictions. The SBC embraces doctrine that Wesleyans cannot accept and the Wesleyans have an ecclesiology that is dissimilar to Baptists in general (although Paige Patterson might disagree).
You're right about the fundamentalizing element in the church, but it does seem to me it is strongest in the West because it has seemed to have "institutional cover."
I similarly would not know where to place various congregations of other ethnicities. Traditional in their own way?
Yes, I would line up most of AJ's "don't know" group with the large church crowd.
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