Fightings Without and Fears Within: Challenges to the Future of the Wesleyan Tradition

Transcription

1 The Forum on Wesleyan Potential Austin, Texas December 1-3, 2015 Fightings Without and Fears Within: Challenges to the Future of the Wesleyan Tradition Andrew C. Thompson, ThD When I speak in settings like this, I have the good fortune of addressing a subject matter that is inherently interesting to Methodist audiences: John Wesley, Wesleyan theology, and the Wesleyan tradition. That can be a real advantage as a speaker in most ways; I usually don t have to work hard to win the room. But in some other ways, it can be a real disadvantage. I sometimes feel like a living trope: the Wesley guy who gets trotted out to wave the standard and rally the troops. I don t mind rallying the troops, but doing that in this setting is going to require us to think first about how poorly the troops have been trained. For generations. Only then can we think about what it means to move forward into the future. The story I have to tell is a story about traditions in conflict and transition. To enter into it, we first have to understand what that word means: tradition. The Nature of Tradition The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre describes tradition in his book, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? as follows: A tradition is an argument extended through time in which certain fundamental agreements are defined and redefined in terms of two kinds of conflict: those with critics and enemies external to the tradition who reject all or at least key parts of those fundamental agreements, and those internal, interpretative debates through which the meaning and rationale of the fundamental agreements come to be expressed and by whose progress a tradition is constituted. 1 The tradition we are primarily interested in here is the Wesleyan tradition. It is a tradition that arose within the evangelical and pietist wing of Anglican spirituality in the first half of the eighteenth century. Historically, it has been marked by a belief in the total depravity of human beings through sin, the unlimited atonement of Jesus Christ through his sacrifice on the cross, the universal availability of grace by virtue of that atonement, and the need for all people to personally receive God's saving grace in themselves. This tradition has always held onto the tension between the nascent restoration of human moral faculties through the prevenient character of God's grace and the still yet profound need to encounter God's justifying grace and the new birth it mediates. In addition, the Wesleyan tradition gives great attention to the sanctifying work of God's grace which typically proceeds through the individual s engagement of the means of grace which are themselves grounded not in individual but rather in communal practice. The empirical fruits of sanctification are affectional in nature and are often 1 Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 12. 1

2 described through the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self- control. In other words, the Christian believer who is walking and holiness of heart and life is one in whom certain virtues are present. Notice how much of what I have described here is related to the doctrine of salvation. It's all related to the doctrine of salvation, in a certain sense, although there is much to be said for a Wesleyan ethos of practical discipleship as well, especially when you engage the Wesleyan commitment to the practice of the means of grace. However, there are other aspects to the Wesleyan tradition that arise out of this primary emphasis on present salvation. One of these is a high Christology, which is connected to the meaning and power of Christ's atonement and the role of the Son of God in bringing salvation to mankind. Another is a robust pneumatology, which is often seen precisely at those points when Wesleyans have spoken about and experienced present salvation. Some of the best work in historical theology around John Wesley's own thought at present is in examining the dynamics of his understanding of the Holy Spirit; one cannot read either Wesley or the social history of the early Methodists without sensing the way in which the Spirit was understood to be working in profound ways. Finally, there is in the spirituality of the Wesleyan tradition a pointed concern for the well being of the poor. This concern is connected to the command of Jesus Christ to care for "the least of these," and it is linked as well to the view that present salvation is something that touches the soul and body together (in other words, salvation is a holistic reality). All of this is simply to say that the Wesleyan tradition stands with in what we could call evangelical orthodoxy in the Protestant sense. There are other nuances we could add to what I have described above, but this gives us the main contours. That these contours had to be worked out through conflicts both external and internal there can be no doubt. If you'll remember back to your Methodist history and doctrine courses from seminary those of you who had them I think you will call some of these conflicts to mind fairly easily. Externally speaking, the evangelical revival arose right in the middle of the Enlightenment. Deism and the exaltation of Reason to almost divine status were some of the forces that spurred on evangelical activity from the beginning. The institutional Church of England has to be seen as an antagonistic outside force as well; though John Wesley and other evangelical leaders hoped to find institutional allies that would see their reforming work in a positive light, those aspirations were rarely realized. Within the Methodist movement itself, it is always important to remember that there was an Arminian wing led by John and Charles Wesley and their confrères and a Calvinist wing led by figures such as the Countess of Huntingdon, George Whitefield, Howell Harris, and others. Added to that major division internal to the tradition, there were other periodic tensions as well; we can think about a ready example in the perfectionist controversy of the late 1750s and 1760s when the meaning of Christian perfection led to turmoil that lasted for years. In short, I think that Alasdair MacIntyre's definition of tradition finds an ideal example in the tradition we call Wesleyan: it is indeed an argument, about the nature of salvation and the Christian life, which has extended through time and in which certain agreements within the tradition have been defined and redefined in terms of conflicts both internal and external to the tradition. Thus, the Wesleyan tradition has a foundation that can be described or articulated and has proven strong enough to provide the theological substance for church communities for almost 300 years. And yet, that tradition has not been and is not impervious to 2

3 change. I mentioned a few conflicts, internal and external, that occurred in just the early years of the traditions development. We could mention literally dozens of others that took place and subsequent generations. Now, MacIntyre's definition of tradition is fairly thick. You need to work through it line by line. In an interesting way, though, one of the most prominent of the early Methodists penned a similar description with a much greater economy of verbiage. I am talking, of course, about Charles Wesley s hymn And Are We Yet Alive, which says, What troubles have we seen What mighty conflicts past Fightings without, and fears within Since we assembled last. 2 That's a song written for Methodist preachers gathering together at their annual conference, and it is very upfront about the reality that Wesleyan laborers in the vineyard have regularly encountered those internal and external conflicts that have contributed to make us what we are. But now we find our tradition in trouble. And to have some kind of clue about where we should go, we need to get a sense about how we got to where we are. I want to offer up an account of that by talking about what happens when different traditions clash. The story begins in the United States of America around the year Traditions in Conflict: An Example In many ways, the early American circuit riders mirrored their English counterparts in their approach to preaching, spiritual practices, and a commitment to pursue the salvation of all and sundry as their modus operandi even if the context of the American frontier meant that they lost something of the theological sophistication around the doctrine of salvation that Wesley had originally supplied. Yet in the period after about 1820, things began to change, as the historian John Wigger has traced in his excellent study, Taking Heaven By Storm. 3 Instead of being contented with preaching and practicing a dramatically countercultural version of the Christian gospel, which included a robust commitment to the practice of the means of grace as the pattern of discipleship and the central significance of the small group spirituality known in the classes and bands, Methodist preachers and laity alike again to be more and more concerned about upward mobility and social respectability. One example of this change comes to us from an incident in Ithaca, New York, in the mid- 1820s. Rural New York Methodists had planned a camp meeting (an institution that was at that point only a little more than twenty years old) and the town Methodists in Ithaca were uncomfortable with what they suspected the spirituality of the gathering would prove to be. One layman in the congregation in Ithaca, David Ayres, lamented that the town Methodists could not prevent the camp meeting from being held entirely, and he recommended that they 2 The United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville: United Methodist Publishing House, 1989), John H. Wigger, Taking Heaven By Storm: Methodism and the Rise of Popular Christianity in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). 3

4 should at least keep a noticeable distance from their country Methodist counterparts. Ayres proposed that the Ithaca Methodists should hold their own prayer meeting separate from the camp meeting and encourage their own church members to stay close at hand. Thus, said Ayres, "If the Methodists from the country become disorderly, we will not suffer, as the public can see the difference between the Ithaca Methodists, and the ranting Methodists from the country." 4 Now, we could play with this incident a little bit and tease out the ways in which there were divisions going on within New York Methodism. Certainly there is a town and country tension here between the relatively urban Ithaca Methodists and, as Ayres puts it, "the ranting Methodists from the country." Connected to this division is surely a socioeconomic division and most likely an educational one as well, with the Methodists in the city both more prosperous and better educated than their country counterparts. Another way we could interpret this episode, though, is as a competing set of underlying traditions, where the elements of geography (rural vs. urban), wealth, and education exist only as symptoms of something larger. On the one hand, there is the older Wesleyan spiritual tradition, with its focus on a dynamic openness to the action of the Holy Spirit; on a form of practice that gave priority to spiritual experience over social respectability; on a thoroughgoing commitment to social holiness in the Wesleyan sense of that term (i.e., a sense of the community itself as a means of grace and the calling to watch over one another in love ); and on an honest- to- God belief in the evangelical doctrine of salvation. (N.B. All of those things could be seen in a camp meeting experience of that time.) And then, on the other hand, there is an Enlightenment- fueled American civil tradition that is tied to certain beliefs about the importance of middle- class prosperity, advanced education, and political citizenship. This second tradition is not unfriendly to religion, but it is absolutely determined to domesticate it and put it in the service of what it views as larger purposes. What we have here is the maturing of the Enlightenment tradition in its American guise: through the economic milieu of capitalism and the philosophical ascendancy of liberal individualism. The latter of these two traditions is going to win over time, but the former isn t going to go down without a fight. Wigger, the historian, goes on to cite other examples of what happened to the Wesleyan spirituality that Methodist folk originally embraced. The ongoing changes from about 1820 until the 1850s were clearly noticed by people at the time. Methodist preachers who remained devoted to the old ways became known as "Croakers," evoking loud bullfrogs who remain out in the swamp and won't shut up. The croakers could be annoying to their more sophisticated and urbane brethren, but they were nothing if not prescient about the effects of the transformation of their tradition. Charles Giles, one such croaker, believed that one of the greatest sources of decline in the power of Methodist preaching was a growing tendency for preachers to read their sermons word- for- word from a manuscript. This practice, which more sophisticated city- dwelling Methodists appreciated as a mark of erudition, was lamented by Giles who said, if Methodist ministers "become disgusted with zealous preaching and plain dealing, trust in their literary requirements, and seek for fame, wealth, and popularity, they would lose all their secret strength, and become weak as Samson shorn of his locks." He went 4 Wigger, Taking Heaven By Storm,

5 on: "Reading sermons will never convert sinners will not produce reformations, nor the work of religious revivals." 5 Another preacher devoted to the old ways, Abner Chase, sounded a similar concern: "There is a greater effort now being made to please the ear than to reach the heart, and bring them to the foot of the cross. The sword of the Spirit being muffled with silken wreaths cannot penetrate the coat of mail with which sinners are clad." 6 While preachers tended to lament changes in preaching itself on a frequent basis, it is notable that other changes ongoing during the same period mirrored those changes of homiletical content and approach. These included a sharply diminished commitment to itineracy, the decline of the camp meeting, and changes to practices such as the love feast and the class meeting that altered their character so dramatically they became unrecognizable to their late eighteenth century predecessors. Wigger s conclusion about the fate of American Methodism as embodying a distinctive Wesleyan tradition is telling: "As large numbers of American Methodists became well entrenched in American society, they transformed their church from a counterculture to a subculture of American society. By mid- century both the church and its constituency had largely become a part of America's predominant culture. In the process, much of what had been distinctive about the early Methodist movement was jettisoned." 7 II. Tendencies of Traditions in Conflict Now, note some of the interesting facets of what I have just described and what followed historically. First of all, the tradition of Enlightenment liberal individualism more or less won out. It's still winning out. But that doesn't mean that Methodist folk just went away. It doesn't even mean that the Wesleyan tradition completely went away. It does mean that, at those points where the two traditions claimed the same ground, the Enlightenment tradition subsumed the Wesleyan tradition beneath it; the claims of the Wesleyan tradition upon human life were essentially hollowed out. That is what happened amongst the ruling classes, at least. In the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, the places where you see an authentic and vibrant Wesleyan spirituality are largely amongst people who were politically and socioeconomically marginalized. In other words, black Methodism (the AME, AMEZ, and CME Churches) and the Holiness Movement. But why did it happen this way? The answer has something to do with what I said a moment ago about the fact that the two traditions claimed the same ground. Alasdair MacIntyre points out that there is a characteristic tendency for what happens when two intellectual traditions confront one another in this way. Namely, there is "no neutral way of characterizing either the subject matter about which they give rival accounts or the standards by which their claims are to be evaluated." 8 From within a given tradition, there is an accepted standard for what constitutes truth, goodness, and the telos towards which human endeavor should point. What this means, in short, is that there is a form of rationality within a given tradition that may be utterly unintelligible outside of that tradition. 5 Wigger, Taking Heaven By Storm, Wigger, Taking Heaven By Storm, pages Wigger, Taking Heaven By Storm, 193. Italics added. 8 MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationaity?,

6 (To use an example from early American Methodism: members of class meetings often experienced the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in such power that they described the experience as a "melting." Worshipers at camp meetings in the early nineteenth century would frequently exhibit a variety of physical responses to the word preached that went by names like the yips, the barks, and the jerks. At times, believers under the conviction of Methodist preaching would fall into physical paralysis for significant periods of time. And all of these spiritual phenomena, viewed with in the Wesleyan tradition as it existed in the early American Republic, were rational. That is to say, they were reasonable and even expected responses to the religious activities of the community which inhabited that tradition.) In MacIntyre's analysis, the tendency of traditions in conflict is for each tradition to "[characterize] the contentions of its rival in its own terms, making explicit the grounds for rejecting what is incompatible with its own central theses, although sometimes allowing that from its own point of view and in the light of its own standards of judgment in tribal has something to teach it on marginal and subordinate questions." 9 In other words, traditions have a very difficult time engaging one another because they have no neutral third ground by which to adjudicate conflicting claims about the good, the beautiful, the just, etc. Think about how this bears out with the traditions we re talking about: The Wesleyan tradition emphasized the guilt and debilitation of sin, the universal availability of God's grace, the need for conversion or new birth, and the calling to live a holy life as patterned by the means of grace (and, of course, within the community provided by the class meeting!). The American version of Enlightenment liberal individualism, on the other hand, emphasized moral autonomy (over against Original Sin), the universal availability of upward mobility (over against the gift of grace), the need for self- actualization (over against conversion), and the calling to live a prosperous life through economic, educational, and political attainments (over against a life patterned by the means of grace). What I am suggesting here is that this Enlightenment tradition won out over the Wesleyan tradition in which Methodism was originally rooted. The question I would think those of us in this room would want to ask is, Why? We are familiar with the rich spiritual power and depth of the Wesleyan tradition. It s compelling. So why in the world would 19th- century Methodists who were raised in the midst of it want to leave it and more than that, be so embarrassed as to utterly domesticate the spirituality it engendered until Methodism itself became a weak, watered down, almost civil religion? A key point to recognize here has to do with the nature of Enlightenment individualism itself. In a very real sense, we cannot begin to understand the Wesleyan tradition s decline (much less speak intelligibly about the future of the Wesleyan tradition) without coming to grips with the degree to which the recent history of the West has been largely about freeing ourselves from tradition. A recent Christianity Today article refers to "the West's long process of emancipating the individual from all authority outside the sovereign Self." 10 Liberal individualism is about freeing the individual from outside constraints, from legal restrictions, and yes, from the weight of inherited tradition. In that sense it is a tradition whose primary value is to reject tradition in favor of the free, self- actualized, autonomous self. What possible 9 MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationaity?, Rod Dreher, Coming to Terms with a Post- Christian Word, Christianity Today (November 2, 2015). 6

7 role could a belief in sinful brokenness, conversion, and accountable submission to a faith community have in that? Looking Towards the (Wesleyan) Future Jason Vickers penned the opening essay to the Cambridge Companion to American Methodism under the title, "American Methodism: A Theological Tradition." Yet after laboring for twenty- five pages to articulate how American Methodism constitutes a tradition, the best Vickers can come up with is to speak about it in what he calls "five distinct languages." These include evangelicalism, radicalism, ecumenism, liberalism, and Wesleyanism. If we were to compare the kind of terminology that Vickers uses with the way in which a thinker like MacIntyre defines what a tradition is, we might come to the conclusion that Vickers own word choices betray his inability to prove his case. For if a tradition is a socially embodied argument that extends through time, it must at least be something that is carried on in a common language. Granted, Vickers use of the term language is intended to be metaphorical, but it is telling nonetheless that the metaphor evokes the image of people who are mutually unintelligible. Also notable about Vickers conclusion is that Wesleyanism is but one of the languages that contributes to what he considers to be the American Methodist tradition. I came here today to talk about Wesleyanism, or the Wesleyan tradition to be more accurate, and I think Vickers is absolutely correct in asserting that the Wesleyan tradition and the Methodist tradition, in its American context, are not mutually identical. I could have come here to speak to you about the American Methodist tradition, but this is after all the Forum on Wesleyan Potential (and not the Forum on American Methodist Potential). It might be worth thinking about what implicit commitments we are making by the very words we use to describe the gathering we are a part of right now. Though Vickers himself might object to this, I think one of the ways in which we can put his historical analysis to use is in thinking about what we mean by "Wesleyan tradition." Ultimately, we want to employ those strategies and techniques in ministry that lead to some realized good we could call that good, making disciples of Jesus Christ, or transforming lives, or building vital Christian communities, or whatever. But we will be wasting our time if we employ strategies and techniques in a way that amounts to throwing everything possible we can find against the wall to see what sticks. Rather, we need to be clear about the vision from which we are working. This is what will help us move from belief (or doctrine) to practice effectively. Only by gaining some coherence around vision can we make the development of strategy and the execution of technique worthwhile. Doing this important work around our vision, the Wesleyan vision, entails us recognizing that there is a lot of chaff in our theological wheat. It means recognizing what we're up against as well. After all, the heyday of liberal individualism has not ended. Indeed, we may be in the heyday of its heyday. And the survival of the Wesleyan tradition is, of course, no sure thing. I'll end with two quotations. The first is from the prominent and provocative Methodist theologian, Billy Abraham. A few years ago, Abraham wrote an article entitled, "The End of Wesleyan Theology," where he argued that a distinctive Wesleyan tradition was, for all intents and purposes, finished. Here s Abraham: 7

8 Where there was once a time when there existed a relatively coherent set of ideas and correlative practices, these have now collapsed and been replaced by competing alternatives The great hymns are no longer sung; the fervent sacramentalism has been eroded; the robust orthodoxy has been undermined; the commitment to the poor has become a normative ideology; the evangelistic fervor has been sidelined; the biblical literacy has been lost; the official, canonical doctrines of new birth, assurance, perfection, and predestination are unknown or received with consternation. What we have are bits and pieces of the tradition grafted into theological visions that have their roots elsewhere. As a serious experiment in theology, Wesleyanism is over. 11 Tough words. The whole essay is worth reading, and it's also worth pointing out that Billy is no predestinarian. He still lives very much as a Wesleyan, and I suspect he believes that a Wesleyan revival is certainly within the realm of possibility. But it is difficult to deny that many of the details he describes are true events even if you don t agree with his conclusion. The second quote is shorter, and it comes from an account that John Wesley once gave to describe the advent of the Methodist revival in England. Wesley writes: In 1729, two young men, reading the Bible, saw they could not be saved without holiness, followed after it, and incited others so to do. In 1737 they saw holiness comes by faith. They saw likewise, that men are justified before they are sanctified; but still holiness was their point. God then thrust them out, utterly against their will, to raise a holy people. 12 Note the way that the word holiness is used here. We cannot be saved without holiness. Holiness comes by faith. There is a certain logic to justification and sanctification, but it all eventuates in holiness. And when one comes to understand these things, the only relevant response is to go out into the world to raise a holy people. Now Wesley believed that biblical holiness was a synonym for Christian love. It is that thing God gives us (and not something we conjure up ourselves). And when it is given to us, and when we receive it rightly, it forms us into a holy community a community of love which becomes the very light of the world. Traditions arise, develop, decline, and dissipate. Certain truths never go away. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our Lord will endure forever (Isaiah 40:8; 1 Peter 1:24-25). Here s the good news: When contingent traditions are animated by truths that endure, their renewal is never outside the realm of possibility. 11 William J. Abraham, The End of Wesleyan Theology, Wesleyan Theological Journal 40:1 (Spring 2005): John Wesley, "Minutes of Several Conversations Between The Rev. Mr. Wesley And Others From The Year 1744, To The Year 1789," commonly called the "Large Minutes," in Vol. 8 of The Works of John Wesley, edited by Thomas Jackson, Reprint edition (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1958),