What is a United Methodist?

Wilson longs to strengthen the Methodist presence at Duke. Phil somewhat wryly responds to Wilson's quest under my post, "Tale of a Great Blessing," "what is a Methodist?" I post that question here since it seems like a question to which those doing field education might usefully opine. I offer my two cents below.

I have catalogued my criticism of Methodists in emails and on the site and, in general, I believe those same criticisms can be applied to the so called liberal/moderate wings of the Episcopal church without unfairness. However, a strength in Wesleyanism that I have learned to value from simultaneously studying Hauwerwas and reading a biography of Cranmer is the priority of unity over orthodoxy/orthopraxy. I correlate that theme with what Hauerwas says on non-violence. A commitment to non-violence forces you to contemplate a politics that can imagine tactics other than division/violence. I believe that key Wesleyan idea has a heritage that goes back to Cranmer and is visible in the United Methodist Church in its retreat from a clearly articulated dogma or confession. See Wilson's repeated insistence that Methodists do not have a "doctrine" but only a "discipline." That strength is often received as weakness (as weak strength perhaps?) because it comes across at times as a refusal to stand for anything. And the idea "tolerance" sometimes is distorted into a relativistic apathy. But I believe that Methodism's traditional insistence on welcoming all and striving for unity with diversity is among its defining characteristics and its chief strengths. I think, for example, that's why we see the inclination, perhaps (I concede to Derrick and Wilson now) unwise, towards a radically open table. I also think the priority of unity explains why Methodists tend not to get caught up in rigorously defining/regulating the "how" of the sacraments and tolerate a broad range of liturgical scripts.

However, to that characteristic, I would add a second major trait: a historic emphasis on holiness. I think that is most famously caricatured in Steinmetz's joke about Hell, in which we find the Baptists who dance, the Methodists who drank, and the Episcopalians who used their salad fork with dessert. That emphasis on holiness of lifestyle is still in the Book of Discipline. Candidates for elder, like me, are discouraged from drinking, smoking, and sex outside of holy marriage. (It's our loving duty to help Methodist bachelors - like Wilson - remain celibate at seminary!).

I believe a third historic trait of Methodists that distinguishs them from many Anglicans and especially Episcopalians is an emphasis on evangelism. Methodists historically tend to emphasize "conversion" as a high priority over against other ecclesial goals, such as Christian formation. Note the qualifier, "historic." One thing I have learned in studying Anglicanism is that the reform movement that fostered the African Anglican churches - the one that was planted by British colonial efforts - paralleled the Methodist movement but had a distinctive emphasis on "christian formation" rather than "conversion." Hence the evangelical anglicanism that I have grown to appreciate has a relatively stronger tendency towards common worship and therefore more clear definition of liturgy and doctrine than its cousin, Methodism. I hope to reconnect those two strands in my ministry.