American Methodism 200: The Unclaimed Heritage

This year, American Methodism celebrates its bicentennial. Two hundred years ago, in the same decade that the republic was establishing its independence from Britain, American Methodists were affirming their own independence. The first autonomous American church, Methodism grew as the nation did. As one established its structures and extended its domain, so did the other.

The new nation became Methodism’s challenge. Its mission, as it understood it, was to reform the nation and spread scriptural holiness over this new land. This meant that the moral character of every person and of the society itself were not only valid but obligatory Methodist concerns. Even Methodism’s enemies were impressed with its phenomenal success.

In 1784 when the church was organized in Baltimore, it had 15,000 members. By 1855 it had grown until the Methodists in all branches made up 38 percent of the Protestant communicants of the country. The largest Protestant body in the predominantly Protestant country, Methodism became a national force.

The life of the church reflected the nature of the society, and vice versa. The successes of the one, and its failures, affected the other. William Warren Sweet, a Methodist historian, illustrates this with a reference to the division of the main body of Methodism in 1844 over the issue of slavery: “There are good arguments to support the claim that the split in the churches was not only the first break between the sections, but the chief cause of the final break.” The nation and the church suffered and succeeded together.

There were theological reasons why Methodism became such a naturalized part of the American scene. There was a democratic character to the theology that supported the ideals of the new democracy at its best. Wesley posed a theological mix that made Methodism a remarkable force for renewal and reform. The power of that theology, so evident in the nation’s first century, however, seems clearly to have been attenuated in the second.

Wesley’S Viewpoint

Four primary themes permeated Wesley’s theology. (1) Man, if he is to be saved, can be saved by grace alone, and (2) that grace is available for all; (3) if he is not saved, he alone is accountable; (4) the purpose of God is not just to prepare the saved for heaven, it is also to bring them to a perfection of love now that will enable them to live a life dominated by love for God and their neighbors. In other words, faith should show itself at work in love:

1. A primary assumption for Wesley was that man is fallen. He saw belief in the doctrine of original sin as the key difference between Christianity and paganism. As the result of the Fall, man traded freedom before God for bondage to himself. The problem is heightened by man’s illusion of freedom. The result is despair.

This assumption about original sin kept early Methodism realistic in a frontier nation where passions and individualism could run raw. It kept the preacher addressing society where it was—in need of God and his grace.

2. If there was a realism about sin, there was an optimism about grace. A person could be delivered through grace, and the dominion of sin could be broken, now. It was a possibility available for all.

There was something democratic about this. No social, economic, racial, sexual, political, or even religious differences exempted any. No one had to come; grace was resistible. But all were invited.

These beliefs had political and social implications. The founding fathers had taken the biblical doctrine of Creation seriously. They believed that man had his origin in the work of a benevolent Creator. They felt that political equality and equal human rights were divinely sanctioned.

But Methodist theology took this a step further. The doctrine of salvation was added to the doctrine of Creation. Every man must be seen in the light of the Cross as well as Creation since Christ died for all. Human worth had divine as well as political sanctions.

3. Grace was there for all, but how was it to be received? Here Wesley made perhaps his most significant contribution to Christian theology. He was convinced that the very response to the offer of grace was made possible by the grace that initiated the offer. He called it “prevenient grace,” the grace that comes before saving grace.

It is there to quicken conscience. The sinner sees and finds he can respond. Every person somewhere has the chance to see and be free. But when it comes, it is of grace.

This doctrine had its effect on the passion of Methodists for evangelism. They noted the special presence of prevenient grace when believers witness, and especially when the Word of God is preached. Thus they felt a special urgency about preaching. And by grace hundreds of thousands responded to the offer of Christ.

4. The fourth theme marking the early Methodist message was their telic view of the possibilities of grace in the here and now. Heirs of the Reformation, they believed man could be delivered from condemnation and justified by faith. The Puritan and Anglican influences had, however, left a profound hunger for holiness. Was it possible to be delivered from the tyranny of self-interest? Wesley’s conclusion was that through grace this could be achieved. Self could be denied and faith could be perfected in love.

This teaching also had its social and political implications. It may come as a surprise to many current Methodists, but the great concern of United Methodists with social issues had its origins largely in just such pietism.

Here two current scholars have helped us. Timothy Smith in Revivalism andSocial Reform and George Marsden in Fundamentalism and American Culture have chronicled the impact of such theology.

Just as the doctrine of universal atonement made the salvation of every soul a moral concern, the emphasis upon love made the well-being of others a personal priority. Wesley expressed it in his familiar wisdom on money: “Make all you can. Save all you can. Give away all you can.”

The result was that social issues now became religious concerns. Slavery, poverty, inhumane prison conditions, alcoholism, women’s inequalities, the abuse and misuse of children, the availability of education for the nonelite, and other problems in American life became the inescapable concern of the devout. The story of the nineteenth-century assault on social evil in America is one of the notable stories in Christian history.

Marsden and Smith, neither of them United Methodists, show that the passion for evangelism and the hunger for holiness were vital elements in a commitment to social reform that has characterized not just Methodism but so much of American Christendom.

Problems With Continuity

This year Methodism in America looks back on two centuries of pilgrimage. Pride and nostalgia have marked the celebrations. Some uncertainty, some self-doubt is apparent, though. Questions about lack of identity or a consensus on mission recur. At least part of this has to do with doctrine.

In 1972 a special theological study commission, headed by Albert Outler, reported to the denomination. One section read: “We can scarcely identify ourselves to ourselves; we baffle our separated brethren. Our Wesleyan heritage goes largely unclaimed.… Our doctrinal norms are ill-defined and anomalous. We have a Discipline [constitution and bylaws] that is generally clear on questions of administrative polity, but blandly vague with respect to doctrine and doctrinal standards. The simplest proof of this is the frequent mention of “our doctrines,” with no definition of what the phrase refers to. It is as if, once upon a time, an earlier generation understood it all and then forgot to tell their children—who never asked.”

One of the problems Methodism shares with other American denominations is that of memory and continuity.

Like people, institutions cannot be one thing today and a discontinuous “other” tomorrow, without psychic loss. While no reasonable person can fight change, discontinuities are destructive. Pruning is a different operation from cutting the tap root. We need the wisdom to know the difference.

This problem was brought into focus for Methodism almost two decades ago by a young theologian, Robert Chiles, who analyzed the theological transitions within Methodism from 1790 to 1935 as reflected in three of Methodism’s most respresentative theologians. He looked at their views on authority, man, and salvation:

1. In its origins, Methodism’s authoritative norm for determining belief was revelation; Scripture was the final court of appeal. But before the period studied was over, human reason was supreme.

2. Man was seen by early Methodism as fallen, but by the twentieth century, man the sinner had become man the moral agent.

3. A theology that in its origins emphasized free grace turned to belief in free will. The benefits of prevenient grace were now seen to be a part of man’s natural constitution.

So Chiles raised the question of continuity. Other Methodist thinkers are now noting that Methodist scholarship in this century has concentrated more on philosophy of religion than on systematic theology and biblical studies. An emphasis on religious experience in general has replaced the distinctive emphases on justification by faith, regeneration, and sanctification. General religious experience along with human reason have tended to be as much the locus for truth as the Scripture. The discontinuity between God and man has tended to be obscured.

To replace the transcendent Holy One with “God within” means that man then looks within for help. Inevitably, he faces an identity problem. With no external norm to protect him from himself, he sees his best impulses and confuses them with the divine. He thinks he sees God when it is really himself.

How Crucial Is Dogma?

But some say theology is not too important. An answer to this was given in, of all places, a 1970 lecture to the John Dewey Society by a sociologist, Robert Nisbet. His burden, strangely, was the importance of dogma.

Nisbet contends that every institution (church, college, etc.) is the structural expression of a set of dogmas. In fact, what oxygen is to an animal, dogma is to an institution. If the dogma goes, the institution goes (or gets another set of dogmas). But if the dogma changes, the institution changes too.

However, dogma is like oxygen, invisible to the naked eye. So the dogma that is the institution’s life may go, and no one may know that it has left. Exaggerated activity may represent death throes, not signs of life.

Perhaps that is part of the sovereign purpose of God in birthdays, even those of institutions. They make us conscious of time. That forces us to notice change. If birthdays force us to differentiate valid change from discontinuity, they will have served a grand and saving purpose.

Tim Stafford is a free-lance writer living in Santa Rosa, California. He is a distinguished contributor to several magazines. His latest book is Do You Sometimes Feel Like a Nobody? (Zondervan, 1980).

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