Wesleyan theology

The Reverend Brown, the Wesleyan minister, sturdily declares that he cares nothing for creeds but only for education.

Meanwhile, in truth, the wildest Wesleyanism is tearing his soul.

The Reverend Smith of the Church of England explains gracefully with the Oxford manner that the only question for him is the prosperity and efficiency of the schools, while in truth all the evil passions of a curate are roaring within him.

It is a fight of creeds masquerading as policies.

THE LADY OF THE BARGE The master of the barge Arabella sat in the stern of his craft with his right arm leaning on the tiller, but a sultry conversation with the mate of a schooner, who was hanging over the side of his craft a few yards off, had come to a conclusion owing to a difference of opinion on the subject of religion.

The skipper had argued so warmly that he almost fancied he must have inherited the tenets of the seventh day of Baptists from his mother, while the mate had surprised himself by the warmth of his advocacy of a form of Wesleyanism, which would have made the members of that sect open their eyes with horror.

He had, moreover, confirmed the skipper in the error of his ways by calling him a bargy, the ranks of the Baptists receiving a defender if not a recruit from that hour.

With the influence of the religious argument still upon him, the skipper- as the long summer's day gave place to night, fell to wondering where his own mate, who was also his brother-in-law, had got to.

Today I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Howard A. Snyder.

Howard is a Wesleyan theologian, a writer, and was a long-time professor amongst other places at Asbury Theological Seminary.

And his work centers on the kingdom of God as the heart of the Christian life.

Through many wonderful, influential books, he's called the church back to rediscover its identity as a spirit-formed community, shaped by holiness, mission, and the renewal of all creation in and under Christ.

But then when I was still a baby, they returned to the States.

And I was always interested just as a child and growing up in the out of doors in what we often call nature or the creation, trees and birds and fields and so on.

But when I was at Asbury Seminary as a student, I realized I didn't really know my own tradition, that is the Wesleyan tradition, which is the free Methodism in the Wesleyan tradition.

And it was really after seminary that I, on my own, got into Wesley and discovered the breadth of his vision and ministry.

you could get there.

Now, in the 19th century, something that spread across all of Protestantism, whether Wesleyan or Reformed, was the phenomenon of revivalism.

Revivalism.

In the 18th century, there had been some periods of emotional fervor uh... that corresponded to uh... religious conversions and uh... and a lot of uh... what hoopla went into it the nineteen thirty looking back at the eighteenth century they got interested in the hoopla right they they they thought well we can do what they did we can do what our forefathers did they have this sort of religious revival that place we can kind of package that and recreate the dynamics they changed the theology they kept the emotion And so you see the advent of revivalism, and revivalism is the idea that you can kind of manufacture a religious experience that will induce a conversion.

And in this mentality where people think like, okay, we have to kick it up to the next level, There's normal Christianity, and then there is revived Christianity.

That becomes part of the mindset.

When that mindset takes hold in the Wesleyan tradition, with its tradition of holiness, they think that, okay, now maybe Christian perfection, Wesley's idea of Christian perfection, can take place through a revival, that you can have a kind of blow-up experience and go from mundane Christian to holy Christian.

And thus is born the holiness movement.

Today we're going to learn about a story about a young man who was saved in the Wesleyan Holiness movement and then spent most of his life and career in Christian radio.

Yeah, you know where this is going.

A lot of things to do, superficial Christianity and no rest.

And it was not long before I was like, I want to be a part of this.

And so I became a Christian.

That was Trinity Wesleyan Church in Jackson, Michigan in 83.

And And so I started going there.

We went on a youth retreat in Hickory Corners, Michigan.

So Lutheran, Reformed, Baptist, Anabaptist, Anglican.

What's next? What is next, Wesleyan? Wesleyanism comes out of Anglicanism, all the way back to John Wesley and his brother Chuck, Charles Wesley.

They practice what is called a connectional form of church government.

So it's a totally different one.

Some things that you might not know.

The Wesleyan tradition is filled with God moving on people's hearts.

And sometimes that looks like little branches of the Wesley tree that take new shape and new form.

And God uses in very specific ways.

And one of those ways is the Salvation Army.

And so, Diane, would you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do and maybe connect the dots a little bit more educated than I could on the connection between Wesleyanism and the Salvation Army?

Okay.

Okay.

Like one thing I learned was the Church of God in Christ, which we all think of today as a very Pentecostal church, had originally started because they were a Baptist offshoot in the late 1800s.

that got kicked out by the Baptists because they started believing Wesleyan ideas, specifically about sinless perfectionism and being baptized in the Spirit.

And so they got kicked out, but then some Pentecostal dudes who came from Azusa show up, and they're like, oh, dude, these guys, this is exactly what we're missing.

And so the whole denomination starts to gradually integrate these ideas.

So the first split as the Pentecostals start to kind of grow, the first split that happens is actually not on the Trinitarian stuff, which is what we identify oneness with.

It's actually kind of a result of – like I said, Pentecostalism – was values-driven, but it wasn't exactly, at this point, doctrine-based.

So you had people who had a Baptist view of Scripture, and then you had people who had a Wesleyan view of Scripture, and they were kind of not getting along with each other because they're now both Pentecostal.

So essentially what happened was...