Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it

While not surprising, given all we've learned this semester, the comparison between how the United Methodist Church handled/handles issues of racism and how the church handled/handles issues of sexuality are striking.  We've discussed issues of slavery/race already, but we haven't discussed the debate regarding sexuality as much.

Richey outlines the the inception and continued debate over issues of human sexuality from 1968 - 2000.  He notes that the UMC, as progressive and forward thinking as the church seemed to be about some things, also housed a more conservative contingent.  This perhaps isn't surprising either, as some of the rhetoric coming out of the temperance movement appeared pretty conservative too, but in contrast to the progressive energy from parts of the denomination, it stands in contrast.  Richey goes on to say that the UMC was resistant to the socio-cultural environment post World War II, particularly related to sexuality.  After hearing the current debates on this issue, it makes sense that the UMC has always resisted properly addressing this issue.  His description of how the language of "incompatible with Christian teaching" ended up in the Principles, and the BOD, fascinates and horrifies.

As Richey outlines the debate on whether or not the sexuality of a clergy person matters, I was struck by the reaction of the COB in 1984.  Even then, there was resistance to claiming any authoritative response to issues of sexuality; by saying each conference can do its own thing, there was seemingly no leadership on how the UMC should actually address the issue.  This book stops in 2000, but as we've seen every quadrennium since, this issue gets more and more polarizing.  The COB was asked in 2016 to take a stand on this issue by identifying a path for the UMC to address this issue so we can move on, one way or another.

Given the history of the UMC and how we have dealt with this issue for the last 40 years, I wonder what it will look like to have the COB, based on the Commission, take a stand and give us a direction in which to go.

I also wonder how Wesley would have seen this issue, how he would have handled it.  I used to think that he would be all about inclusion, making disciples, and all of that, but after learning in this class all of the nuanced limitations placed on leadership, I'm not so sure he would advocate for the ordination of not straight humans.  That said, he wouldn't have been okay with ordaining women either, so it's probably good that his preferences aren't the only guide marks in our denomination/theology.

War, Peace, & the UMC

In American Methodism:  A Compact History, Richey discusses the multitude of major issues the UMC faced upon its creation, let alone the US.  The biggest issue, of course, was race.  However, I do find it important to also to bring up the other hot topic, namely the Vietnam War.  Three of the first five resolutions dealt with war and peace in the first edition of The Book of Resolutions of The United Methodist Church:  1968; the first being called "U.S. Policy in Vietnam." Considering the UMC's initial social principles regarding military service and composition of the first BOR, I wonder how important the Vietnam War actually was to the merger that created the UMC.  How would the development of our Social Principles, even into the 21st century, be different if war and peace weren't such a prevalent issue in 1968?

What in tarnation...

Until the university severed its ties with the denomination in 1914, Vanderbilt Divinity School was under the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. In 1958, James Lawson- raised in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion tradition- is attending Vanderbilt Divinity School and using Wesley's example of nonviolent response to mobs opposed to his teaching (Dickerson, 313). How, 140 years after Wesley condemns the enslavement and dehumanization of black people in his Thoughts Upon Slavery, are entire universities being founded by a Methodist tradition that existed simply because of its preference for continuing slavery? How, 184 years after the same condemnation, is Lawson being expelled from an institution founded on Methodism? What breakdowns allowed theologies originating from one tradition stray so far from one another (MECS and AMEZ)? What were MECS members saying of Wesley’s words on the matter?

Unification, and what it meant for the Laity

The Unification of the United Methodist Church is something so far removed from my lifetime that it always feels more distant than it actually is. It always felt as a child growing up in a rural enviroment that the United Methodist Church had always been there, and it wasn't until I was older that I realized it wasn't until 1968. But how could this be the case?

I have to wonder how much the liturgy changed for the laity. Though there was a brand new hymnal as I was growing up(the one we still use today), there still was only one hymnal prior to our current one, which I still find used in Sunday School classes even today. But even so, I heard very little about any problems with becoming a single church: from the liturgy, to the identity of the UMC, to any number of issues that would come from merging an organization. It was as if time only started for the church in 1968, rather than the church having anything to fall back on prior to that.

A Bouquet of Live Wires

Richey's Compact History ends in the year 2000, a time quite removed from the political and cultural forces shaping our current state in the UMC.  However, the issues haven't changed much:  Richey, in chapters 11 and 12, touches on racism, homosexuality, abortion, elder care, divorce, female leadership, and the Church's relationship to war.  With the possible exception of elder care, each of these is still An Issue in conference conversations, especially in last year's scorching General Conference.  Most of these are things that we increasingly don't want to touch in any one-to-one setting, preferring to leave them alone or contain them to the pulpit or denominational gathering.

Knowing that the most important things are rarely ever solved and thus of course keep returning but that our current trend of either ignoring them in hopes of politeness or grabbing hold of them with such force that we harm ourselves and others is unsustainable, how do we as United Methodist leaders take these conversations to the lay level?  (How do we especially as Vandy students learn to have these conversations in ways that honor all the viewpoints brought to the table?)  And in what ways can we partner with other denominations and faith traditions struggling through the same pains (e.g. Unitarian Universalism and their recent conversations about racism in leadership, the Church of the Brethren and their conversations about sexuality, the PC[USA] and its engagement in divestment and moves toward denunciations of war)?  We must, after all, be careful to avoid "agitating conferences with resolutions and proposals" since "such advocacy had the effect of focusing United Methodism on itself" (202) and we should not be our own target audience.

Methodist Interaction

As a child, I had no clue that there was any kind of Methodist other than a United Methodist. Reading through Warner's article brought up a few related questions--how aware were the different sects of Methodism of each other at the laity level? How much did the denominations tend to overlap geographically versus how much did they kind of claim their own territories? Were the denominations that were more open to the ordination of women centered in any certain area?

Dickerson's Outline of the AME Lineage

The Dickerson article outlines how African-American Methodism affected the modern civil rights movement. He mentions that the theology and ethos for slave liberation are "embedded" within this Methodist movement, citing Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois as leaders of a nascent civil rights movement that led to the one we are all familiar with headed up by Martin Luther King, Jr. They adopted a "Wesleyan social holiness" that informed their social justice work to end societal discrimination by demanding a re-creation of God's kingdom of salvation on earth. Dickerson brings up civil rights leaders whom I had not previously identified, including our familiar Richard Allen, Henry M. Turner, and A. Philip Randolph, who worked tirelessly through both governmental and grassroots movements to promote non-violence, which in turn affected the tactics of the 1960s movements. Archibald J. Carey, Jr. also took these tactics but moreover worked within the government itself, which I found surprising for the era before the 60s. In particular, I loved reading about Rosa Parks simply because we have the same hometown - and I had no idea she worked to investigate rape victims. In general, the article does a very good job of establishing the connection between the AME civil rights leaders' work that led to and helped catalyze the 1960s civil rights movements, and it clarified the nature of the pacifism rise within the movement due to these leaders' academic interactions.

An American Woman Missionary in Korea: Mary Scranton

Women in Wesleyan and Methodist movements during the 19-20th century seemed to actively participate in many areas. They especially took part in the feminist movement for the women, who were oppressed and marginalized, and for their civil/ecclesiastic rights. 

Warner highlights mission works of Methodist women. According to him, “[some women missionaries] made significant contribution to the education and medical care of indigenous women.” When I was reading this part, this stream in America reminded of the early history of Korean church. 

There was a woman missionary in Korea whose works were very similar with those in America at that time. Her name is Mary Fletcher Scranton, and she came to Korea in 1885 as the first Methodist woman missionary.  Her major works in Korea were also education and medical care for Korean women. At that period in Korea, there was no hospital for women to be cared, so she founded the first women-only hospital in 1886. Moreover, she also established the first women-only educational institution in 1886 named Ewha Hakdang. This now became as one of the top 10 best universities and the best women’s university in Korea: Ewha Womans University. She was the first person who started feminist movement in Korea and tried to safeguard women’s rights. 

Therefore, I thought that Mary Scranton’s works might have been affected by the movement in America, or she, as a missionary, might have brought the movement to Korea.

Warner Article - People's History

First, an anecdote that some may find interesting:

Reading Warner's article on American Methodist women reminded me of a book my sister sent me about the history of some of our family ancestors, which contains several references to Methodism in the 1700s and 1800s. One excerpt is from my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother Mary Grimes Montgomery, who writes of a conversion experience in a Methodist class meeting in Ohio in 1803 with a pastor and two other women. Her testimony is quite similar to others we have read in class, with references to camp-meetings, seeking "a greater work of grace" night and day, and that she eventually "experienced the blessing of perfect love." Her obituary is also full of references to how she raised her children as "professors of Christian faith" and that she was a "strong advocate of the religion of Jesus Christ." Many of her grandchildren and children were Methodist preachers so her advocacy clearly held an important place in that family. 

In relation to Warner's article, this made me think of the incredibly important place that women have held in Methodist history. We have read from several sources that women outnumbered men in congregations and that women held vital roles in the religious life of a family, etc. Many of the women who did the important work towards women's ordination and inclusion are listed in the article, but so many more exist who did work that is unremembered now, acting for all intents and purposes as ministers and as pastors but without any of the recognition or place in our history books. It's understandable that we must focus on these larger-than-life figures when we study history- by necessity of the fact that we have such few written records for anyone other than those key figures. I'm interested, however, by the concept of a people's history, or history from below, which focuses on common people rather than leaders, and what this might look like in a Methodist context.

Here's a link to the above-mentioned book on Google books: 

https://books.google.com/books?id=8Gs6AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA32#v=onepage&q&f=false

Woman's Church

In Laceye Warner's article, she states that in the face of strong opposition to the ordination of women in the Methodist Church, Frances Willard suggests that women should ordain themselves if the opposition persisted (thus proposing the creation of a "woman's church").  However, Warner notes that this proposition never materialized. In facing opposition for their own ordination and racial discrimination, Richard Allen effectively created the African-American Methodist Church. In light of this, why did Willard's proposal fail to materialize among women? Why was Allen successful in creating a separate church and Willard wasn't? Did Willard lack the strategic planning to implement such an undertaking, or where there other underlying factors that prevented women supporting Willard's proposal?

Church Architecture

I find church architecture to be fascinating, especially as a form of theological expression. The layout, ornamentation, and general architectural style of a church all say something about the church's theology. I'm glad the textbook addressed the rise of neo-Gothic architecture for the Methodist church (158-161). West End UMC, where I attend, was built during that revival and it helps to explain why the church looks the way it does. It grandeur has been a point of pride for the congregation from the 1930s on. In our recent capital campaign, the beauty of the sanctuary was linked with creating spiritual experiences with people (much like Conover articulated, 161).

Prior to the neo-Gothic movement, what architectural style did Methodists typically follow? What were their thoughts on ornamentation (stained glass windows, etc.)? Did Wesley have anything to say about church buildings, or would that have been too much of try to start a new denomination?

What People Think We Do/What We Really Do

As one might also accuse Methodists of today, it seems that there is a large gap between what the church officially says that it does and what it actually does (we should make one of those memes as a diagram). As described in the Women in Seminary and in the Pulpit excerpt, women were getting seminary degrees, preaching, founding and leading churches (Richey, 118). Meanwhile, they were sending petitions to bishops asking to be officially recognized for the things they were already doing, which were denied. Methodists took on the loving mission work of stripping indigenous people of their heritage and land- officially- but also aided Union troops in massacring them (Richey, 121). Upon finally reaching a place where some Methodist denominations were ordaining black clergy, the same ones were also recognizing petitions to segregate local churches (Richey, 121-122). I’m wondering if this incoherency comes from mere ridiculousness (i.e. racism, sexism) entirely, or if is due in part to the sheer number of denominations that existed- AME, AMEZ, UBC, EA, MPC, MECS- am I missing any? When we look back at a “Methodist” history, what do we actually claim as Methodist? Who decides?

Just the Middle Class?

In Richey's American Methodism: A Compact History, he describes the founding of the Oxford League as "a youth organization 'modeled' on Wesley's Holy Club."  As one would imagine, part of this club included studying the Bible an building moral character.  The most interesting piece of the goals for the Oxford League I found says "to train middle-class teenagers in the works of 'mercy and help.'"  Now if the UMC looked back to the MEC's youth organizations like the Oxford League and Epworth League, would they look anything like our UMYF programs?

What jumps out at me is the intent to focus on the middle-class teens.  I also do not know the overall demographics of Methodist teens in the nineteenth or twenty-first centuries, so maybe having a focused mission on the middle-class was or could be a good call.  So my question is, why did John Vincent and other leaders of these youth organizations focus only on the middle class?

And finally, if the UMC employed youth organizations also modeled on Wesley's Holy Club and/or the Oxford/Epworth Leagues, how would it affect Church membership, participation, and missions after these teens enter college and eventually the workforce?  Would this help bridge the gap the UMC is facing today in the loss of many young adults in the Church?  How did the MEC's youth organizations affect the life of the Church as their teens became young adults?

Methodist Eccumenical Communion

One of the things I had hoped to take away from this class was a better understanding of how the parallel "Methodist" movements came about. Yet American Methodism seems to gloss over some of the splits and reconciliations that happen throughout the time period we were assigned this week. In particular, I'm curious as to what specifically caused the Church of the Nazarene to form, and what brought the United Brethren into talks with the Methodist Episcopal Church?

Brain, Meet Heart

In chapter 7 of Palmer's Way of Holiness just after the acceptance of grace narrative, Palmer feels called to evangelistic mission.  In deciding whether she can "profess this blessing" even to crowds of thousands, she says that her prior mindset had been that "Satan had suggested that she would ever be vacillating in her experience; one day professing the blessing, and another not; that she was so constitutionally prone to reason, it would require an extraordinary miracle to sustain her amid the array of unpropitious circumstances, which, like a mighty phalanx, crowded before the vision of her mind".  Two things about this particular passage:  one, that we continue the Wesleyan (and, really, Lutheran) plot device of uncertainty regarding assurance; and two, that there is a fight between faith and reason that I don't know we've seen as yet.

One:  the vacillation Palmer mentions is part and parcel of every good Wesleyan narrative, but here it seems to be both more external (Satan as speaking character) and completely awful.  Was there a greater need for certainty by Palmer's time that doubt wasn't something people were comfortable wrestling with as Wesley did?  And was there a sense that Wesley (or any of his published followers) had ever gotten to a place where they stopped wrestling?

Two:  asking for a miracle is a rather gutsy thing to do, to be sure, but Palmer seems aghast at the fact that she is "constitutionally prone to reason."  Was the folksy aspect of Methodism the thing that made reason a hindrance to faith or was the general tone of American religion at this point?  And what do miracles have to do with reason?  She goes on later to say that yes, a miracle would indeed be needed and God was standing by to provide one; was there not a sense that the standing by part was the miracle or were only concrete actions slotted into the miracle category?  (Did "miracle" have pretty much the same parameters then as now?)

sisters are doin' it for themselves

It's a pretty reasonable human thing to try to ascribe meaning to traumatic things that happen, particularly, things that happen to us.  Phoebe Palmer experienced a significant amount of trauma in her life, losing all of her children.  So given that, it makes much sense that she would seek understanding of that by studying scripture, by trying to create a structure around something like living holy.  She makes a point of separating out tradition from scripture, indicating that scripture has more authority than whatever traditions came from it, all of which, could be a response to the trauma she's experienced.

I wonder what impact her trauma had on the women who heard her exhortation in terms of offering strength or comfort to those with similar experiences, one that wasn't uncommon at that time.  It seems that her contribution might have been to make scripture more accessible to women at that time, particularly given that women didn't have formal roles in other denominations, really.  I wonder what it would have meant to a woman struggling with her own trauma to hear Phoebe Palmer speak or read her words.  

Initially, I struggle to understand what made her different, worthy of study, other than the fact that she was a female, but I think it's that she reached, or had the potential to reach, far more hearts than did her male counterparts.  And if the mission was to save souls and bring people to Christ, it seems possible that she did that as effectively, if not more so, than others.

Methodist Perfectionism: Theologically Light Huh?

Holifield’s Methodist Perfectionism paints a picture of American Methodism as being theologically light movement. A movement concerned with reaching lay people rather than producing theological treatises, and in fact Holifield depicts how Methodism only formed its theological stance in opposition to Calvinist & Universalist thought.

Now I know Christianity had a close relation to all things educational, and these institutions are birthed from that relationship. But this transformation still makes me wonder how Methodism went from a theologically light denomination towards producing theologians, and founding schools, and being tied to institutions such as Duke, Emory, Vanderbilt, Yale, and Boston University? Is the Methodist approach towards slavery the answer for this? If we see anti-slavery theologians as trying to prove the Bible doesn’t mean what it says, is this the foundation for our theological-educational-criticism shift?

Holifield speaks towards the Methodist emphasis on depravity, and I don’t know about you, but depravity & prevenient grace seem pretty theological to me. So if we are understanding American Methodists as being theological lacking, but still see the conversations built around theological language; does this speak more towards the theological literacy of the period or our theological illiteracy?