Celebrating Wesleyan Treasures and Rooting for United Methodists to Continue Offering Them

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Reading Sarah Lancaster’s insightful overview of Wesleyanism and keeping in mind its United Methodist denominational expressions took me back to when it was my responsibility to articulate overlaps between Mennonite and United Methodist teachings and values. The United Methodist University Senate oversees UM higher education, including in non-UM institutions it approves to teach UM students. To maintain the Eastern Mennonite Seminary UM Senate approval for further quadrennials, as seminary dean I needed to validate, on behalf of our students and faculty, that EMS adequately understood United Methodism and was prepared to teach and form UM students accordingly.

I was struck at the time, and now in reading Lancaster, that there are indeed significant commonalities. A key one is the overlap between the Anabaptist-Mennonite emphasis on discipleship and the Wesleyan emphasis on scriptural holiness along with the growth in holiness summarized through sanctification. There are variations in the details (particularly the Anabaptist grounding in believers baptism versus the Methodist affirmation of infant baptism), yet discipleship and sanctification both involve living faithfully for Jesus and not simply articulating doctrines or believing this or that.

This is communally expressed for both traditions. As Lancaster puts it, “Following Jesus to grow in holiness, then, was not finally individualistic and private, but rather took place in community.” And if holiness is not individualistic but public, this in turn leads to what Lancaster calls “social holiness.” In Wesley’s day as in ours, this can lead to opposing slavery, racism, oppression, alcohol production that leads to grain shortages for the poor, and so forth.

As I learned during my seminary dean days, it has also led to the “Social Principles” of the United Methodist Church. The fact that UM student numbers at EMS were second only to Mennonites made sense as I learned, for example, that both the United Methodists and Mennonites are committed to peacebuilding and principles of social justice. Both traditions take seriously the way of peace taught in the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus who stressed love of enemies.

As the UM 2016 version of the UM Book of Discipline affirms in relation to Social Principles: The World Community,

We believe war is incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ. We therefore reject war as an instrument of national foreign policy. We oppose unilateral first/preemptive strike actions and strategies on the part of any government. As disciples of Christ, we are called to love our enemies, seek justice, and serve as reconcilers of conflict

Throughout my reading of the Social Principles, I’m struck that again and again Mennonites would say amen to the UM social principles related to the natural world, the nurturing community, the social community, the economic community, the political community, the world community. This includes resonating with the UM position on the separation of church and state, a principle dear to many Anabaptist-Mennonites, and affirming, with the UM Social Principle on the Political Community,  “the diversity of religious expressions and the freedom to worship God according to each person’s conscience.”

If amid occasional differences in details and emphasis, many Anabaptist-Mennonites will resonate with the UM Social Creed and its celebrations of God, Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit, natural world as God’s handiwork, the rights of all, the rights and duties of workers amid “elimination of economic and social distress,” and more. Affirmations in response to Lancaster and such principles could go on and on. If anything as a Mennonite I feel a hint of chastening as I encounter the sheer comprehensiveness with which United Methodists address social issues and UM faith commitments.

Yet that does not exhaust United Methodism. Lancaster also highlights effectively the suppleness of a Wesleyan ethos that can catalyze such significant social thought yet also encompass “seeking emotional experiences of God in prayer and worship.” She helps us integrate social principles with John Wesley’s famous and memorable journal testimony that as he was listening to a reading of Luther’s Preface to the epistle to the Romans,

About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins. . . .

This also overlaps with Christopher Gehrz’s thoughts on the Pietist influence across multiple traditions.

There was one area in which I wished for Lawrence’s fuller exploration. She does observe that “There have been divisions over various matters, such as race and slavery, lay rights, women’s ordination, etc. (and we face division now over LGBTQ+ issues), but none of these ‘various views’ are distinctive to Wesleyans.”

There she lets things rest, perhaps understandably and deliberately so. To wade into such matters is to find all too little rest and perhaps often to muddy core convictions. It can be a challenge indeed, for example, to maintain communal commitments as polarizations related to “LGBTQ+ issues” threaten to shred community, at least at the formal denominational level. And Lancaster is understandably aiming to speak not only for United Methodism but also more broadly for a Wesleyanism expressed in but not limited to the UM denominational manifestions.

Yet fragmentation is affecting so many of our traditions, very much including Anabaptist-Mennonite as I earlier touched on. In addition, the UM battles related to LGBTQ+ denominational positions seem to involve significant intertwining with Wesleyan emphases on holiness, perfection, social creeds. When such core teachings confront the acids of controversies in which alternative views of sin and right living are in play, how do they fare? It would be valuable to learn more about how Lancaster sees United Methodists continuing to offer the treasures of Wesleyanism while confronting intense denominational factionalisms.

During my days as seminary dean, such denominational dynamics were omnipresent for both Mennonites involved in Mennonite Church USA and for United Methodists. Several times UM leaders provided resources to the EMS community based on UM dynamics that were not identical to Mennonite ones, given polity variations, yet involved overlapping complexities and sufferings still working their way through both denominations.

Mennonite Church USA is in the final stages of preparing for a May 2022 special delegate session that could “retire” or embrace several resolutions affecting LGBTQ-related denominational positions.  And as of this spring, even such a general-audience, non-theological source as USA Today was stirred to report, for instance, that a new Global Methodist Church would split from the UM Church by May and that

The new denomination announced its plans on the same day the UMC postponed its General Conference for the third time, this time until 2024. Delegates were expected to vote on proposals regarding the creation of a new denomination at the General Conference on Aug. 29-Sept. 6 in Minneapolis.

I certainly don’t propose that such developments invalidate Lancaster’s overview. But as an Anabaptist-Mennonite who has experienced the challenges of maintaining communal commitments when divisions erode denominations’ ability to gather around core understandings and practices, I will continue to watch with interest and concern how the United Methodist Church navigates such shoals.

And I’ll be rooting, Sarah Lancaster, for the various wings of the United Methodist Church, whether still officially part of one “United” denomination or fragments of what once was, to continue to offer us what you summarize in your memorable conclusion:

In the Wesleyan tradition, following Jesus means being a child of God and living appropriately in that relationship. However differently holiness may be conceived, it is a common conviction that God empowers us to live in the power of the Holy Spirit so that we may work with God in God’s intention to restore the world to what God created us to be.

“Oh, now I understand…”

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If Lutheranism is the parent of Pietism, then surely the Wesleyan Tradition is the closest cousin to my own. The most distinctive catalyst for the Methodist wing of the First Great Awakening was the encounter of John and Charles Wesley with Pietism, both the Moravian strain that famously led to their conversion experiences and the “churchly” Pietism associated with Philipp Spener (whose conventicles were adapted by early Methodists). In the 19th century, the influence ran the other direction: the Swedish Pietist revival to which I’ve referred in virtually every essay started with the efforts of a Methodist missionary named George Scott. 

And yet apart from my familiarity with those origin stories, most of my personal encounters with Wesleyanism have come through outgrowths of that tradition that weren’t central to Sarah Lancaster’s essay: friendships with CMA and Nazarene Christians whose version of Wesleyan holiness was touched on only briefly in this month’s lead essay; my experience talking about Pietism at a university with Free Methodist roots; some research into the history of United Brethren higher education.

When it comes to Methodism itself, I’m almost shocked how little I know of it. (Apart from attending a friend’s wedding, I’m not sure I’ve actually worshipped in a United Methodist church.)

And I might have wished to hear a bit more from Lancaster about contemporary Wesleyanism. But I can’t complain of being reminded of the origins of Wesleyan practice and belief: some of which I knew well; some of which I now understand far better.

“Hymns have deeply formed my own relationship with God,” she wrote in her response to my essay on Pietism. So let me start with my favorite legacy of early Methodism: its hymnody. (Here too, there’s a Pietist connection: John translated from German to English hymns by Nikolaus von Zinzendorf, Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen, and other Pietist writers.) The hymnal of my pietistic home denomination, the Evangelical Covenant Church, features sixteen hymns by Charles Wesley, including “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing,” which opened the Maundy Thursday service last night at our neighborhood Lutheran church. Describing a Jesus whose name is “music in the sinner’s ears,” bringing “life and health and peace,” and who has the power to “[set] the pris’ner” free,” that hymn came to my mind as I read Lancaster describe sanctification as “growing in holiness-understood as perfect love,” both personal and social.

(Speaking of social… I also appreciate how the early Methodists emphasized congregational singing, perhaps one more way of working out Lancaster’s profound insight that “We grow in God’s love as we open ourselves to one another.”)

“Look and believe through faith alone,” Charles added, carefully placing the Wesleys in the Protestant mainstream, “be justified by grace.” But to understand what he means by “the triumphs of [God’s] grace,” I think we need to go back to Lancaster’s observation that, for the Wesleys, grace initiates and empowers salvation — understood as including “not only what happens after death but also what happens in this life.” For Wesleyans, like Pietists, grace doesn’t just impute righteousness but enables us to follow Jesus in this life, learning “again to love as God loves, thereby becoming more who God created us to be. We are really changed by following Jesus.”

Maybe because of their Lutheran parentage, most Pietists can’t follow (John) Wesley, let alone some of his 19th century spiritual descendants, to the point of expecting “Christian perfection” or “entire sanctification.” In his recent compendium of Philipp Spener’s theology, K. James Stein (a UMC theologian from the United Brethren tradition) emphasizes that the Pietist founder’s “belief that the new birth is only completed at death kept him from the understanding of a sanctification that is often equated with sinless perfection.” 

But apart from that hesitation, I came to the end of Lancaster’s winsome essay and felt almost like I could say, with her other students, “Oh, now I understand why I am a Methodist” — the overlap with Pietism is that close.

In fact, I’ve often heard something similar from college and adult students at the end of my classes: “I was a Pietist and didn’t know it.” So even Lancaster’s excursus sounded familiar, which prompts a brief tangent of my own…

It’s not just that she and I share the experience of providing theological language and historical context to people who “have been formed in certain ways of thinking even if not explicitly taught.” At the same time that Methodist scholars undertook their “effort to recognize [John Wesley’s] theological work and share it more broadly with people for their daily living,” mid-20th century Covenant, Brethren, and (Swedish) Baptist scholars were recovering the thought of Philipp Spener and other early Pietists. I’m not quite sure what to make of that. American Pietist ressourcement after 1950 often had to do with finding an alternative to the fundamentalist-modernist and conservative-liberal binaries of 20th century theology; I don’t know if the same dynamic animated Methodist historiography.

But even if it’s just a coincidence, that scholars from both traditions have rededicated themselves to retrieving their origins reiterates the importance of this conversation: it pushes us at once to dig deeper into our own stories, then to share them with others.

John Wesley and Eastern Orthodoxy

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Dear Sarah,

Thank you for your informative contribution to our ongoing conversation.

You are probably aware of the fascinating ways John Wesley is linked with Eastern Orthodoxy, but some of our conversation partners may not be aware of these connections.

First of all, while John Wesley loved all the Church Fathers of the first four centuries, he clearly favored the Greek Fathers over their Latin counterparts.  As Randy Maddox observes (in his essay entitled “John Wesley and Eastern Orthodoxy: Influences, Convergences, and Differences” which appeared in The Asbury Theological Journal in 1990),

“It is generally recognized that the first four centuries of Christian tradition played a significant role in Wesley’s theology.  What is not as often noted is that he tended to value the Greek representatives over the Latin.  It was a preference he inherited from his father.  It deepened during his Oxford years as he studied newly-available editions of patristic writings with his fellow ‘methodist,’ John Clayton.

“As such, it is not surprising that Greek theologians predominate when Wesley gives lists of those he admires or recommends for study.  Frequently cited were Basil, Chrysostom, Clement of Alexandria, Clement of Rome, Ephraem Syrus, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Origen, Polycarp and (Pseudo-)Macarius.  By contrast, references to Augustine, Cyprian and Tertullian were relatively rare.”

Maddox further states,

“Perhaps the closest resemblance between Orthodoxy and Wesley lies in the articulation of their respective doctrines of deification and sanctification.  The Orthodox doctrine of deification has often been misunderstood by the West.  It is not an affirmation of pantheistic identity between God and humanity, but of a participation, through grace, in the divine life.  This participation renews humanity and progressively transfigures us into the image of Christ.

“Analogously, Wesley’s affirmation of entire sanctification is not a claim that humans can embody the faultless perfection of God in this life, but a confidence that God’s grace can progressively deliver us from the power of sin – if not from creatureliness.  For both Wesley and Orthodoxy, the transformation desired is more than external conformity to law.  It is a renewal of the heart in love – love of God, and love of others.  Moreover, they agree that such transformation is for all Christians, not merely a monastic or spiritual elite.

“What is most characteristic of and common between Wesley and Orthodoxy is their conviction that Christ-likeness is not simply infused in believers instantaneously.  It is developed progressively through a responsible appropriation of the grace which God provides.  Spiritual disciplines are essential to this process of growth.”

It’s also known that while on the ship on his way as a missionary-priest to the colony of Georgia in the New World in 1735, Wesley was reading the Fifty Spiritual Homilies of St. Makarios of Egypt.

And finally, there’s the very intriguing possibility that, at Wesley’s request, a Greek Orthodox bishop from Crete named Gerasimos (or Erasmus) ordained several of Wesley’s preachers to the priesthood, in 1763, while the bishop was visiting England, after having established an Orthodox church in Amsterdam.  Apparently Wesley could find no Anglican bishop to ordain his preachers, and more of his followers wanted to receive Communion than he could accommodate himself.  There is more than just a little evidence that these ordinations really did take place.

May these points of contact between the founder of Methodism and Eastern Orthodoxy help contribute to more fruitful dialogue between these two major streams of Christianity!

Yours, in Christ,

David Ford

 

 

 

 

How Do You Best Love Those Who Don’t Fulfill Expectations? Can Methodists Endorse the Lutheran Answer as Appropriate?

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     I was tempted to sing the Paul Simon hit again about the mother and child reunion in response to this fine piece of Methodist theologizing.  After all it is well known that John Wesley had his famed Aldersgate Experience while reading the work of Martin Luther on justification by grace through faith (Journals, May 24, 1738).  But alas, it is not quite as simple.  Methodism has other  mothers like the Anglican heritage and the original Reformed theological home of Samuel Wesley (and could we even suggest the Eastern tradition through Gregory of Nyssa and Macarius the Egyptian).  Perhaps the Methodist-Lutheran relationship is more like that of a niece to one of her controversial, though beloved aunts who is often out of touch with the thinking of other extended family members.   

     Be that as it may, as you well know from your work in the dialogue, Sarah, our denominations see each other as family, in Full Communion.  Your paper makes me even more confident that our denominations have done the right thing.  Of course your comments on prevenient grace and forgiveness are music to this Lutheran’s ears (Apology of The Augsburg Confession, IV.2-3).  And your comments about Methodists believing that love may be expressed in different forms is in line with the Lutheran openness to a Situational Ethic (Luther’s Works, Vol.5, p.150; Complete Sermons, Vol.3/1, p.61).  I also think that your way of describing Perfection as an expectation that believers may have also makes the concept even more palatable to Confessional Lutherans.  Add to all these Methodist overtures to Lutheranism the fact that the more characteristically Methodist themes of striving for holiness of heart and even synergism as well as striving for perfection are also embedded in the Lutheran heritage (esp. its Pietist segments) (The Large Catechism, II.3.57-58; Formula of Concord, SD IV.31-33; II; VII; Philip Spener, Pia Desideria, 2), and it is clear that each of us may legitimately endorse much of what the other deems precious.  And if you are a Methodist who construes the Sacraments as in an Anglican manner, then once again Lutherans are at home in Wesleyan contexts.  My only question in that connection, then, is what do we collectively make of Sacramental fellowship with some UMCs, AMEs, Zionites, and CMEs who teach a more symbolic view of these rites?           

      I have just a couple of further questions of clarification aimed either at helping clear away any suspicions remaining in our memberships about our ecumenical agreements, and also a final question (suggested in my title) about whether Methodism can in fact embrace as a viable catholic point of view, a commitment very basic in the Lutheran tradition.  Some of these are questions I raised last month to our Pietist colleague Christopher Gehrz.  You refer to the pursuit of the holiness of heart and life as an important dimension of Methodism.  My question is, who does the pursuing?  Do we do that task alone?  Of course with your Methodist commitment to prevenient grace, and what is written in Art 8 of your Articles of Religion you would give grace and the Holy Spirit credit for this pursuit.  But Lutherans worry that Methodists and other Pietists do not always and systematically make this clear (The Small Catechism, II.3.6).  This relates to your Methodist claim that our nature is marred by sin.  Lutherans prefer to speak of our concupiscence, to make clear that we are thoroughly sinful in all we do, not just partially damaged (Apology of The Augsburg Confession, II.24-26), because if just partially damaged it seems we can do at least some of the pursuing of holiness on our own.  Although not characteristic of Methodist thinking, can such an Augustinian way of talking about sin be considered a legitimate alternative from a Methodist point of view?  

     This brings me to the question raised in the title to this response.  I have already expressed my Lutheran resonance with your idea of perfection and entire sanctification as an expectation.  Confessional Lutheranism has expectations about what grace can accomplish.  Because Lutherans expect good works to follow justification, this is why Lutherans are not inclined like Methodism to direct or exhort Christian behavior, to opt for teaching spontaneous good works and seem not to have much so say about sanctification.  It is because we have expectations about what grace can accomplish (that it will lead to good works) (Luther’s Works, Vol.31, pp367-378; Complete Sermons, Vol.1/2, p.316).  But what do Methodists do when their expectations are not met, when holiness or good works do not happen in the lives of the faithful?  How do you comfort someone in despair over that matter or over the quality of their faith?  Do you just keep urging them to do better in all cases, to keep striving?  Or can you instead offer solace, forget about exhorting works, tell them they are fee from the Law and that works take care of themselves, like Lutherans are inclined to proclaim?                               

    As noted above, Lutherans are open to sometimes urging the despairing to strive for more holiness.  You could validly preach that sometimes in a Lutheran congregation under our full communion agreement.  But if invited to your congregation, pledged to preach and teach in a manner that does not violate Methodist teaching and if advised in advance of my visit that you had a number of members struggling and uncertain in their faith, would I be legitimately able to proclaim a Word of freedom from the Law and the spontaneity of good works, as I have been advocating in our sessions?  Is it possible for Methodists to deem this Lutheran theme a legitimate Christian alternative?  If so, Methodists and Lutherans can indeed unequivocally follow Jesus together.                

 

The Quest for Holiness

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 It seems that I have been fascinated with the concept of holiness for as long as I can remember. As a young person growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I discovered that one of my cousins and his family were active participants in what they referred to as a “Pentecostal Holiness” movement. Many years later in my doctoral studies I focused on Religion in America and learned of the roots of Methodism and of its founders, John and Charles Wesley. I also found that many of Charles Wesley’s great hymns and anthems are contained in the Latter-day Saint hymnal.

Brigham Young, the second President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was a devoted and practicing Methodist before he was caught up in the spirit of Restorationism or Christian Primitivism in the northeastern United States. He once said of John Wesley: “I never passed John Wesley’s church in England without stopping to look at it. Was he a good man? Yes; I suppose him to have been, by all accounts, as good as ever walked on this earth. . . . Has he obtained a rest? Yes, and greater than ever entered his mind to expect.” Brigham added: “Did the Spirit of God rest upon him? Yes, and does, more or less, at times, upon all people.”

Six years ago I was approached by Mark Maddix, who is now the dean of Theology at Point Loma Nazarene University, near San Diego. He indicated that he was aware of a dialogue with Evangelical Christian scholars of which I had been a part for some fifteen years. He inquired whether some Latter-day Saint colleagues and I from Brigham Young University might be interested in beginning a similar academic dialogue with four professors of the Nazarene faith. At the time, I knew very little about the Nazarenes but, out of curiosity, I sensed that such could make for a worthwhile conversation. Before I could answer, however, Mark added: “I think you’ll discover that you have much more in common with Nazarenes than you do with Evangelicals.” The Nazarene-Latter-day Saint dialogue began six months later, and the group has met twice a year (when needed, by Zoom) for over five years.

In each gathering, we have read both Latter-day Saint and Nazarene perspectives on such topics as the Fall and the plight of fallen humanity, the Atonement of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts, and Eschatology (which we just discussed four days ago). Quite frequently our Nazarene readings have consisted of sermons by John Wesley, their principal theologian. Very early on, I fell in love with Wesley. I have read several biographies and become absolutely taken with the man’s life. While I am not always in agreement with his doctrinal conclusions, his unmatched devotion to duty, as well as his teachings, speak to me (as do the hymns of his brother, Charles). Four years ago I was invited to spend a portion of the summer as a visiting scholar at Point Loma at the Wesley Center there on the university campus and to devote about five hours a day to Wesley’s teachings. Those were days never to be forgotten.

Dr. Lancaster’s comment that Wesley had chosen to “convey important theological ideas to ordinary people rather than to scholars” resonated with me. After about ten years of writing to academics in order to be promoted to Associate and then Full Professor and obtain continuing faculty status (BYU’s version of tenure), I found much greater satisfaction and feelings of accomplishment as I wrote, almost exclusively (with an academic article or book here and there) to what we often refer to as the informed non-specialist. And I for one am very grateful that John Wesley made that decision.

I was a bit confused about a matter in paragraph six. Sarah states that “In justification we truly and deeply learn through Jesus Christ that God loves us as dear children, we know we are forgiven, and we receive Christ’s imputed righteousness. Because new birth (used alongside the image of adoption, this metaphor stresses a real change in us and not just a change in status) accompanies justification, we may begin to model our lives after the one we follow, learning from Jesus how to love properly.” It is a beautiful expression, wonderfully stated. My question is this: Do Methodists believe in “imputed righteousness” (receiving the righteousness of Jesus), or do they believe that when we are changed by Christ and conformed to His image there is an actual spiritual change that takes place? I’m a little confused. In his 1765 sermon, “The Lord Our Righteousness,” he states: “I believe God implants righteousness in every one to whom he has imputed it. . . . They to whom the righteousness of Christ is imputed are made righteous by the spirit of Christ.” (Paragraph 12.) I suppose I am having trouble distinguishing between imputed righteousness and implanted righteousness.

In paragraph 11 Dr. Lancaster gets to the matter of “Christian perfection” or “entire sanctification,” meaning “perfect love in this life,” which John Wesley felt people should expect before their death. My questions are these: From Wesley’s perspective, when a person has perfect love or enjoys entire sanctification, is he or she completely free of sin? Will such a person, for the remainder of their life, never disobey God or be unkind or dishonest? Or is whatever they do that is wrong or inappropriate not counted or considered to be a sin? I ask that in light of my understanding that the Methodists, in contrast to the Reformed traditions, believe that one can fall from grace.

During the Second Great Awakening, an era when camp meetings and revivals were everywhere in the northeast, the Joseph Smith Sr. family was religiously mixed. Father Smith was a universalist, while Lucy Mack Smith (the mother) and three of the children joined the Presbyterian Church. Young Joseph Smith described his religious leanings as follows: “In process of time my mind became somewhat partial to the Methodist sect, and I felt some desire to be united with them; but so great were the confusion and strife among the different denominations, that it was impossible for a person young as I was. . . to come to any certain conclusion who was right and who was wrong.” Interestingly, in 1831, twenty-five year old Joseph Smith stated that “until we have perfect love we are liable to fall, and, when we have a testimony that our names are sealed in the Lamb’s book of life, we have perfect love, and then it is impossible for false Christs to deceive us.” Perhaps some of the Methodist teachings were still a part of his religious thinking and understanding.

 

I particularly appreciate Sarah’s last paragraph about our efforts to be a true child of God and live “appropriately in that relationship.” It reminded me of C. S. Lewis’s remarks in Mere Christianity. Lewis quotes Philippians 2:12, which seems to imply that the greater responsibility to become more Christlike rests with us (“work out your own salvation”). He then quotes verse 13 (“it is God which works in us”) and observes that such language seems to imply that the greater work toward our becoming more Christlike will be God’s. “You see, “he points out, “we are now trying to understand, and to separate into water-tight compartments, what exactly God does and what man does, when God and man are working together.”

 

The Allure of Wesleyanism

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For this Baptist, John Wesley is one of the most interesting and significant Protestant leaders in history. I have always found his project alluring: within decadent, aristocratic-heavy 18th century Anglicanism arose a leader, and a movement, calling for a renewal of heartfelt, wholly committed, holistic, holiness. (Perhaps only Baptists alliterate quite like that. Sorry.) The Wesleyans cut through centuries of encrusted tradition to call for what Methodist sympathizer William Wilberforce simply called “Real Christianity.” A vivid Jesus and lively Holy Spirit, encountered in a demanding community of Christians earnestly striving for holiness — some even managing to hope that they could achieve moral perfection and “entire sanctification,” as Sarah Lancaster so clearly describes.

It is one of the remarkable things about the Christian faith — the way it always seems open to renewal from the roots, to the sweeping aside of mere culture- or family- or class-religion and the return of blazingly powerful devotion to Christ. These fire-breathing reform movements pop up all over the Christian world, appearing when most needed, when the local practice of Christianity seems most moribund, enculturated, and corrupt.

But then, alas, over time such renewal movements themselves becomes (sub)cultures, usually with the holism leached out. Thus Wesleyanism becomes, eventually, a denomination, then multiple denominations. Some Wesleyans become personal-rigorist, some social-rigorist, some worship-rigorist. Some lean left, some lean right, some try resolutely to remain in the center. By now, the Wesleyan traditions as we find them in the US seem just as swallowed up in our broader cultural divisions as are so many other Christian groups that once blazed with reformist fire.

But today I choose to celebrate the original inspired vision of John Wesley. I think of him disturbing all those nice British costume drama tea parties attended by the vicar, those grand weddings at the country estates and castles, with his rough-cut message of Real Christianity.

Who will God inspire with this generation’s reforming fire?

Hearts Strangely Warmed

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I deeply appreciate Sarah Lancaster’s summary of the Wesleyan tradition and its emphasis on holiness and piety within the context of community. True, as Ms. Lancaster notes, that emphasis has flagged somewhat at various times within the Wesleyan tradition—a consequence of routinization, no doubt—but the ideal remains, and it is important.

When I think of the Wesleyan tradition, I quickly return to John Wesley’s Aldersgate experience on May 24, 1738, as a formative moment (and I confess I was a bit surprised that Ms. Lancaster didn’t mention it). This is when Wesley attended a religious society on Aldersgate Street in London (not far from St. Paul’s) and felt his heart “strangely warmed.” What I find so arresting about this account is the evident surprise in Wesley’s telling of the story. A disquisition on Martin Luther’s preface to the book of Romans is hardly calculated to produce a pietistic response, but that is exactly what happened “about a quarter before nine” during Wesley’s visit.

Some scholars have referred to the experience as “mystical,” and the term seems about right to me. Whatever the nomenclature, however, it’s clear that it was life-changing for Wesley. And I love the element of surprise, in part because I too have experienced spiritual/mystical moments at unexpected moments. These are gracious visitations of the Spirit.

I see four important lessons from the Wesleyan tradition about following Jesus. The first, building on Aldersgate Street, is the centrality of religious experience. I was struck the other day while rereading Jean Sulivan’s Morning Light by his thoughts about the relation between faith and rationalism, especially regarding the teachings of Jesus. “Rationalistic explanations,” he writes, “transform the message into slogans and render it inoffensive.” The Wesleyan tradition—as well as Wesley’s own experience—affirms that faith is more than mere intellectual assent.

Second, Wesleyanism points to the centrality of community, and this, historically speaking, is important not only for the spiritual formation of individuals but also for social reform. In fact, if we look back on the noble tradition of evangelical social activism in the nineteenth century, we see that the impetus for these reforms was not the Reformed tradition; it came instead, more often than not, from the Wesleyan-Holiness movement. Put another way, it was not Charles Hodge and the Princetonians, writing from their ivory tower hideaways on the leafy Princeton Seminary campus who were working to eradicate slavery or push for women’s rights or ensure the success of public education. No, that energy, as historians Donald W. Dayton and Timothy L. Smith have demonstrated, came largely from the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition. It’s no accident that the formative event of the women’s rights movement took place at Wesleyan Chapel, in Seneca Falls, New York.

Third, and building on the previous point, gender. Unlike many other Christian traditions, the Wesleyan-Holiness movement has not only valued, but encouraged the participation of women. Indeed, one of the tragedies of the Holiness movement’s offspring, Pentecostalism, is that white Pentecostals in particular have steadily shut women out of leadership roles, this despite Azusa Street itself and the long and distinguished history of women’s leadership—Sarah Lankford, Phoebe Palmer, and many others.

Finally, we should congratulate the Wesleyan tradition for finding inventive ways to evangelize, to bring the gospel to the masses. Methodist meetings themselves, derived from and building on Pietist conventicles, provide one example, but the real genius of Wesleyan Methodism was the circuit riders, whose influence on the nineteenth-century American frontier endures to this day.

Holiness of Heart and Life

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Other participants in this project have told their stories about how they came to participate in the tradition they represent in these conversations. My own story is quite straightforward. My father was a Methodist preacher, and my mother had been a Methodist missionary in India before she married my father. I was baptized as an infant in the Methodist Church (before a merger made it The United Methodist Church), so I have been in this tradition my entire life.

Of course this tradition contains the same varieties of thought (conservative or progressive, evangelical or liberal) that are found in many other traditions. There have been divisions over various matters, such as race and slavery, lay rights, women’s ordination, etc. (and we face division now over LGBTQ+ issues), but none of these “various views” are distinctive to Wesleyans. British and American Methodism have taken slightly different form in their different contexts, and as “foreign” mission activity was carried out separately by both British and North American Methodists, those differences were to some extent transported globally. All of us acknowledge our start in John Wesley’s evangelical revival, so I will start with the history we hold in common before noting further various views.

When John and Charles Wesley led the Methodist movement during the 18th century English Evangelical Revival, they were operating as priests within the Church of England. They did not intend to form a church, but rather they followed the model of organizing religious societies to call people already in church to follow Jesus more faithfully. For Wesley, Methodists were people who pursued “holiness of heart and life, inward and outward conformity in all things to the revealed will of God” imitating Jesus “more particularly in justice, mercy, and truth, or universal love filling the heart and governing the life” (Advice to the People Called Methodists). Wesley believed God raised up Methodists “To reform the nation and, in particular, the Church; to spread scriptural holiness over the land” (“Large Minutes” of Methodist Conference). In this brief account of what it means to follow Jesus in the Wesleyan tradition, I will explore the idea of scriptural holiness at the heart of the Wesleyan tradition.

Excursus:  In my younger years, few in my orbit knew much about John Wesley’s life and less about his theology. Wesley saw his primary task as conveying important theological ideas to ordinary people rather than to scholars. Because he produced no systematic theology, but rather did his theological reflection in sermon form to address specific practical matters, he was not often regarded even by those in his tradition as a theologian of consequence. Since the middle of the 20th century, there has been an effort to recognize his theological work and share it more broadly with people for their daily living. We are in a time of recovery and education. As a result, consciousness of the ideas I express in this essay may not yet be high among congregants, for instance few people I know would ordinarily use the words holiness or perfection, but as I teach Wesleyan ideas in various settings, the general reaction by people who have never heard them before is, “Oh, now I understand why I am Methodist,” so I think people have been formed in certain ways of thinking even if not explicitly taught.

John Wesley’s understanding of holiness can only be understood against the background of his understanding of human nature. For Wesley, Adam was created in the moral image of God, with love filling his soul and directing his actions. Adam had full liberty to remain in this state or to lose it. While he remained in the state God intended, he was happy. Adam’s state changed, though, and with the fall, the nature God had given to Adam was marred, opening him to be ruled by other affections besides love (for instance fear and anger), and crippling the love he was made for. The “one thing needful” for human beings is for Christ to renew our fallen nature, to restore us to wholeness so that we may again love God above all else and love everything else as God loves it. This renewal in holiness brings with it the happiness for which we were made.

This restoration happens as we follow Jesus. Wesley speaks of “salvation” in such a way that it includes not only what happens after death but also what happens in this life. If there is any “doctrinally distinct” center to Methodism, it is the way of salvation. Wesley’s nuanced understanding of salvation includes serious attention to both justification and sanctification. Everything he describes in the “way of salvation” is initiated and empowered by grace (understood as the power and presence of God). In justification we truly and deeply learn through Jesus Christ that God loves us as dear children, we know we are forgiven, and we receive Christ’s imputed righteousness. Because new birth (used alongside the image of adoption, this metaphor stresses a real change in us and not just a change in status) accompanies justification, we may begin to model our lives after the one we follow, learning from Jesus how to love properly. Sanctification consists of growing in holiness–understood as perfect love, namely “love excluding sin; love filling the heart, taking up the whole capacity of the soul” (“The Scripture Way of Salvation” §I.9). As we follow Jesus and imitate Jesus’ love, we learn again to love as God loves, thereby becoming more who God created us to be. We are really changed by following Jesus.

Even though Methodists worked for individual hearts to be changed, Wesley understood Christianity to be “social” (not solitary) religion and therefore even growth in holiness is “social.” Being a child of God (justified) meant living as a child of God (sanctified). The movement was organized in small groups for members to talk openly with each other about the state of their souls, to encourage and if necessary admonish one another to follow Jesus more faithfully.  We grow in God’s love as we open ourselves to one another. Following Jesus to grow in holiness, then, was not finally individualistic and private, but rather took place in community.

Methodist societies were governed by three General Rules: Do no harm, do good, and attend upon the ordinances of God (in public worship and private devotion). These three rules guide us in expressing holy love. They direct attention to loving relationship with God and to those around us, and to the consequences of our behavior for society. Later generations have adopted the language of “social holiness” to refer to the way we show love of neighbor, especially the poor and the vulnerable. Even in the 18thcentury, Wesley had incipient understanding that systems and structures could do harm. He opposed the practice of slavery and he connected the production of spirituous liquor to the grain shortage that deprived the poor of bread.

Over time, as the movement within a church has become itself ecclesial, this pattern of mutual confession in small groups has diminished although there are sometimes attempts to revive them. Even so, there can be communal confession on a large scale. The “Wesleyan” tradition includes churches that began by breaking off from the original Methodist Episcopal Church because of racism (African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion, and later from the MEC South the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church). In 2000, following our tradition of repentance in community, The United Methodist Church General Conference (a representative legislative body) held a liturgical Act of Repentance to acknowledge the racism of the past and commit to healing division between our churches. In 2004, The United Methodist Church held a similar service to repent for racism against those African Americans who remained in this church and to commit to a more inclusive future.  In 2012, The United Methodist General Conference held another service to repent of harm done by the church to indigenous people in North America. Because the Acts took place in a representative body, members in local congregations may not have been entirely aware and involved, so the impact has not been as widespread as one would hope. Nevertheless, I value the way our heritage can be a resource to remind us that seeking holiness involves accountability before God.

Some of Wesley’s complex theology has been stressed differently in different churches. I think it would be commonly held that holiness is love but expressing love may take different forms. Some will seek holiness through counter-cultural behaviors, others will recognize it in struggle against oppression, others look for a powerful internal experience of God. This means that people in the same tradition may commit themselves to following Jesus somewhat differently—for instance in abstaining from alcohol, in protesting injustice, in seeking emotional experiences of God in prayer and worship.

John Wesley was so confident in God’s ability to heal us that he taught a doctrine of “perfection” or entire sanctification (perfect love in this life). He acknowledged that perfection might happen gradually or instantaneously, but he urged people to expect it in this life. Expecting to be made more loving opens us to God’s work to make us more loving. John’s brother Charles was less sure we could receive perfect love before the point of death. John did not insist that everyone must or would be entirely sanctified before death, but he did encourage everyone to expect it. Expectation of perfect love should lead us to follow Jesus more closely as we seek this gift. The tradition that has followed him has had various ways of thinking about perfection: sometimes to ignore or dismiss it (no one can be perfect, not even in love), and at other times insisting upon it (in an instantaneous cleansing).

All these expressions of holiness may exist in a single church, but they may also characterize different churches in the tradition. For instance, there are “holiness” churches that stress entire sanctification and encourage lifestyles that avoid common cultural behaviors that are either considered sinful or could lead to sin (for instance smoking, drinking, some forms of dancing), while predominantly African American churches stress justice and liberation and more evangelical churches call people to conversion experiences.

In the Wesleyan tradition, following Jesus means being a child of God and living appropriately in that relationship. However differently holiness may be conceived, it is a common conviction that God empowers us to live in the power of the Holy Spirit so that we may work with God in God’s intention to restore the world to what God created us to be.

Is Pietism Really a Tradition? Is It Evangelicalism? And What of Justice?

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Above all else, count me relieved that my unusual approach to the lead essay format seems to have connected with so many of my conversation partners. Knowing that the typical response to the word “Pietism” in the 21st century is either non-recognition (“What’s that?”) or mis-recognition (“Oh, you mean legalism” — or “anti-intellectualism” or “quietism”), I hoped for nothing more than trying to help people see Pietism from the inside-out.

If no one else here would come to the end of my essay and call themselves a Pietist — though I’m happy to find a Pentecostal cousin! — I do think it’s telling just how many people in this conversation heard something of their own experience of following Jesus in my imagined narrative of one Pietist’s week. Perhaps it offers some small confirmation of Roger Olson’s thesis about the pervasiveness of the Pietist ethos. Given how rarely music has come up over the past months, I’m especially delighted that everyone from Mennonites to Methodists to Mormons resonated with my paragraph about singing the hymns of Lina Sandell.

But by the same token, I can understand why Wes Granberg-Michaelson came to the end of my essay and still found it hard “to understand Pietism (with a capital ‘P’) as a distinct Christian tradition.” Christina Wassell was spot on in describing Pietism as “a strain of religious expression that hasn’t demanded a denomination, per se, and the trappings that come with it. Rather, this tradition seems content to be an influence that flows through many of the Protestant strains represented in our conversation.”

Perhaps Pietists never really had the option to demand denominational trappings. As Randall Balmer perceptively observed, Pietism “provided a means to circumvent calcified and unresponsive institutions. All well and good. But a kind of sociological inevitability kicks in at some point, and as the faith becomes routinized and institutionalized a new wave of scholasticism takes root—and thereby sets the stage for a new Pietistic revival of some sort.” In that sense, an institutionalized Pietism is impossible.

(Here I thought of Mark Ellingsen, who understandably circled back to many of our earlier points of agreement and disagreement in pondering a reunion of the Pietist child with its Lutheran mother. In my response to his essay, I had quoted his fellow Haugean Pietist Lutheran Gracia Grindal — a translator of Lina Sandell, among her many other accomplishments. Lamenting the decline of Pietism within this country’s largest Lutheran denomination, Grindal acknowledged that “a personal and individual experience simply cannot be passed on to the next generation through doctrine or structure. It tends to go cold.” And yet she hoped that what she took to be the spiritual coldness of contemporary Lutheranism might spark a new Pietist renewal. And so the cycle goes…)

When he invited me to participate, I wasn’t sure why Harold Heie would give one of twelve precious spaces in this conversation to something that is more a common ethos than a body of Christians sharing a sense of identity. So why include Pietists in the mix?

I suspect that Wassell may have put her finger on it, in concluding that my hypothetical Pietist sounded like “a thoughtful, if a bit overly self-conscious Evangelical.” Who in this conversation, after all, speaks for the wing of Protestantism that still claims an enormous segment of the American Christian population? Ultimately, I think that role will fall to Terry Todd more than anyone, since Pentecostalism accounts for a growing share of Evangelicals worldwide. But there’s enough affinity between Pietism and evangelicalism that I can also understand why Granberg-Michaelson was left wondering “what characterizes pietism from American evangelicalism.”

For much of their shared history, the answer would be: not much. It’s undeniable that Pietism helped to inspire the evangelical awakenings of the 18th century (see W.R. Ward, who starts his “global intellectual history” of evangelicalism with Philipp Spener) and the 19th century; Roger Olson even subdivides evangelicalism into “Pietist-Pentecostal” and “Puritan-Reformed” paradigms. It’s only in the twentieth century that we see space widen between the two, enough that my home denomination would refuse to join the National Association of Evangelicals. As historian Kurt Peterson has argued, leaders and scholars in the Evangelical Covenant Church identified themselves with what we’re calling the Pietist Tradition because they wanted to chart a “third way” between the liberal theology of mainline Protestantism and what they suspected to be the lingering fundamentalism of Billy Graham’s neo-evangelical movement.

So what distinguishes Pietists from Evangelicals? There’s still significant overlap — in myself, among others — but I think David Gushee’s response to my essay can help us start to recognize the differences.

He didn’t call them Evangelicals, but I suspect that many of those Protestants number among the “coldhearted, coldblooded, doctrinaire, politicized, and sometimes amoral Christian folks” whom Gushee finds so “befuddling.” For Pietists, what’s still most important is what Gushee called the “vital, living relationship with Jesus Christ” and “[demonstrating] this vital, loving, heartbeat of faith in our daily interactions with others,” not the traits that tend increasingly to define contemporary evangelicalism: “affirming orthodoxy, voting for the right party, and owning the libs.”

First, “affirming orthodoxy.” This far removed from the Modernist-Fundamentalist split of the early 20th century, Evangelicals don’t like to be identified with the latter term, but they still love to define themselves as guarding “historic orthodoxy” against the former threat. And they don’t necessarily mean the centuries-old doctrines that David Ford and Mark Ellingsen emphasized in their responses to my essay (though I appreciate Ford’s encouragement to consider more carefully the relationship between propositions and piety), but beliefs about issues that may strike other Christians as being of secondary or tertiary importance, such as the nature of human origins or gender roles, or a particular way of understanding the inspiration, authority, and truthfulness of Scripture.

Such theological gatekeeping aggravates the divisions within Christianity that Pietists have always abhorred and sought to transcend. Moreover, it makes possible Gushee’s combination of the adjectives “doctrinaire” and “coldhearted.” (Tellingly, the Covenant Church has said in recent years that it is “evangelical, but not exclusive” and “biblical, but not doctrinaire.”) The fear of “dead orthodoxy” that keeps inspiring irruptions of Pietism is no longer about the Nicene Creed or the Augsburg Confession; Pietists instead see it among some Evangelical defenders of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy or the Danvers Statement about “biblical manhood and womanhood.” Not only because they seem to us to be “majoring in the minors,” but because Pietists ask what difference this kind of faith makes in one’s life: whether it inspires love of others, or something more toxic. What else but “dead orthodoxy” do we call it when some Evangelicals insist that the Bible inerrantly defines rigidly distinct gender roles yet manifest that belief in misogyny and abuse?

Second, “voting for the right party, and owning the libs.” At this point in U.S. history, the term “Evangelical” is so closely bound up with partisan politics that many Evangelicals themselves are ready to drop the term. But if I’m right that a Pietist “longs for a Christianity more ‘authentic’ than a religion of custom and culture,” then no Pietist has much at stake in a “culture war” fought on behalf of ostensibly “traditional” values.

Which is why I acknowledged in my lead essay that some Pietists have embraced quietism. (Understandably: like Todd, I find myself yearning for more “quietude, soundlessness, even the apophatic[.]”) But for those of us who want to be “heavenly-minded” and yet seek “earthly good,” the most common Pietist strategy has not been political activism. Instead, most of us imitate what the Brethren scholar Dale Brown called “Christ the servant of culture.” By contrast to the five models of Christ sketched by Richard Niebuhr* — in particular, the one that leads Christians to seek to control their culture — Brown suggested that Pietists “​​neither to try to get on the top in order to make things come out the way we think they should or refuse to become involved at all.” Instead, we seek at once to “[love] the world for which Christ died,” by making faith active in loving service, even as our commitment to conversional piety helps us not conform to the world’s more destructive patterns.

(As someone who straddled the Anabaptist and Pietist traditions, Dale Brown would surely appreciate Michael King’s comment: “the tenderness that watches o’er the troubled ones of us safely in God’s bosom gathering can be a key source of returning to the world healed enough to care for it.”)

I think that explains as well as anything why Pietists would be as likely to support evangelical ministries of compassion and mercy like those of Samaritan’s Purse as they are to reject the staunchly right-wing politics of that organization’s leader, Franklin Graham. But it leaves open the question raised by several responses and posed most clearly by Farris Blount:

…how does the Pietist suggest we deal with and pursue collective action to create systemic change? I can clearly see that Pietists support collective action to solve social ills – how else would [August Hermann] Francke have been able to create schools, an orphanage, and a publishing house to aid his community if not for the help of others? But each of these efforts appears to try and address the symptom of the ill and not the cause. An orphanage can take care of children who are poor, but it does not necessarily alter the societal conditions that create poor children and the need for orphanages in the first place. A publishing house can provide affordable resources, but it does not appear to decrease the ever-increasing cost of goods that widen the gulf between the wealthy and everyone else.

It’s a clear weakness of my own tradition, one I named last month in my own response to Gushee. And it’s why — whether or not Pietism deserves to be a part of this project — I’m happy to participate in this conversation. No tradition here follows Jesus perfectly, and I’m glad now to recede from prominence and go back to what I enjoy most about Following Jesus: the chance it gives me to listen to and learn from others.

* By the way, Richard and Reinhard Niebuhr grew up within yet another of the small American denominations influenced by Pietism: the Evangelical Synod of North America. I knew it would be foolish to try to name all such bodies in my own short essay, so thanks to Mark Ellingsen for mentioning another in his response: the Church of the Lutheran Brethren. I could also add the handful of historically Norwegian “free Lutherans” who resisted absorption into what became the ELCA, plus the historically Finnish congregations of the Apostolic Lutheran movement, which descend from another member of the 19th century Pietist revival movement in Scandinavia: Lars Levi Laestadius. I’ll leave it for Sarah Lancaster to decide whether to discuss the United Brethren (now part of the United Methodist Church but originally the foremost result of the pietistic revival led by Martin Boehm and Philip William Otterbein) or the Brethren in Christ (who describe themselves as having Wesleyan as well as Pietist and Anabaptist origins).

The Heart of the Matter

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Hello, cousin! That’s the first thing that came to mind when I read this month’s “A Week in the Life of a Pietist,” by Christopher Gehrz.  Too few scholars have drawn attention to the deep affinities between Pietism and Pentecostalism, and to Pietism’s influence on Pentecostal faith and practice.  Pentecostalism has a complex root system that includes the Anglo-American Keswick and Higher Life movement and Wesleyan-Methodist-Holiness impulses, but Pietism’s role in the formation of Pentecostalism is often overlooked.  Years before the 1906 Los Angeles Pentecost at Azuza Street, revivals among Scandinavian Pietists in the upper Midwest touched off Holy Ghost manifestations, even tongues-speech.  But the trace ink flows deeper than that.

Pietism’s stamp doesn’t stop with Pentecostalism. Gehrz cites Roger Olson’s claim that in the North American context, Pietism “became the main form of Protestantism.”  Pietism is the absent presence in many Lutheran, Anglican, Baptist, Anabaptist, and Reformed expressions of faith. It thoroughly suffuses Wesleyan and Methodist traditions and has made its mark on American evangelicalism. (Growing up evangelical, little did I know that the question we posed to potential converts was utterly Pietist in its focus if not its effects: Have you asked Jesus into your heart?)

Given that tangled set of influences, meeting Dr. Gehrz’s fictional Pietist was like meeting a long-lost cousin. Like me, she goes to church on Sunday primarily to “meet Jesus,” not to consider ideas about Christ. (Yet I wonder: can’t we do both? Can’t our bodies-in-motion enflesh our discursive ideas of Christ?)  On Monday night, my Pietist cousin is with her beloveds in the Lord. They’re together in someone’s home, or maybe they’re at Starbucks, offering up some home-brewed Christian wisdom and insight. After all, following Christ doesn’t just happen alone, or in church, and not always in the presence of a pastor. Through personal and communal experiences of prayer, scripture reading, and holy listening, just like my Pietist cousin I seek transformation of my heart – the seat of affect and will – through my walk with Jesus.

Pietist sentiments don’t stop at the level of the personal, Dr. Gehrz reminds us. Or at least they shouldn’t. Over the centuries some theologians have criticized Pietists for turning inward in a Just you and me, Jesus! kind of way. Think of Wesley’s disappointment with Moravians over what Wesley saw as the movement’s Quietist and universalist impulses, to the neglect of social engagement in the world. But Gehrz says it’s not so.  He conjures the memory of one Pietism’s great 18th century giants, German theologian August Hermann Francke, to claim that among Pietists “personal conversion to Jesus Christ [should] spark social action.” It hasn’t always worked that way, but a deep impulse within Pietist circles is to see a passion for social justice flowing from transformed Christian lives.

Are Pietists too Quietist? Maybe that’s the wrong question. Quietism, in my view, has gotten a bad rap, as has Pietism.  In a world as loud and distracted as our own, in a world of pumped-up egos and celebrity pastors, maybe it’s time to embrace quietude, soundlessness, even the apophatic in personal and communal prayer and meditation.  Could such practices ground a spiritual revival that links inner personal change to world transformation? I realize it might be a queer thing for a Pentecostal to say such things, given our penchant for loud praise, speaking in tongues, and running the aisles. But we, too, have our quiet moments: in many Pentecostal churches a deep, wordless groan indicates the sincerest and most powerful of prayers.

All of this is to say is that both Pietists and Pentecostals have a storehouse of spiritual inclinations and practices that might help us follow Jesus amid the noisy brass and clanging cymbals of our world.  To retrieve such practices means to rummage imaginatively in the attics of our traditions to uncover things long-lost.

There’s an 18th century painting by the Mennonite artist Johann Haidt that conveys what I have in mind. In Haidt’s work, “Teacher of the People,” Nicolaus Zinzendorf, the German nobleman, Mennonite bishop and Pietist patron, stands at the center of an immense crowd of all colors and hues, a scene reminiscent of the great gathering of the world’s tribes in John’s Apocalypse.  It’s a white Euro-Christian colonialist fantasy, meant to chronicle Mennonite missionary successes in the Americas.

Yet what captures my curiosity is what Haidt has painted in the sky, a disembodied heart shooting golden shafts of divine light toward Zinendorf’s own heart. The heart in the sky is the pierced heart of Jesus, reaching toward humanity. Much to the horror of most other Protestants, early Mennonites practiced meditating on Jesus’ sacred wounds, especially the pierced heart of the side wound.  Too gruesome, too embodied, too “popish,” I’m assuming, especially since the wounded heart is so reminiscent of Catholic Sacred Heart devotions. Methodists and other Protestants cleaned up this deliciously garish bleeding heart by channeling the heart into the language of hymns, poetry, and exhortations.

The practice of wounded heart meditations fell out of favor with Mennonites, but perhaps it’s a Pietist practice worth recovering – even for noisy Pentecostals?!  Pietists were known for cutting through stultifying Protestant orthodoxy to invite people into an earthy, heart-based intimacy with Jesus. Among early Mennonites, silence, prayer, and image-based meditation led ideally to the transformation of the individual’s heart, something like what Gehry’s fictitious Pietist experienced in her quotidian moments.  And with personal transformation came the potential for world-change as well.

In Haidt’s image of Zinzendorf’s heart aflame, and in the individual experiences of real-life Mennonites dead and alive (and possibly other Pietists as well?), heart-based faith calls forth sympathy with a suffering Jesus and a recognition of the mystical bonds that tie together all wounded hearts. In the alchemy of faith, whether Pietist, Pentecostal, or other, perhaps the next step is into a loving engagement with the world and its people that God created and declared good.  To me, that’s the heart of the matter.