Marks of Methodism: Theology in Ecclesial Practice (UNITED METHODISM AND AMERICAN CULTURE, 5, Band 5) - Softcover

Richey, Russell E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0687329396 ISBN 13: 9780687329397

Verlag: Abingdon Press, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

The title of this volume is as old as the Wesleyan movement and apt for the very latest Methodist theological self-designation. Marks of Methodism points back to John Wesley himself and to his efforts to define the movement. Such marks or hallmarks prescribe a basis for Methodist identity, purpose, and unity. They also serve to differentiate Methodists from other Christians, to sketch the boundaries of our movement, and to mark us off. Marks also invite attention to the conjunction of precept and practice, to the considerable recent affirmation of practices as the traditioning and corporate bearers of Christian faithfulness and witness; and therefore as the ground of theology and doctrine, and to Methodist embodiment of and featuring of traditioning practices long before that became fashionable. These marks point to an understanding of church, a doctrine of the church, an ecclesiology, embedded in the everyday structures, policies, organizations, and patterns of Methodist life.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dennis M. Campbell is former Dean of the Divinity School and former Professor of Theology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. Currently he is Headmaster of Woodberry Forest School in Woodberry Forest Virginia.

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Marks of Methodism

Theology in Ecclesial PracticeBy Dennis M. Campbell

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2005 The United Methodist Publishing House
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-687-32939-7

Chapter One

    Connectional

    1 BLEST be the dear uniting love,
    That will not let us part!
    Our bodies may far off remove,
    We still are one in heart.

    2 Joined in one spirit to our Head,
    Where he appoints we go;
    And still in Jesu's footsteps tread,
    And show his praise below.

    3 O may we ever walk in him,
    And nothing know beside;
    Nothing desire, nothing esteem,
    But Jesus crucified.

    4 Closer and closer let us cleave
    To his beloved embrace;
    Expect his fulness to receive
    And grace to answer grace.

    5 Partakers of the Saviour's grace,
    The same in mind and heart,
    Nor joy, nor grief, nor time, nor place,
    Nor life, nor death can part.

    6 But let us hasten to the day
    Which shall our flesh restore,
    When death shall all be done away,
    And bodies part no more!

"Connectionalism," to the average United Methodist, suggests machinery—apportionments, boards and agencies, hierarchy, conference headquarters, the church's officialdom, its apparatus. Such a perception is neither inappropriate nor new. The image of Methodism as machine runs deep in our consciousness and our heritage. When Bishops Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke annotated the Discipline and explained the church to American society in 1798, they referred to Methodism as a machine. They insisted on the necessity of preserving "in order and in motion the wheels of the vast machine." Not half a century later George Cookman (then chaplain to the Senate), soon to be lost at sea, drew upon Ezekiel's image of wheels within wheels to interpret Methodism.

The great iron wheel in the system is itinerancy, and truly it grinds some of us most tremendously; the brazen wheel, attached and kept in motion by the former, is the local ministry; the silver wheel, the class leaders; and golden wheel, the doctrine and discipline of the church, in full and successful operation. Now, sir, it is evident that the entire movement depends upon keeping the great iron wheel of itinerancy constantly and rapidly rolling around. But, to be more specific, and to make an application of this figure to American Methodism. Let us carefully note the admirable and astounding movements of this wonderful machine. You will perceive there are "wheels within wheels." First, there is the great outer wheel of episcopacy, which accomplishes its entire revolution once in four years. To this there are attached twenty-eight smaller wheels, styled annual conferences, moving around once a year; to these are attached one hundred wheels, designated presiding elders, moving twelve hundred other wheels, termed quarterly conferences, every three months; to these are attached four thousand wheels, styled travelling preachers, moving round once a month, and communicating motion to thirty thousand wheels, called class leaders, moving round once a week, and who, in turn, being attached to between seven and eight hundred thousand wheels, called members, give a sufficient impulse to whirl them round every day. O, sir, what a machine is this! This is the machine of which Archimedes only dreamed; this is the machine destined, under God, to move the world, to turn it upside down.

Throughout the nineteenth century, Methodists prided themselves on the machinelike quality of Methodism. Indeed, they equated the church with a machine. Abel Stevens, the MEC's midcentury historian and apologist, suggested that two machines conquered the American wilderness: the steam engine invented by James Watt and the moral engine invented by John Wesley. Of the two, Methodism was truly "the machine in the garden." In imaging itself as machine, indeed glorifying its machinelike qualities, Methodism clearly drew on a socially powerful metaphor of the day. The machine—steam and then internal combustion—made the industrial society. Methodism's connectionalism, our nineteenth century ancestors thought, functioned to make the church work with high efficiency, productivity, and creativity.

In the early twentieth century, Methodists spent less energy glorifying the Methodist machinery and more in making it run efficiently. Efficiency, they believed, could be gained by collaboration, structure, procedure. So Paul Kern of the MECS, faculty member at Southern Methodist University and later bishop, and Worth Tippy of the MEC, Executive Secretary of the Church and Social Service Commission of the Federal Council of Churches, collaborated on a training manual for church leaders. There they explained connectionalism and then its machine character:

Methodism is essentially connectional....

There are many denominations in which the connectional idea is not as strong as it is in Methodism. We regard it as a vital part of our ecclesiastical life. All the scattered and varied congregational groups are in reality parts of one splendid unity called Methodism.... Note how we stress our connectional idea. When a young man joins the ministry of our church he does not join any local Conference, he is a member of the world-wide fellowship of Methodist preachers, liable for service anywhere; our bishops are bishops of the whole church; our great objectives, such as missions and education, are handled through connectional boards, whose relationships are church wide. Whenever Methodism loses its confidence in the power of connectionalism, it will be almost certain to enter a career of disintegration.

Their chapter titles capture the machinelike character of connectionalism: Our Heritage, The Purpose and Program of the Modern Church, Building the Christian Fellowship, The Church Organized for Worship, The Church Organized for Teaching, The Church Organized for Social Service, Making the Church Organization Efficient, Efficiency through General Organization, The Local Church in World-Wide Enterprise, Housing the Local Church, Financing the Local Church, Leadership.

And, of course, prominent in the efficiency revolution were apportionments. If connectionalism is machinery, what keeps it humming is money. And if machinery and money constitute Methodism's character, both find fullest expression in their twentieth-century developments—bureaucracy and apportionments. So Methodism incarnated the ethos and forms of capitalism.

But do such images capture all of what we would say about connection or connectionalism? On the contrary, "connection" has and has had deeply spiritual and profoundly theological resonances. Many of these...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Abingdon Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0687329396
• ISBN 13: 9780687329397
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 160
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland