Women and Early Mission Work

 Many early missionary societies were led by Methodist women, partly due to the MEC's policy of an exclusively male clergy. These societies were precursors to today's United Women in Faith and the Women's Division of the General Board of Global Ministries. Discuss these themes, and how women have embodied the Wesleyan emphasis on ministry to the poor, sick, and incarcerated. 

https://www.umc.org/en/content/timeline-of-women-in-methodism

 

The prohibition against women as preaches goes back to the early Methodist movement. Wesley himself would not permit (most) women to preach, although he did authorize Sarah Mallet to preach. In 1957, the United Brethren General Conference passed a resolution that no woman should be allowed to preach.  In 1866, Helenor Davisson was ordained a deacon in the Methodist Protestant Church, making her the first ordained woman in the tradition.  Even though Anna Howard Shaw earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Boston University School of Theology, she is refused ordinated by the Methodist Episcopal General Conference in 1880.  She joined the Methodist Protestant Church and is ordained.  In 1984, the church rules her ordination out of order.  In 1888, five women were elected as lay delegates to the Methodist Episcopal General Conference; later, male reserves replaced them.  In the same year, the position of deaconess is established for women – women can serve in any capacity that does not require clergy rites – in ministries of love, justice, and service. 

 

Even though women could often not pursue a call to preaching, they were still experiencing the transformed life that Methodism offered.  They heard their calls, and social justice ministry was an outlet opened to them.  Women served as missionaries – sometimes as a spouse, and sometimes as a single person.

 

https://uwfaith.org/who-we-are/our-history/

 

The United Women in Faith is a social justice organization that was founded out of the need to be in service to the world.

 

The United Women in faith website states “In 1869, Clementina Butler and Lois Parker, wives of missionaries to India, made a plea to a group of eight women in Boston about the spiritual and physical needs of poor women in India. They could not be treated by male doctors. Schooling for girls was almost non-existent. Help was desperately needed.”  This was the beginning of what has become the United Women in Faith.  They say they have a legacy of “showing up and getting things done.” This has been my experience with United Women of Faith as well.

 

Other timeline events include that Sojourner Truth, an emancipated slave, co-founded Kingston Methodist Church in New York State. She became involved in the abolitionist movement.  Sophronia Farrington, the first single missionary, arrived in Liberia in 1834.  In 1869, Isabella Thoburn and Clara Sawn leave for India.  Thorburn started a college, and Swain began medical work.

Course Review: Methodist Identity: Our Story

 Information about the Course

This is a course offered by BeADisiciple.com called Methodist Identity: Our Story. This is a course offered as part of the Wesley Academy for Advanced Christian Studies, created in partnership with Wesley Theological Seminary and BeADisciple.  The course instructor is Rev. Dr. Kristen Burkhart. The course is eight weeks long. Each week a video of different experts in the field of Methodist history.  Each week students are asked to do some additional readings, post answers to 3 questions on a Discussion board, and participation in online discussion. 

The course can be part of a certification called Certificate in Advanced Christian Study.  The certificate involves completion of six courses such as this one.  The course can also be taken as a stand alone option.

Summary

From the website:  What does it mean to be Methodist? The first of Wesley Academy’s two Methodist Identity courses guides learners through a series of lessons from leading Methodist scholars and features Christian historian Justo Gonzalez. Methodism is traced through its roots in Wesleyanism to its growth as a movement in the North Atlantic and, eventually, the world. Supplemental materials cover Methodism’s growth in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Join us in this exploration of Methodist identity, which will benefit the lifelong Methodist, the armchair scholar, and the simply curious.  

Lessons Include:

1. John and Charles Wesley: The Early Years – Paul Chilcote
2. Methodist Beginnings: 1725-1737 – Amy Oden
3. Aldersgate and Its Results: 1738 – Steve Rankin and Methodist History: 1739-1744 – Henry Knight
4. Early Methodist Revival: 1740-1760 –Hoo-Jung Lee and Methodism in Britain: 1760-1791 – Peter Forsaith
5. The Legacy of Charles Wesley – S. T. Kimbrough
6. American Methodism: 1740s-1860s – Douglas M. Strong and African Methodism in Early America – Dennis C. Dickerson
7. The Holiness Movement and Missions – Steven O’Malley and Global Methodism – Robert Hunt
8. Methodism and Social Holiness – Wendy Deichmann Edwards

Impressions

This course is one of two required courses for a Wesleyan Emphasis for the Advanced Studies certificate. 

I enjoyed the course, and am glad I signed up to complete it.  It presents United Methodist history is an organized way, which is helpful for my understanding of it. 

I believe this course will be beneficial both to my work at the Foundation and as I teach the Conference CLM Course.  I also think that it will be beneficial to me in my work as a reserve delegate to the General Conference.

In the past, I have participated in at least two courses with low enrollment;  this complicates my goal of responding to at least two other people's posts since one of the four was me.  That was not a problem with this course. There were many students, and it was easier to find posts to which to reply.  As usual, the leader's participation adds to the course.

Prior to starting the course, I read the book Wesley and the People called Methodists by Richard Heitzenrater and read at 2-4 of John Wesley's sermons each week.  I would recommend doing this if you have the time. It adds more dimensions to the course - although the course would stand alone without it.

Great course - I recommend it.

Posts about the Class

Posts about the class will have the tag Methodist Identity: Story

The Fruit of Failure

 

One of the questions we discussed in the Methodist Identity: Our Story class was how John Wesley's experience in Georgia prepared him for fruitful ministry later. 

Wesley’s experience in Georgia – his failure in Georgia – prepared him in at least two ways for a fruitful ministry later.  On the way to Georgia, he encountered a group of Moravians.  Watching them and their devotional practices during frightening ocean experiences helped him to see that his relationship with God could be closer.  He believed if his faith had been stronger, he would have been less frightened as he saw the Moravians were.  Whether this is true or not, it did create in him (or enhance) a yearning for something more.  Secondly, his failure as a missionary, even up to and including legal charges, created a new humility in John.  He left Georgia less reliant on himself and his own beliefs and abilities.  Amy Oden calls it a “heart broken open.”  He is more prepared to rely on God than he was before.

What is the role of failure in our ability to have fruitful ministry? I can see how John's new humility would open him to new ways for relating to other people and to God. When we learn from our mistakes - what we should do and should not do - and when we allow failure to transform us from what we were into something new and better, we are growing, aren't we? We are allow God's grace to sanctify us.

I doubt any of us like the pain of failure or humiliation (John Wesley left Georgia fleeing from legal charges). We should take care not to waste the pain.

Wesley's Highest Priority

 A watershed for Methodism was the ordination of Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey as ministers in America: an act of ecclesial disobedience, even while maintaining Methodists communion with the Church of England. What does Wesley's willingness to bend the rules here tell us about his approach to leadership and authority, and about the character of Wesleyan leadership today?

 

Part of the mission of the Methodists was to reform the Church of England from the inside.  Wesley was an Anglican priest; his goal was never to start a new religion, but to bring the Anglican church to a deeper faith. Separating the Methodists from the Anglican church would have been to admit failure of this original mission.

Wesley spent decades working within the Anglican Church; an earlier separation could have solved problems he faced all throughout this time, but he stood opposed to it.  He published and preached against separation; he saw his work to be to renew the Anglican Church.  At the same time, Wesley saw his call to help others to live a holy life in obedience and under the authority of God.  These were two parts of the mission of the Methodist movement.  For decades, Wesley worked to find compromise solutions that would allow both parts of this mission to continue. 

 

After the Revolutionary War in America, the colonies were no longer part of England.  Why should the Church of England send priests?  Wesley saw the Methodist movement in the new United States as a growing and successful enterprise.  He could no longer fulfill both parts of the mission, and he determined (I think) that the second part, to bring people to a holy life, was more important than renewing the Anglican Church that could not or would not serve them. The people needed priests, so he secretly ordained two of them. 

For me, this look at Wesley's mission and experience building Methodism with its original two-pronged mission, brought to light for me Wesley's highest priority, to bring people to God and a life of holiness. That outranked everything else.

Susannah Wesley

In what ways was Susanna a woman ahead of her time, and what characteristics do you particularly admire? Why?

Susanna knew how to build connections with people through kindness and gracious responses. She was able to build community in their parish when Samuel was not.  She believed in the education and spiritual upbringing of her children, and she devoted herself to this goal.  She did not exclude her daughters from this endeavor, believing their intellectual development was more important and a higher priority than their domestic development.  She was organized: Rev. Alfred T. Day, III, General  Commission on Archives and History, said, “She had a spreadsheet before there were spreadsheets.”

 

Earlier this year, I participated in the Women Speak of Faith class in this series (great course).  One week we read and wrote about Susanna Wesley, particularly her written commentary of the Apostles Creed.  I admire the theology she outlines in that commentary.

 

There is a story told of Susanna Wesley. When her husband was absent for a long period of time, out of dissatisfaction with the substitute priest in the parish, she began teaching and preaching to a group of people in her home. Eventually, over 200 gathered. There were complaints to Samuel, her husband. She wrote to him, “If you do, after all, think fit to dissolve this assembly, do not tell me that you desire me to do it, for that will not satisfy my conscience: but send me your positive command, in such full and express terms as may absolve me from all guilt and punishment for neglecting this opportunity of doing good when you and I shall appear before the great and awful tribunal of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

 

She was a woman of grace, faith, and intellect.  She was devoted to her family but also to the community in which she lived.  I find much to admire about her. 

 

Early Puritanism

Considering its presence among the Wesley family, how might had early Puritanism influenced early Methodism? Do such influences persist? Discuss.

Following the ascension of Elizabeth I to the throne, those who had fled the country during the reign of “Bloody” Mary (so named because of her execution of Protestants) returned with a determination to remove all papal influences from the state religion. According to Richard Heitzenrater in Wesley and the People Called Methodists, “Hence some English Calvinists became known popularly as Puritans and worked to effect reforms that would purify the church of its nonscriptural corruptions.”  In some ways this radical, non-conformist movement influenced early Methodism, especially in the search for personal piety or holiness and in the desire to reform the established church.  As I read about the Puritan belief in stages of Conversion, I could hear echoes of Wesley’s salvation theory of justification and sanctification.  Wesley advocated for the supremacy of scripture in faith. In other ways, Methodism seems a reaction against the Puritan faith, including the belief shared by the Calvinists that some people were “the elect” and others were not.

 

I think some influences of Puritanism still do exist in the United Methodist Church.  When one reads the Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church – one of our two doctrinal documents – one hears overt anti-Catholic sentiment.  Our General Rules reflect the call for a personal holiness of life. 

Book Review: Wesley and the People Called Methodists

Information about the book

Richard P. Heitzenrater. Wesley and the People Called Methodists, Second Edition. Abingdon Press, Nashville. 2013.  Cokesbury. Amazon.

Summary

From the Amazon Description: This second edition of Richard P. Heitzenrater's groundbreaking survey of the Wesleyan movement is the story of the many people who contributed to the theology, organization, and mission of Methodism. This updated version addresses recent research from the past twenty years; includes an extensive bibliography; and fleshes out such topics as the means of grace; Conference: "Large" Minutes: Charles Wesley: Wesley and America; ordination; prison ministry; apostolic church; music; children; Susanna and Samuel Wesley; the Christian library; itinerancy; connectionalism; doctrinal standards; and John Wesley as historian, Oxford don, and preacher.

This book is a very detailed review of the early years (1700s) of Methodism. It focuses on John and Charles Wesley and the people and activities around them through Wesley's death.

Impressions

I read this book in preparation for the BeADisciple class Methodist Identity: Our Story.  I have found that my "investing" my reading time in a reference book related to the class that my experience of the class is greatly enhanced.  I read this one before the class started, over the summer months.  I found it to be very detailed, well organized, and actually, if not an easy read, then also not a difficult read.

I found the following aspects of the book to be particularly interesting:

1. The first section reviewed the English Reformation and the Church in England.  I have never considered how this would influence the development of Methodism and the Wesleys themselves. 
2. I was particularly interested in watching how Wesley's faith and viewpoint matured over his lifetime. It was definitely not a stagnant faith. It grew and matured.
3. John (and Charles) Wesley's idea that they weren't Christian until they experienced assurance of God's love and forgiveness was - well - a shocker.
4. I appreciated watching the dynamic of "will we or won't we" break away from the Anglican Church.
5. In general, reading about how Methodism grew and changed was very interesting to me.

I would recommend this book to someone who would like to take a deep dive into the origins on Methodism during John Wesley's life.

Posts about book

Others posts that reference this book will be tagged with Heitzenrater Wesley

Studying History

 

How might studying history help us understand ourselves more deeply? How might have Wesley's historical context shaped him?

When we study history, one of the potential outcomes is that we come to understand ourselves better than we did before.  We learn the historical events and factors that shaped our ancestors and us.  For example, my own church became a Methodist Episcopal Church South in the 19^th century and then a Methodist Church in 1939. Knowing my local church has a history connected to the support of slavery and racism, I wonder how that has shaped who we are today – a reconciling ministry congregation that is open to everyone.  As I look back at my own childhood, I see that I grew up as our country was building rockets to go to the moon and hearing about Watergate on the television. How has that shaped my view of life? Do I have a more global outlook after seeing the fascinating images of the earth from the moon? Is my own distrust of politics linked to what I learned about Watergate?

 

Wesley was born during the middle of the Industrial Revolution in England with its accompanying shift of people to city centers, increased gap between the richest and the poorest, and increases in industries including mining and mechanized industry.  This was one of the most impactful changes in human life for centuries. Wesley was born after the political and religious revolutions of the Tudor and Stuart royal families in England as well as the English Civil Wars.  He lived in a post-Reformation England with great anti-Catholic sentiments and in a Church of England (government supported) that strove to find a middle ground in faith.  Wesley was born in a time that was beginning to experience global trade and colonization. It was a seminal time to be a person of faith in England.  Wesley believed and taught that it was necessary to live not only a life of personal holiness but also social justice. How could he ignore the people around him who needed help? How could his faith not be influenced by the vast changes in beliefs around him? 

Time Management and Holy Living

I’m currently reading Wesley and the People Called Methodists by Richard P Heitzenrater. I’ve registered for my next Wesley / Be A Disciple class for the Wesley Academy for Advanced Christian Studies.   My experience with these classes is that they do not require a large amount of outside reading, but by adding an optional book reading to the class, I greatly enhance my experience and learning. 

Anyway, today I read this:  "Jeremy Taylor provided one of the most crucial suggestions that Wesley adopted: the first rule of holy living is care of your time."

I’ve known for a while that John Wesley kept a diary of the use of his time (among other things).  Also, one of the historical questions is:

“Will you observe the following directions? A) Be diligent. Never be unemployed. Never be triflingly employed. Never trifle away time; neither spend any more time at any one place than is strictly necessary. B) Be punctual. Do everything exactly at the time. And do not mend our rules, but keep them; not for wrath, but for conscience’ sake.” 

I’ve never really considered why Wesley placed such a value on managing his time until I read the first sentence I quoted: the first rule of holy living is care of your time.

How aware are we of how we spend our time?  I manage my time at work with the goal (in my mind) of both being aware of the goals/tasks I need to accomplish that day, prioritizing them, and then managing my time in order to accomplish them.  That’s not working toward holy living, but it’s what I consider to be time management.

But how often do we say, “I would do that, but I just don’t have the time.”  Are we aware of how we spend our time? Do we prioritize holy living? Time in prayer and study? Time in service?

I for one do not think it is healthy to always be pushing to get things done.  We all need down time.  That said, do we prioritize our time for holy living? It’s an interesting question to me.