I‘m not the first person to observe that in the UMC our church politics looks very much like secular politics. In both worlds, it is the most extreme positions that grab headlines. Yet most people in the UMC don’t fit neatly into the ideological polarities. As they think through the vast array of issues that…

I’ve been thinking about and praying for Bishop Johnson lately as she has dealt with church trials in the Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference. I have worked with Bishop Johnson on a number of occasions. She is perhaps the most visible advocate for people with disabilities in the United Methodist Church. I can’t say enough about the…

A couple of days ago I was invited by my former student Joel Watts to participate in a conversation with N. T. Wright and a few bloggers.  The event was, in part, to promote Wright’s new book, Paul and the Faithfulness of God. Wright was on his game as usual. He commands an incredible range…

United Theological Seminary President Wendy Deichmann reflects in Catalyst on the virtues of Christian orthodoxy. This is definitely worth a read. You can find the article here. 

Maybe I just don’t get it.  It really could be that I don’t get it.  But I just can’t see how the Wesleyan Quadrilateral is particularly useful for resolving theological questions. I can’t see, moreover, why we hold on to this concept as Wesleyans. Bear with me in a bit of foolishness.  It is fairly…

So, the Schaeffer trial is over. The debate over human sexuality in the UMC is not. I’ve been watching social media pretty closely during this time. There are lots of hurt feelings and many people who feel a great distance from one another in the denomination. The rhetoric has been wild. The emotions have been…

Let’s get this out of the way: good people within the United Methodist Church, with all the best intentions, disagree on matters of human sexuality. There’s no way around this. Whether or not the General Conference petition by Mike Slaughter and Adam Hamilton would have made for effective legislation, the fact of the matter is…

United student Joseph Graves makes some very interesting points about the new atheist “churches.” I commend this blog post to your reading. The most salient point he makes has to do with the degrees of difference between many “mainline” churches and these atheist gatherings. To what extent is God the center of our ecclesial life? http://josephdavidgraves.com/post/66778305173/church-without-god-lessons-from-atheists

I recently gave a talk at United Theological Seminary on United Methodist Beliefs. The following constitutes part of the introduction to that talk. I welcome your comments, questions, agreements, and disagreements.  Imagine you have before you two people: The first is 35 years old, an up and coming scientist with an impressive c.v. and an IQ in…

A very interesting post from Jason Vickers on the nature of holiness, and the ways in which we have diminished its meaning in contemporary Wesleyanism…..