In a book on American Christianity, I came across an old saying about circuit riders back in frontier days—that the weather was so bad that nobody was out except crows and Methodist preachers. Well, recently on a miserably cold and wet day in Nashville, I spotted some crows on the ground in my neighbor’s yard. When I approached with my phone camera, they took flight, and I managed to catch one as he cleared a power pole. 

Those early-nineteenth-century Methodists were a hardy, ministerially-faithful lot, with Peter Cartwright a paradigm. He hated slavery and alcohol, and he preached a blunt, conversionist gospel which issued in thousands of baptisms. He was ordained by Francis Asbury, the first Methodist bishop in America, namesake of a street in Evanston, Illinois, where I was a Baptist church planter 2000-2011. Indeed, the town was full of “Methodist streets,” including Hartzell (the first Methodist bishop of Africa), Simpson (who preached President Lincoln’s funeral sermon), and, yes, Wesley (the father of Methodism). Picking up on this, our little church turned out a flyer featuring “the Christian witness” of thirteen honorees.

The reason for this cluster of divines was the presence of Northwestern University and its sister Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, both Methodist, both pillars of the community since their founding in the 1850s. Though you’d not guess it, Northwestern’s seal bears two biblical phrases, one in Greek (“the Word, full of grace and truth” on an open Bible emanating rays) and one in Latin (“whatsoever things are true”). To boot, the town was also home to the United Methodist Church’s Board of Pensions and Health Benefits. A Methodist Zion, if you will.

But they’ve come a long way since the days of Asbury and Cartwright. First Methodist Church, which hosted the worship services of the second meeting of the World Council of Churches back in 1954, now announces that they are “a vibrant, accepting congregation that welcomes all who seek God, inclusive of age, race, education, economic status, sexual orientation, gender identity, and special needs.” Those circuit riders would have been on board with most of these items, but not so much the penultimate and antepenultimate ones. Of course, most churches of any denomination would welcome all these folks to their gatherings, but FMC is saying more than this, and, indeed, more than the Bible allows.

Such is the fate of many originally-Methodist churches and institutions, including my own graduate alma mater, Vanderbilt, whose divinity school dean is a lesbian. They’ve come a long way, Baby. Indeed, such a long way that the denomination is facing a split between traditionalists and progressives.

The traditionalists are not without their champions, including Mark Tooley, with whom I’ve worked a bit in connection with Kairos Journal and Providence magazine. You can check him out at https://theird.org/person/mark-tooley/, where you’ll see reference to his 2008 book, Taking Back the United Methodist Church.

At a conference in Chattanooga some years ago, I found myself seated at a table with a lady from the Nazarene church. I asked her what distinguished the Nazarenes, and she replied, “If John Wesley came back today, he’d join with us.” Well, Tooley and others are working to give Wesley an alternative, but it’s a big challenge.