#postmethodist

what no one seems to grasp, what took me years upon years of scrabbling for any scholarship i could get my hands on to understand: the power & danger of (white) methodism is precisely in its cultural hegemony, its setting the standards of normalcy & middle-class decency, its obscured political network.

thank you for indulging me :’) shoutout also to @feargender @a-very-honoured-moose and an anon for asking!

so:

my father is a United Methodist minister

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, got in a lot of trouble during his lifetime for supporting lay pastors (ministers who weren’t ordained by the Church of England)

the United Methodist Church is currently tearing itself to shreds over refusing to ordain LGBTQ+ people or allow ordained ministers to marry gay couples

John Wesley is famous for open-air preaching when he wasn’t allowed to preach in Church of England churches. notably, he preached in a cemetery using his father’s grave as a pulpit

then Mike Hutchinson responds, “even modern fundamentalists have really nice things to say about John Wesley.”

he then goes on to discuss the influence on movements like the IFB through hymns. for example, “i come to the garden alone” presents the modern believer’s personal relationship with jesus as incomparable to anyone else’s experience — which would include the disciples & others who actually knew him

Hutchinson continues: “and then you have this show up in the carnal christian doctrine. there’s the idea that you have some kind of crisis, and that leads to justification. and then there’s a second crisis, and then that’s where this higher christian life of holiness & sanctification comes from. and then, that may not be stated as explicitly as you’ll find it in some of the methodist movements… but it’s there as this sort of, you might say almost like an underground river that’s flowing under a lot of the practice.”