Open Letter to Friends in the Wesley Covenant Association

October 6, 2016

2:18 PM

UM Insight Screencap

WCA Panel

A cover photo from the website of the Wesleyan Covenant Association

Dear Friends of the Wesley Covenant Association,

As I read the names of the founding sponsors of the Wesley Covenant Association, I know many of you – have known you for years. You have been colleagues in our work as United Methodists. You are committed pastors, known theological educators and activist organizers in the Confessing Movement and the Good News Movement in United Methodism. Now you offer a new organization, a new association. Hopefully your claim that the Wesley Covenant Association is a re-booting, a move toward re-discovery, a signal of readiness to traverse beyond the tread-worn battles of the past is true.

I pray you join me in the realization that the younger, rising generation of United Methodist seems rather disinterested in a rehearsal of the same old arguments, using the same labels and categories. Our battles still may appear to be unresolved, but there is little doubt they are increasingly insignificant in the lives and faith of our grandchildren. I would be helped if you could answer five questions. They are ones asked before, at various times and places. Not yet having received an answer I repeat them now – this time with a renewed sense of urgency as I fear the WCA, may be simply a laying of the predicate for a schism in our denomination.

These questions of you are not rhetorical. I sincerely would like to hear from you:

If "evangelical," what is the "good news" you share?

If "evangelical," why so little attention to Christian experience, to personal conversion? Why so little mention of the transforming love of Jesus Christ for persons and society?

If Wesleyan, why the silence about ministry with the poor?

If uniquely "Biblical Christian," what is the basis of scriptural interpretation? What is the hermeneutic employed?

If Wesleyan, what of John Wesley's concern about schism and his clear guidance to learn from others who differ as expressed in "A Plain Account of Christian Perfection"?

Answers to these questions would help me know if I might be included in the "covenant" you seek to draw. You see, I fear your appropriation of the word "covenant" is more of a way to exclude and narrow than it is a way to a hope-filled future. It is a misdirection away from the more profound meaning of covenant that comes from scripture. The covenant that I believe we share is much broader and more profoundly enduring than that which can be restricted by a few paragraphs in the ever-shifting-language of The United Methodist Book of Discipline.

Using the word "covenant" in this narrow way may be beneficial to an ecclesial political agenda. It may serve to set folks like me outside of "the elect." I reject this use of covenant language in this way. I will not be thus separated by your linguistic legerdemain. It was after all, conservative theologian, Richard John Neuhaus of blessed memory, who taught the essential difference between "contract" and "covenant." Our faith covenant binds us together by something deeper and more profound than contractual language can ever contain.

A contract is limited to the temporal, "quid pro quo" reality. It is an effort to control and claim exclusive authority over things that are passing, temporal. It seeks to hold us together, by our past rules, limited language and small understandings. It is a way to count up grievances and deny our commonweal. It suggests the interpretation of scripture is the exclusive possession of one party and only this view will be acceptable for all United Methodists. A "contract" seeks to limit vision, thwart new expression, block new insights walling them in to past categories and perspectives.

Covenant is not contract. Covenant is God's gift for us ALL – something that draws us into the future, TOGETHER; it is the power of God's Spirit at work in the world and it is beyond our ability to limit this. Covenant continually ReCenters us in Christ. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote of the church being centered in Christ where boundaries drawn by those who seek to limit the expansiveness of God's activity in the world will not hold.

Believing we all belong to Christ and that this is our true covenant hope, I remain,

Your brother,

Philip Amerson

The Rev. Dr. Philip Amerson of LaPorte, Ind., is a retired United Methodist educator who previously served as president of two United Methodist seminaries, Claremont and Garrett-Evangelical.

Comments (4)

Comment Feed

Commitment to the Poor

Well I tried to post Jorge Acevedo's entire sermon but your blog wouldn't let me because it was too long. Anyway, you would find plenty of commitment to the Poor at WCA. I assume you and Jorge are FB friends. The talk is called "The Genius of the And". Blessings

Beth Ann Cook more than 8 years ago

Questions of evangelicals

Thanks, Phil, for the questions. I do not presume to speak for others interested in Wesleyan Covenant Association but I will speak as one who has been part of the evangelical renews efforts for many years. My answers to your questions:

1. What is the Good News we share? Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, he was buried and on the third day raised from the dead. And "whoever believes in him shall have eternal life."

2. Why so little attention to Christian experience? Evangelical faith in the Wesleyan tradition has the testimony at the heart of its sharing of the faith. Indeed, some (as in Calvinists) argue that it is so obsessed with experience that it uses a subjective standard (experience) that diminishes the object standard of Scripture. By experience I mean the awareness of God's grace and the Spirit's working in our lives. I do not mean the sum total of all of that happens to me, which would involve education, history of relationships and (especially) my preferences.

3. Why silence about the poor? There is no silence about the poor, except, perhaps, if what you really mean is why not public pronouncements and political lobbying for government programs and solutions. Almost all of the efforts on behalf of the least and the last and the impoverished and the economically disadvantaged that I am aware of are initiated and funded and maintained by evangelicals. The whole Rescue Mission movement, Salvation Army, overseas missions... Furthermore, the churches most successful in ministering in disadvantaged areas are evangelical. There are no (well hardly any) Unitarian Churches in the inner cities. There are plenty of Pentecostals and Holiness groups such as Assemblies of God, however. These are groups with evangelical Methodist backgrounds.

4. Basis of Scriptural interpretation? The New Testament interprets the Old. The epistles (that is, the section of the Bible written from this side of the death and resurrection) interpret the gospels. The theological passages interpret the practical problem passages. Thus Romans 1-8 and/or Galations (as with Martin Luther) interpret other passages.

5. What of Wesley's concern about schism? Good point, and to be taken seriously. Schism, it seems, has already taken place. It is not those who stand with everything historic Methodism is about, including the Scriptures, the doctrine, the discipline, who have divided, but those have rejected that for another agenda. Why is mainstream of United Methodism being accused of schism under the present circumstances? How is the integrity of everything that has been historic Methodism to be upheld if a significant minority is so willing to scuttle it and offer a different gospel?

Riley B Case more than 8 years ago

Yo, hold up

In #5, what is this "different gospel" of which you speak? It seems your assertions in this item assume facts for which evidence is lacking. "Mainstream"? How so? Right-wing movements like "Good News," "Confessing," etc. are anything but. Spit it out. Innuendo and masking the right-wing agenda with honor guard phrases is not an honorable argument made in good faith.

George Nixon Shuler more than 8 years ago

Emphasis on the Poor Part 1

In response to your question about emphasis on the poor. I think you will find plenty of it in Jorge Acevedo's WCA Keynote. Here is the text, which he posted:

Genius of the “And”
Jorge Acevedo, Pastor

Years ago, I was privileged to hear Jim Collins of "Good to Great" fame speak. This was before he wrote this seminal leadership book. He had just finished releasing his research that documented the slim margin that distinguished “A” companies from “A+” companies. In those days, it was the difference between American Express and Visa or Dell Computers and Hewlett-Packard. This research was recorded in his book "Built to Last."

The part of his talk that I will never forget was when he taught on one of the distinguishing principles. Collins said that A+ companies practice the genius of the “and” instead of the tyranny of the “or.” In the talk, he described how choosing between seemingly contradictory concepts—focusing on this or that—leads to missed opportunities.
• Is the product low cost or high quality?
• Do I focus on short-term opportunities or long-term strategy?
• Should the company be bold or conservative?
• Is it great customer service or profit making?
Collins and his team at Stanford discovered that the best companies find a way to embrace the positive aspects of both sides of a dichotomy, and instead of choosing, they find a way to have both.

It seems to me that as followers of Jesus in the Wesleyan way, we practice this principle of the genius of the “and” in our understanding and living out of the life of faith. Think about some of apparent choices some in Christianity might want us to make:
• Is it grace or is it truth?
• Is it faith or is it works?
• Is it radical welcome or is it radical Gospel?
• Is it orthodoxy or is it orthopraxy?
• Is it love of God or love of neighbor?
When we in the Wesleyan stream get it right, we refuse to be sequestered to one corner or another, but instead choose the robust middle way, which we understand as the way of Jesus.

Maybe the most profound witness to genius of the “and” at work in our tradition is our Methodist understanding of the means of grace. A quick check on the umc.org website and you find this page (www.umc.org/how-we-serve/the-wesleyan-means-of-grace). We Methodists believe in holding in tension both works of piety and works of mercy. Faith expressed without a robust expression of both in the life of an individual follower of Jesus or a local church is incomplete and unbiblical in our understanding of what it means to live in Christ. For us faith is lived best when as a follower of Jesus I work on my prayer life and work to end human trafficking. My local church is being faithful to the way of Jesus when our hands are lifted high in transcending worship and our hands are reaching low to work with the poor.

This was part of the genius of the Wesley’s and the early Methodists.

Beth Ann Cook more than 8 years ago