Methodist Revolutions: Evangelical Engagements of Church and World

Methodist Revolutions: Evangelical Engagements of Church and World focuses on the interrelation of revival, reform, and revolution within Methodism. Edited by Joerg Rieger and Upolu Lumā Vaai, the volume’s contributing writers argue that those edified by Wesley’s notion of social holiness resist Methodists’ complicity in the capitalist exploitation of workers, certain evangelicals’ homophobic paranoia, and the perpetuation of the ecological dysfunction that the technological ravishing of the earth has wrought. Rieger and Vaai have organized Methodist Revolutions in terms of ‘Historical Perspectives’, ‘Contemporary Challenges’, and ‘Ecological Perspectives’. Allow me to share what I have found compelling about these sections.Radicalizing workers Christologically and eschewing their pacification, eighteenth-century British Methodist ‘field preaching’, qua revival, has exemplified ‘the very public performance of revolutionary fervor’. It was not, therefore, an ‘antidote for asocial revolution’ (12). On the other side of the pond, twentieth-century Brazilian Methodism has yielded insights into atonement theory that complement the revolutionary desire for an equitable society. We are to understand that the Spirit of Christ—received from the agapic Father rather than the wrathful Creator—moves believers to practice social holiness as outlined in the Wesleyan Social Creed. Its principles have been revolutionary within repressive twentieth-century Brazil.Regarding ‘Contemporary Challenges’, if the Methodist Church is to realize its revolutionary potential, ecclesial revival and reform must include full acceptance of LGBTQ people. The argument is that ‘a queer paradigm of openness to all kinds of non-normative difference’ is necessary to transform ‘lives into queer Christlikeness’ (55). The suggestion that Christlikeness, and the social holiness it implies, has a gay dimension is a provocative claim given the Methodists’ turmoil over same-sex marriage and the ordination of ‘out’ candidates for the ministry. To focus on the other through a Levinasian sensitivity to the alterity of faces—and thus the existential and somatic realities that render certain people vulnerable to painful injustices—is to adopt another way to actualize Wesley’s notion of social holiness. But there’s a price to pay for such sensitivity: sanctifying grace, and thus the growth toward agapic perfection, produces suffering in those who revolt against the status quo to bring justice to all.The soteriological triad—revival, reform, and revolution—involves ecology, for the earth can sustain life only if humankind realizes that violence to the ecology—which capitalist hegemony has brought about—damages all life forms, especially marginalized human beings. One must surely agree that Methodists (and all Christians!) should make ecological stewardship a ballast of revolutionary revival and reform. In South Africa, historically one of the most violently oppressive contexts of the modern and postmodern periods, ‘the mining industry pollutes the air and water’. That toxicity, ‘global warming . . . climate variability . . . desertification . . . land degradation . . . and waste and litter mismanagement’ make ecological reform imperative (157). Such dysfunction results from the West’s colonial exploitation of African resources (especially Black labour). Perhaps some ecological damage can be repaired through Africans’ ancestral praxis, which fosters equilibrium among the land, waterways, fauna, and flora. John Wesley’s emphasis on social holiness leads, in addition, to a focus on environmental stewardship as a revolutionary imperative among the Pacific Island people. Revivals and reforms worth their salt should thus discover the means to seed a ‘revolutionary environment that promotes the courage to speak and act against the destructive and painful colonial hegemony, both past and present’ (176).To conclude, Methodist Revolutions: Evangelical Engagements of Church and World exemplifies that Methodist ecclesiology need not serve conservative mores that sublate the poor and the earth to self-serving upper-crust privileges. As a theme, ‘revival, reform, and revolution’ signifies solidarity with the LGBTQ community and the activism that empowers nature’s self-regulating and self-healing processes. The book contributes to theological existence that rejects eschatology that capitulates to injustice with the rationale that the Parousia will make everything right sometime in the future. The time for revival, reform, and revolution is now! Nonetheless, the book does little to undermine white supremacy. Frank Wilderson rightly points out in his book Afropessimism that white supremacy is often unaddressed when class, LGBTQ rights, and ecological crises take centre stage. And so it is here: Methodist Revolutions falls short where the Black body is concerned. One hopes that future volumes in this book’s vein will make room for Black, radical, and even Afro-pessimistic consciousness. The lack of such consciousness hinders all Methodist attempts to embrace bone-deep diversity.

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