Category Archives: Book Review

New Volume of Wesley’s Works Forthcoming

07 Thursday Apr 2011

Posted by in Book Review, Methodist History, Wesley

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I am anxiously awaiting the release of vol. 10 of the Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley. The title of vol 10 is The Methodist Societies: The Minutes of Conference and will contain, as the title helpfully implies, the minutes from the various conferences in early Methodism. I am particularly interested in getting a copy of this book in my hands because there are several passages from various minutes I would like to cite from the critical edition in my dissertation. This volume is edited by Henry D. Rack, who is best known for his biography of John Wesley, which is seen by many as the standard biography of John Wesley.

The Bicentennial Edition is the scholarly edition of John Wesley’s works, as distinguished from the Jackson edition, which is much cheaper, but is not comprehensive and contains no footnotes or annotations. The Bicentennial Edition is fairly expensive (although about a year ago, Cokesbury was selling the previously published volumes for $15 each) but it is, in my view, a worth while expense for the library of any pastor in the Wesleyan family. The Bicentennial Edition has published all of the volumes of Wesley’s sermons and all of the volumes of Wesley’s Journals and diaries.

Are you as excited as I am?

Campbell on the Wesleyan Belief in Entire Sanctification

15 Monday Nov 2010

Posted by in Book Review, Christian Living, Methodist History, Wesley

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In a previous post, I recommended Ted A. Campbell’s Wesleyan Beliefs: Formal and Popular Expressions of the Core Beliefs of Wesleyan Communities. One of the highlights of the book is Campbell’s discussion of the continuing relevance of the Wesleyan doctrine of entire sanctification or Christian perfection. Campbell makes the most persuasive and helpful case for the ongoing value and relevance of the Wesleyan doctrine of entire sanctification that I have read in some time. Here is the key passage:

The doctrine of entire sanctification is a great gift at the heart of historic Wesleyan communities, a gift that, I am inclined to say, Wesleyan Christians could neglect only at the peril of losing what has been the heart of their distinctive beliefs. It is grounded in the consistent biblical mandate that the end (telos) or goal of human existence is complete love for God, and love for our neighbors as the natural concomitant and sign of love for God… I find John Wesley’s twofold rationale for the doctrine of entire sanctification unassailable:
1. God intends that we should love God completely.
2. God can accomplish what God intends.
Once these two points are understood, the doctrine of entire sanctification can be understood as the heart of biblical religion… It creates a space where ancient saintliness can meet modern life and thus it is a gift of grace for the contemporary world. (233)

Amen!

Almost Christian

12 Friday Nov 2010

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I recently finished reading Kenda Dean’s new book, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church. As I said in a previous post that recommended several books I have recently read, I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in youth ministry, young people, or the state of the American Church.

To put it differently, if the beginning of Dean’s book doesn’t make you want to read more, then you may not want to read it:

Let me save you some trouble. Here is the gist of what you are about to read: American young people are, theoretically, fine with religious faith – but it does not concern them very much, and it is not durable enough to survive long after they graduate from high school.
One more thing: we’re responsible.
If the American church responds, quickly and decisively, to issues raised by studies like the National Study of Youth and Religion… then tending the faith of young people may just be the ticket to reclaiming our own. As the following pages attest, the religiosity of American teenagers must be read primarily as a reflection of their parents’ religious devotion (or lack thereof) and, by extension, that of their congregations. (3-4)

As Dean says a few paragraphs later, “lackadaisical faith is not young people’s issue, but ours.” (4)

In other words, this book is as much about the current state of the American church as it is about the state of youth ministry or the faith of youth themselves. Dean sees the faith of teenagers as a mirror that shows the American church the faith that it is teaching to them. Part of Dean’s argument is that the church is doing a decent job of forming young people in the faith that they are practicing. The problem is that this faith is “an imposter faith that poses as Christianity, but that in fact lacks the holy desire and missional clarity necessary for Christian discipleship” (6)

Here is the question that should cause American Christians to do some serious soul-searching: “What if the church models a way of life that asks, not passionate surrender but ho-hum assent? What if we are preaching moral affirmation, a feel-better faith, and a hands-off God instead of the decisively involved, impossibly loving, radically sending God of Abraham and Mary, who desired us enough to enter creation in Jesus Christ and whose Spirit is active in the church and in the world today?” (12)

Dean’s work moves beyond Christian Smith and Melinda Denton in Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenages and the National Study of Youth and Religion (NYSR), which was the research that informed the book. Here is the central question that Dean explores in Almost Christian: “How can the twenty-first-century church better prepare young people steeped in Moralistic Therapeutic Deism for the trust-walk of Christian faith?” (22)

The argument of the book, then, contains a detailed description of the problem of the “parasite” of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, several positive examples of what it looks like to “claim a peculiar God-story,” and several descriptive chapters that outline suggestions for “cultivating consequential faith.”

Almost Christian has gained attention in many venues. An article about the book on CNN.com even stirred up some controversy. As of this writing, there are more than 5,000 comments to the article. This is an important book that raises some serious questions, not just about ministry to youth and young adults, but about the contemporary state of Christianity in America.

After reading the book, the question I am left with is: What tools or insights does an intentionally Wesleyan approach to Christian formation offer? Admittedly, this is a question beyond the scope of Dean’s book, but I believe the Wesleyan tradition has a rich contribution to make to attempts to “cultivate consequential faith” in Christians both young and old(er)!

Generation Rising: A Future with Hope for The UMC

08 Monday Nov 2010

Posted by in Accountability, Book Review, Christian Living, Methodist History, Ministry, Wesley

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Andrew Thompson has written a post about a book that Abingdon will be publishing in the Spring, Generation Rising: A Future with Hope for the United Methodist Church. Thompson is the editor of the book, which features chapters from twelve different younger leaders in the UMC about the future of the denomination. (Click on the link to Andrew’s post to see a list of the authors of the various chapters, the titles of each chapter, and the cover of the book.)

I was thrilled to be asked by Andrew to write a chapter on the role of small groups for the future of the UMC. My chapter gives a brief history of the role of “watching over one another in love” through a form of small group accountability in early Methodism. I then explore the relevance of the past for the present by addressing some of the challenges to embracing this Wesleyan communal practice in the 21st century. Ultimately, I argue that a return to such a practice will be essential for the renewal of United Methodism. I see the chapter I wrote for Generation Rising as a key part of what I have been doing here in my series on the relevance of the class meeting for the 21st century. If you have found that conversation to be beneficial, I hope you will read my chapter.

I am excited to be a part of this project, because I am thrilled to be part of a collaborative effort to give voice to what younger leaders in the UMC think is needed in order for United Methodism to have a future with hope. One of my frustrations about efforts to restore vitality to our denomination is that they typically fail to represent the vision or insights of the people who are the future of the church. This project is one attempt by younger folks in United Methodism to share what our sense is of where we are and what the most promising and hopeful way forward is. It is written by people who love the church and are committed to it.

I appreciate Andrew’s vision, initiative and leadership in conceiving this project, and his work to bring it to fruition. I also appreciate Abingdon Press’s recognition of the importance of giving voice to the experience and insights of younger generations within the church. Ultimately, I hope Generation Rising is only the beginning of a broader conversation about the way forward for the church.

Recommended Reading

27 Wednesday Oct 2010

Posted by in Book Review, Christian Living, links, Methodist History, Wesley

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I want to recommend three books that I have recently read (in one instance, re-read) and three books that I am really looking forward reading.


Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church by Kenda Dean.

If you are involved in ministry with youth and young adults, you should read this book. If you have children and care about them becoming mature Christians, you should read this book. Oh, and if you care about people in this demographic… you should read this book.

I just finished reading Almost Christian and (as you may be able to tell) I thought it was excellent. Almost Christian chews on the research and data that was released with Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton’s Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, which has already made a big splash in conversations about the formation of youth and young adults. I plan on blogging about Dean’s book in the near future, so I won’t say more at this point.


Charles Wesley and the Struggle for Methodist Identity by Gareth Lloyd.

I re-read this book during my time working in the Methodist Archives in Manchester. Gareth Lloyd is also the archivist for the Methodist material in Manchester. Lloyd’s book does two things that are both major contributions to Wesleyan Studies and the history of Methodism. First, he argues that John Wesley’s perspective has dominated the history of Methodism in ways that have distorted the picture. Thus, Charles Wesley and the Struggle for Methodist Identity seeks to begin to restore some balance and bring the picture back into focus. The second contribution of Lloyd’s work is that the book acts as a kind of guide to the primary source material that has all too often been overlooked by Methodist historians. One of Lloyd’s key arguments is that scholarship relating to Charles Wesley is inadequate because it has tended to rely on nineteenth century secondary source material, rather than going back to the original materials. Because of his position at the Rylands, Lloyd is the ideal person to make this case and to provide suggestions as to where key materials are that have yet to be mined.

Warning: The main negative of this book is its price. It is currently only available in hardcover and is $99. (Oh, you can purchase a Kindle version, which is $20 cheaper.)


Wesleyan Beliefs: Formal and Popular Expressions of the Core Beliefs of Wesleyan Communities by Ted A. Campbell.

Finally, Ted A. Campbell’s latest contribution to Wesleyan Studies has just come off the presses. If nothing else, you should read this book because it is endorsed by both Richard P. Heitzenrater and Randy L. Maddox. Maddox’s endorsement suggests that “Campbell’s careful study should put to rest finally the frequent caricature of Methodism as unconcerned about doctrinal beliefs… This is a must-read for scholars of the Wesleyan/Methodist tradition and beyond!”

My brief summary of Campbell’s argument would be that studies of Methodist or Wesleyan doctrine or beliefs have tended to fall into one of two camps. They are either focused on a rigid study of official doctrinal statements or academic contributions from members of these traditions, or they are focused on the opposite extreme of the popular practices and expressions of faith of Wesleyan or Methodist faith communities at particular points in time. In Wesley Beliefs, Campbell aims to bring these two legitimate foci into conversation with one another. In so doing, he finds that the study of official statements of doctrine along with more popular expressions of lay spirituality (such as hymnals, catechisms, and the architectural design of churches) reveal significant harmony.

(Full disclosure: Ted Campbell is my Ph.D. advisor here at S.M.U., so I am perhaps predisposed to think highly of his work.)

Here are three books that I am chomping at the bit to get my hands on, in fact I hope to be able pick up a few this weekend at the American Academy of Religion. Since I have not read them, I will not comment on them any further at this point, except to say that I think they are worth checking out.

The Methodist Experience in America, Vol 1: A History
 by Russell E. Richey, Kenneth E. Rowe, and Jean Miller Schmidt

From Aldersgate to Azusa Street: Wesleyan, Holiness, and Pentecostal Visions of the New Creation edited by Henry H. Knight III.

T&T Clark Companion to Methodism edited by Charles Yrigoyen, Jr.

An Important Wesleyan Voice on the Formation of Youth

30 Monday Aug 2010

Posted by in Book Review, Christian Living, Ministry

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Kenda Dean has written a book which has recently been published by Oxford UP, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church, and it has received a lot of attention over the past week. It started with an article on CNN.com, which you can read here. As of this post, there were almost 6,000 comments to the story! Dean responded to the CNN article with two different responses on her blog. You can read them here and here.

Edit: I initially omitted Dean’s post “Almost Christian” which responds to CNN’s use of the term “fake” in the title of their article. This is the lengthiest post, and it makes explicit that Dean had Wesley’s sermon of the same title in mind when she gave her books its title. This is an excellent post, if you only click on one of the links in this post – click on (and read) this one.

I also just noticed that Sonja Tobey, an elder in the Oklahoma Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church, has written a blog post on Dean’s book and the CNN article. Apparently, all the attention is impacting the sales of the book. I am not sure what the sales numbers were for the book before the CNN article, but as of this posting the book is ranked #231 on Amazon.com’s sales rankings, which is the highest sales ranking I remember seeing for a book written by a seminary professor (Dean teaches at Princeton Theological Seminary).

This book has been on my radar for several months, but seeing the CNN article finally prompted me to order it. Here is a brief summary of the book from the Oxford listing:

Based on the National Study of Youth and Religion–the same invaluable data as its predecessor, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers –Kenda Creasy Dean’s compelling new book, Almost Christian , investigates why American teenagers are at once so positive about Christianity and at the same time so apathetic about genuine religious practice.

In Soul Searching , Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton found that American teenagers have embraced a “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”–a hodgepodge of banal, self-serving, feel-good beliefs that bears little resemblance to traditional Christianity. But far from faulting teens, Dean places the blame for this theological watering down squarely on the churches themselves. Instead of proclaiming a God who calls believers to lives of love, service and sacrifice, churches offer instead a bargain religion, easy to use, easy to forget, offering little and demanding less. But what is to be done? In order to produce ardent young Christians, Dean argues, churches must rediscover their sense of mission and model an understanding of being Christian as not something you do for yourself, but something that calls you to share God’s love, in word and deed, with others. Dean found that the most committed young Christians shared four important traits: they could tell a personal and powerful story about God; they belonged to a significant faith community; they exhibited a sense of vocation; and they possessed a profound sense of hope. Based on these findings, Dean proposes an approach to Christian education that places the idea of mission at its core and offers a wealth of concrete suggestions for inspiring teens to live more authentically engaged Christian lives.

Persuasively and accessibly written, Almost Christian is a wake up call no one concerned about the future of Christianity in America can afford to ignore.

I hope to comment more about the book once I have had a chance to read it. At this point, I just want to note how pleased I am to see that someone like Kenda Dean (who is an ordained United Methodist pastor and graduate of a UM seminary – Wesley Theological Seminary) has written a book that is making a splash in the broader conversation about Christianity in America.

If you are interested in ways that scholarship by Methodists is impacting the broader conversation about the role of Christianity in American life, or if you are interested in the formation of youth in the Christian faith – you should pick up this book. My guess is that we will be hearing much more from Kenda Dean. I can’t wait to read Almost Christian.

Oh, and if you haven’t read the book mentioned in the Oxford summary of Dean’s book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers written by Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, it is also worth checking out.

Was unChristian Wrong?

01 Thursday Jul 2010

Posted by in Book Review, links

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Scot McKnight has written a post on Bradley R. E. Wright’s new book Christians are Hate-Filled Hypocrites… and Other Lies You’ve Been Told: A Sociologist Shatters Myths from the Secular and Christian Media. My first thought on seeing the title of the book was, Would the title of that book even fit in a tweet? (It will, with two characters to spare!) McKnight’s post is mostly an introduction to the book and an encouragement for us to buy it.

I have not read it, but it sounds like Wright’s book may be trying to set the record straight on some of the assertions made by unChristian: What a New Generation Really Things about Christianity… and Why it Matters. If that is, at least in part, what Wright is in fact trying to do, I will be very interested to read the book (when I can scratch up the money and time to read something not related to my dissertation). I will also be interested to see if it gets as much press as unChristian did. I suspect that if Wright is trying to provide nuance and subtlety to the interpretation and use of statistics which can be used to bludgeon other people in arguments, it regrettably will not be as popular as a book that just allows you to create a neat stereotype of an entire group of people. (At the moment it is ranked 21,241 on amazon, which is not bad.)

I will look forward to writing more if and when I have a chance to read the book for myself.

Has anyone read the book? Are my hunches about what it will be about on target at all? What are you thoughts?

(By the way, Bradley R. E. Wright also has a blog, which I have enjoyed reading. In addition to being a professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut, he is also a gifted photographer.)

A. Lincoln

29 Tuesday Jun 2010

Posted by in Book Review, Life

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I just finished reading A. Lincoln: A Biography by Ronald C. White, Jr. Under normal circumstances, I would not even have considered reading this book. I probably would have dismissed the book, thinking how could there possibly be a need for another book about Abraham Lincoln? Especially after David Herbert Donald’s Lincoln and Dorris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

But then I heard Dr. White speak about Lincoln’s second inaugural address at a Perkins banquet. White is an amazing speaker, and he clearly has both passion and expertise when it comes to Abraham Lincoln. After his presentation, I had to hear more from him. Plus, the book was soon to come out in paperback. So I bought it.

And I am glad that I did. A. Lincoln is the best book I have read on Lincoln. White has a talent for story-telling, making the book a delight to read. He also had a sensitive ear for the role of religion in Lincoln’s personal life and in his political leadership. White told the story of Lincoln’s presidency during the Civil War in a way that suggested (persuasively, in my view) that Lincoln was a man of faith who really wrestled with the role of God in the Civil War, refusing to settle for easy or trite answers.

If you enjoy reading about this period of American History, or you have yet to read a biography of Abraham Lincoln, I highly recommend this book. It is one of those rare books that after I finished it, I was really sad there wasn’t more to read.

The Expansion of Methodism in the early 19th c.

15 Tuesday Jun 2010

Posted by in Book Review, Methodist History

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The explosive growth of Methodism in the early 1800s always fascinates and amazes me. In America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln, Mark A. Noll argues that “the central religious reality for the period from the Revolution to the Civil War was the unprecedented expansion of evangelical Protestant Christianity. No other period of American history ever witnessed such a dramatic rise in religious adherence and corresponding religious influence on the broader national culture” (165-66). Noll further argues that this expansion was unprecedented and there was no reason why it should have been expected.

Within this remarkable growth, Noll finds that “the expansion of the Methodists requires special notice” (168). In 1813, a few years before Francis Asbury’s death, Methodist records indicate that there were 171,448 white and 42,850 African-American members in ‘full society’ served by 678 preachers. At this time there were also about 7,000 class meetings. Each class meeting was presided over by a class leader, which was a local layperson. To give a further idea of a) the seriousness with which Methodists held to their requirements for membership at this time; and b) the broad influence of Methodism, about one million people attended Methodist camp meetings each year. In other words, more than five times as many people went to these camp meetings each year than were full members of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Noll concludes: “From nowhere, in a period of very rapid general growth in church affiliation and over a remarkably short span, Methodism had become the most pervasive form of Christianity in the United States” (169).

Of all these statistics, here is the one that I think is most interesting: there were 7,000 classes meeting throughout Methodism in 1813. That is an average of one class per 30.6 members in full connection. (This creates an interpretative dilemma, because John Wesley typically defined a class as a meeting of 7 to 12 people, not 30. However, this actually serves to confirm what I have read elsewhere – that classes in early 19th century American Methodism were actually quite a bit larger than they were in Britain during Wesley’s lifetime.) What may be more astonishing than the number of classes is that each class was served by a local layperson, who was responsible for the spiritual development of all of the people in their class, and there were ten times as many class leaders (about 7,000 class leaders) as there were preachers (678)!

There are so many different directions you could go in with these numbers. One thing that really strikes me, though, is that it seems that one of the key reasons for the growth of early American Methodism in the first years of the nineteenth century was that everywhere there was a Methodist church, there were several lay people who were spiritual leaders. People who loved their brothers and sisters in Christ enough to walk with them, to ask them how things were going in their life with God in order to support and encourage them.

I wonder if one of the most essential tasks for the United Methodist Church today is training and empowering laity for this kind of ministry. In many churches, there is likely one lay person for every thirty who has authority over an administrative task (such as chairing or serving on a committee). If we could survey every UM congregation throughout the connection, I wonder what the ratio would be of lay people who are asking other laity how things are in their life with God? I wonder what the ratio would be of lay people who are asking other laity if they are keeping the “General Rules” (do no harm, do good, and attend upon the ordinances of God – i.e. practice the means of grace). I wonder what the ratio would be of lay people who are asking other laity whether they are loving God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, and whether they are loving their neighbor as themselves.

What do you think?

Too Close to Home

09 Tuesday Mar 2010

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I am reading Alan J. Roxburgh and M. Scott Boren’s Introducing the Missional Church: What It Is, Why It Matters, How to Become One and I just came across this:

Recently an executive of a denomination was pulling his hair out over the decisions being made in the national office. They had received an estate worth over 20 million dollars. Of that amount, the national office had spent 10 million dollars hiring an agency that researched people’s attitudes toward the denomination and then developed a massive marketing campaign that included chat rooms and a bobblehead dog mascot. The executive was frustrated because of what this program suggested – namely, there was nothing wrong with the church’s perspectives, and all it needed was a marketing challenge on how to attract more people into what was already there. Nobody and nothing on the inside needed to change; it was about how to present and market who they were. This is the attractional mind-set that has to die before a missional imagination can be born. (83-84)

The authors are challenging the attractional approach to ministry, where the goal is to get people to come to our programs or our events as a church (foremost of which is typically the Sunday worship service). Yet, as I was typing the quotation above, another reason occurred to me why marketing campaigns are not the answer. To put it very crudely: If all that mainline churches in the United States needed to attract people to become involved in a church was something that compelled them to enter the doors of a church again, September 11, 2001 would have been the advertisement the church was waiting for.

I have often heard people talk about how full their churches were in the week or two after 9/11. However, I have not yet heard anyone say that the people who visited after the devastating events of September 11th actually became involved in the life of the Church. (I am sure there are some people who joined churches after 9/11, but what I am pointing to is that I have not heard of a church where the majority of people who visited stayed connected to the church they visited over the long term.) This could be interpreted in a number of ways. But one way of looking at it is that they were “attracted” to church and did not find anything there that they needed or wanted. Spending money on Coke ads would be a waste of time and money if nobody thought Coke tasted good.

I am sharing these thoughts as a sort of stream of consciousness, so I may ultimately decide that there is nothing here worth exploring. I guess my main question at this stage is this: Does the ReThink Church campaign fit into the quotation from Introducing the Missional Church? Thanks be to God, as far as I know there is not a bobblehead dog mascot in the campaign… so it seems like we are already ahead of the game there.

The very name of the campaign at first glance would seem to suggest that there is an openness to doing things differently, to changing. But I suspect that is either not ultimately the case, or the creators of the campaign have dramatically overestimated the UMC’s ability to change over a short period of time. We are, after all, a denomination which has been lamenting the decline of younger clergy and the implications of such a decline for the future of the church, while continuing to put the real power of framing and shaping the future of the church into the hands of people who will decidedly not be the future of the church. Or to put it differently, there seems to be a broad consensus that the denomination is not healthy. However, there seems to actually be very little that is proactively being changed. And the ultimate motivation for change seems to be fear. One does not have to read too many books to read one that predicts when the UMC will cease to exist if we continue declining at our current rate.

My prayer for the United Methodist Church is that the Holy Spirit will release us from our fear of death. I pray that by the grace of God we will be motivated by love – love for God and love for our neighbor. I pray that we will want to reach out because we have something worth sharing, something that people need, and that we will actually care about people outside of the church enough that we will want them to experience God’s love, to taste and see that the Lord is good! I yearn for revival to come upon us, to come to us – not as something that we have earned or forced into being, but as an utter gift of grace. Unmerited. Undeserved. But freely given so that we might have life, and have it abundantly.