Postmodern Renaissance Culture Revolutionary

A Fractured Quadrilateral In the previous piece, I wrote about the four identified sources of authority within the history of the Church of Christian faith. Experience, Tradition, Scripture, and Reason have all risen to be the primary source of authority for a faith community. In some cases, the rise of a new form of primary authority has created a conflict between faith communities. There have been obvious splits within the history of the Church over these points of difference. I also alluded to John Wesley and the integration of all four sources into his work in the area of theology. The United Methodist Church took what John Wesley did and have found a unique identifying theological framework. In the Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church, our polity and doctrinal guide, the Wesleyan Quadrilateral is described. It has become a reference point over the last 40 years that United Methodists could point to as something that we shared in common. Recent events lead me to believ...

Forest of Authority This is quite long. It is a piece I have written to explain a new metaphor I am using to teach the different faith traditions. It is also the first part of an examination on where I believe we stand as Methodists in conflict with one another. In the years that I have been teaching church history, I have commonly used the analogy of a tree. It helped to point out the development of the different “branches” of the Christian faith. It was easy to show how one denomination is related to or different from, other denominations. In the last few months, I have begun to shift the analogy. Now I use the image of forest instead of a single tree. The move to a new picture has come as a result of preparation for Bible study in 1 John as well as the ongoing institutional and philosophical crisis of the United Methodist Church. I began to see that one source was not sufficient to understand the current reality of the Church universal. I felt that a different picture has become nec...