No Shame in Wesley’s Gospel

A Twenty-First Century Pastoral Theology

Dr. Edward P. Wimberly

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781610971935
  9781498259545
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630875756
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Kirche

As an African American who was a senior pastor in both white and black churches between 1966 and 1974, Edward Wimberly encountered shame as the feeling of being unloved and being unlovable primarily when his parishioners and counselees experienced a loss of a loved one. Grief was the dominant psychological category for talking about loss in those days, and the feeling of shame of being abandoned and resulting in feelings of being unloved were described as temporary. However, in the middle 1980s pastoral theologians began to recognize shame as a dominant psychological and spiritual long lasting experience that needed to be addressed. Thus, pastoral counselors and pastoral theologians began to explore psychological object relations theory, self-psychology, and the psychology of shame to understand the persistence of the experience of shame. Today shame as the feeling of being unloved and unlovable is a major experience of many modern people given the nature of the loss of relational connections and close-knit communities. Many psychologies are surfacing focusing on cultural narcissism or selfish love, the cult of self-admiration which is replacing self-actualization, and the equating of wealth and social status with being loved. Growing up in the Methodist tradition in an African American church, Wimberly was sensitized to John Wesley's small group experience hearing about the class meetings. Moreover, he had been exposed to the use of small groups in Zimbabwe, Africa in 1998 based on African Methodists attempts to recover the village which was disappearing on account of technology, industrialization, and the colonialism's destruction of the family.Thus, based on the author's family of origin community's fascination with Wesley's small group and witnessing this same phenomenon in Africa, Wimberly decided to explore Wesley's cell group practical theology for its contribution to twenty-first century ministry to people who could be classified as relational refugees.

Chapter 1

John Wesley’s Theology for the Twenty-first Century

In my essay entitled “John Wesley and the Twenty-first Century: A Realistic Future,” I set out to demonstrate that Wesley’s theology, which grew out of the eighteenth century, had relevance for contemporary issues confronting our society. The essay was grounded in my assessment that Wesley’s theology responded to the rapid development of eighteenth-century modern capitalism. At that time, he struggled to address, for himself as well as for his own contemporaries, how to come to grips theologically with the increasing possibility of economic wealth resulting from industrialization. Moreover, Wesley sought to address the undermining impact of both economic wealth and an advancing intellectual movement, derived from Enlightenment influences, against the authority of the church. In my essay, I made the point that the consequences of the industrial era, and of the intellectual forces set loose during the Enlightenment, continue to be felt in today’s society. Likewise, Wesley’s theological wisdom has relevance for our contemporary culture. The essay sets forth the nature of the contemporary challenge.

In the essay, I draw on Wesley’s theological wisdom as a means of addressing two problems facing the church, the nation, and the world. The first is the danger that the United Methodist Church’s vitality will be diminished because of the neglect of its communal, small-group roots within local congregations, even as the church pursues its important and necessarily aggressive social agenda. Second, Wesley’s theology will be drawn on for support in addressing a pernicious and deadly form of narcissism grounded in the pursuit of economic status, social status, and honor, which led to the most recent economic meltdown in the United States and the world. In short, the essay sought to answer the question, “In what sense can Wesley be claimed as a source for theology today?”1

I want to make the claim here that the task for the United Methodist Church in the twenty-first century is one of mining the practical theology of John Wesley for our contemporary cultural problems. Indeed, I submit that this is not simply a concern specific to the United Methodist Church. It is a concern for all denominations that have drawn on John Wesley’s practical theology for their doctrinal formulations, including pan-Methodist traditions or the five African American Methodist denominations, all churches within the Wesleyan heritages in the United States and abroad, Pentecostal and evangelical denominations as well as non-denominational churches that draw on Wesleyan theology, and other denominations that use Wesleyan theology in their understanding of ministry and doctrine. Toward that end, this chapter will provide a rationale for how to update Wesley’s practical theology so that it can have relevance for today. This task recognizes that Wesley’s theology addressed issues and concerns that were uniquely early modern in the sense that they were developments of capitalism. The church then was becoming more secular and was losing its authority in the marketplace. It is my belief that it is possible to bridge the gap between Wesley’s time period and ours by identifying rhetorical practices Wesley used to address the situation of his time. When updated, his practical theological approach to the formation of persons in the faith especially has relevance for today. Therefore, this chapter is a methodological one. As such, it will lay the groundwork for what will be the task of this entire book. This task is to update Wesley’s practical theology for the twenty-first century.

Wesley as a Practical Theologian

Randy Maddox comments on the significance of practical theology by talking about the first and second order of theological reflection. For him, serious theological thinking takes place when the practical activity of ministry is reflected on theologically. He says that Wesley’s gift to theology was being a practical theologian, and that his practical theology reflected the church’s own understanding of doing theology when compared to what was taking place in the universities and academic communities.

Wesley did theology by addressing two levels, according to Maddox. The first level was formational. It involved the basic and implicit assumptions shaping people spiritually, emotionally, interpersonally, and behaviorally.2 For him this level of theological reflection develops as practitioners think about nurturing and forming people in their faith. Methods for influencing how people are formed and shaped by their faith tradition are developed. These methods include the production of sermons, catechisms, liturgies, manuals, tracts, treatises, and communal means of instruction. Maddox calls this level of theological reflection the first order of theological thinking. He says that this practical level sets the stage for the next level of theological thought.

For him, the next level of theological reflection is the grounding of these practical activities within a doctrinal framework. Practice always had to be grounded theologically. Wesley used pre-Enlightenment thinking for grounding practical theology. Pre-Enlightenment practical theology focused on the basic theological principle that happiness and virtue were found in relationship with God and that this relationship had all kinds of benefits and dividends for their growth and development.3 Wesley’s doctrine of salvation was the foundation of everything he did, and all of the church’s practices served the goal of fostering a relationship of human beings with God through Jesus Christ. Moreover, being in relationship with God in Wesley’s theology had the following benefits for persons. People experienced themselves as valuable with worth and dignity. They not only felt valuable, but were so delighted in the rewards of being in relationship with God that they sought to grow and develop their lives in accordance with God’s guidance through the Holy Spirit. Theologically, the doctrines of justification and the assurance of salvation, the growth toward sanctification in love of neighbor, reliance on Scripture as a faithful and trustworthy guide, and growth and discipline in small groups, became the fundamental theological doctrines guiding practical principles of Wesley.

My reading of Wesley’s primary sources indicates to me that he was very much in the pre-modern and pre-Enlightenment model of doing practical theology. Indeed, he followed the pre-modern methods. These methods used doctrine and Scripture to convince or persuade others that being in a relationship with God through Jesus Christ was the source of happiness. It was also the source of growth and development spiritually, emotionally, and relationally. Thus, practical theology for John Wesley was all about seeking to influence people to come into full relationship with God through Jesus Christ. This relationship would be nurtured in practices in small groups. Happiness was growth in salvation through holiness and love-oriented virtues.4

The Case of Glenn Henderson

Earlier in this manuscript I introduced Glenn Henderson and how he pursued the riches of this world in his business and how he met failure after failure until he learned where his true happiness lay. The relevance of his story is that he lives in the twenty-first century, and life itself taught him that true happiness and the practices of Christian virtues began first with a relationship between himself and God through Jesus Christ. He believed that building his own life and business rested in his own hands. He gave no thought to the role of God in the process. Through his own hands, he was constructing his own world and his business. In fact, he writes, “I was busy building my house, a house on sand, a house built my way and a house without any foundations, values, purpose, character or even vision.”5 Eventually, through a process of discovery and participation in the life of Christian organizations, he came to the truth that is expressed in Palms 127:1, which basically points out that building a house is futile unless the builder is God. Thus, as he grew in his relationship with God through Jesus Christ, he learned tha...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: John Wesley’s Theology for the Twenty-first Century
• Chapter 2: Wesley’s Therapeutic Model
• Chapter 3: God’s Present But Not Yet Future
• Chapter 4: Wesley’s Discipline for Guidance in Life
• Chapter 5: Shame, Slavery, and Economics of Hope
• Chapter 6: Practical Public Theology
• Bibliography