2016 Holiness Series: #4 Holiness in Early Church History

Once we get out of the New Testament holiness was not a difficult concept for early Christians to embrace.  This was because the Christians were under nearly constant persecution for the first three hundred years.

            Christianity was birthed in the Roman Empire.  The Romans did not much care what you believed as long as you participated in the civil religion of worshipping the Emperor.  Everywhere the Roman Empire spread conquered people would simply add worshipping the Emperor alongside worshipping whatever local gods they happened to have.  This worked fine, expect for the Jews, of course.  The Jews were eventually given a special exception from Emperor worship.  Since Christianity began as a sect of Judaism, it enjoyed this exception.  The very first Christians were persecuted by Jewish leaders and the Romans largely ignored, what was to them, a Jewish dispute.

            All that began to change with the Jewish revolt which culminated in the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 A.D.  After that, Jews, and by extension, Christians, no longer enjoyed the protection they had under Roman law.  Christianity became an illegal religion.  Those who were caught in the act of Christian worship, or suspected of being a Christian, would be brought in and told that if they would worship a statue of the Emperor they would be allowed to live, if not, they could have their property seized, and often they were tortured and usually killed.  Usually these executions took place in very painful and public ways, crucifixions, impalements, being burned alive, or being fed alive to wild animals.  However, all of this was a very good thing for holiness, because, as you can imagine, there were not many people in the church who were not taking it extremely seriously.

            Then the Emperor Constantine came to power. In 313 A.D. Constantine issued the Edict of Milan ensuring Christians the freedom to worship legally.  Eventually, Constantine would make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire which would give rise to what we know as the Roman Catholic Church.  However, the influx of the rich and powerful into the church since it had now become “popular,” and the involvement of the church in the politics of the Empire, led to a lack of holiness within the church.

            In response to all this many Christians sought a purer and holier way of life away from the temptations of Roman world and monasticism was born.  The first monastics, or monks and nuns, were people like St. Anthony, who lives alone in the desert.  Soon these hermits, as they were called, and those who came to learn from them, formed themselves into little communities of holy living.  It would be the monastic movement, through later figures like St. Francis, that would keep the tradition of holiness in the church alive for over a thousand years through the fall of the Empire and the turmoil of the Dark Ages and the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church.

            Of course, in some ways monasticism itself became corrupt and legalistic, which led a monk named Martin Luther to lead a protest against the abuses and excesses of monasticism and the Roman Church.  This protest became the Protestant movement of which we are a part and which has its own rich history of holiness in many forms.

We will be taking a couple of months off from this series to have some articles in May, June, July, and August talking about General and Jurisdictional Conferences.  We will return to this series in September to discuss John Wesley and his unique contribution to the theology of holiness. 

2016 Holiness Series: #2 Holiness in the Old Testament

            In our second article in this series on holiness I would like to lift up some ideas about holiness from the Old Testament.

            If you have ever tried to read through the Bible beginning at Genesis, and if you are like most people, you probably got to the “begats” in Genesis chapter five and gave up.  However, if you pushed through Genesis 5 things got better and you got to read about Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.  But then you got to Exodus and Leviticus and had to read, in painstaking detail, about how the Tabernacle was to be constructed.  We all love our church buildings, but imagine sitting down in the morning with a cup of coffee and reading devotionally about how many bricks, of what color, went into each wall and how the mortar was mixed, and on and on.  If you get through that, you get to read how the priests were to sacrifice animals in details that rival your very worst memories from high school biology. (Hope your class was not right after lunch!)

            You may have found yourself wondering, and I have been asked as a pastor, “What is all of this stuff about?”  It is about God’s holiness.  You will remember from the first article that “holy” essentially means “different” or “set apart.”  The message that God is trying to send to the Israelites, and to us, is,

“I am holy. I am different from you. I love you and I want to be near you and I want you to worship me. But, just so you remember who I am there are going to be some rules about how you worship me. I am going to have you build a beautiful tabernacle and dress your priests in fine robes and I will give you beautiful ceremonies so that your worship of me will inspire awe and not ‘aww.’”

            In my opinion, the problem with the church today, and for a long time now, is that our ideas about God and our worship have been too much “aww” and not enough “awe.”

            The holiness of God is a major theme in the Old Testament, and in the whole Bible.  Another major theme is the holiness of God’s people.  God wants his people to be holy.  God says, in Leviticus 20:26, and other places, “Be holy because I am holy.”

            God says we should, and can, be holy. If you are one of the determined few who press though Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, at the very end of Deuteronomy, after reading through all the commandments and all the rules and regulations, you will find this, in Deuteronomy 30:11 & 15, “Now what I am commanding you today (everything in Exodus-Deuteronomy) is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach…  See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction.”  God offers us a way of life called holiness. The choice is ours to choose life, God’s way of life.

2016 Holiness Series: #1 Introduction to Holiness

            During 2016 I will be doing most of my newsletter articles on the topic of holiness.  Holiness is very important to who we are as United Methodists, at least historically.  I will say more about that in a future article.  This time I want to simply get a definition out on the table.

Holy simply means set apart.  Holiness is a scary word because when we hear the word “holy” we think it means being perfect, or really good, or at least better than we are. While there is a behavioral element to holiness, the true definition of holiness lies elsewhere.  The true definition of holy is sacred or set apart for special use; not common, different.

God is holy.  Holiness begins with God.  God is the only one who is truly holy and he alone is the source of all holiness and he alone makes all things holy.  The Bible says, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.”  The Hebrew word for holy is kadosh and Hebrews has no superlatives, like good, better, best, so repetition in Hebrew is like saying good, better best.  In saying that God is holy we are not just saying that he is morally perfect but also that he is wholly other than us.

God’s stuff and God’s people are holy.  Because God is holy the people and things that belong to God are holy, like the Holy Bible.  Since all things belong to God, in a way, you could say that everything is holy.  However, we talk of the church and its people as being holy in a particular way.  The church and its people belong to God and have been set aside for special use by God, kind of like the good china.  You don’t use the good china just any old time and, when you do use, you are careful with it.  We should treat the things of the church and the people of the church, ourselves and others, with the same kind of care.

Positional Holiness and Practical Holiness:  If you have put you faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you belong to God and are positionally holy, holy by position because you belong to God.  The problem is, however, that we don’t always act like we are holy.  We are not holy practically, in practice.  It is like we are using the good china to eat pizza in the living room while watching football.  Even worse, imagine playing a game of poker, complete with scotch and cigars, on the altar of the church.  That is what it is like when God’s people do not act as if they are holy.  This series is dedicated to helping us understand the doctrine of holiness and begin to live, with God’s help, like the holy people God has created us to be.

2015 UM History Series #12: Methodist Mergers

The United Methodist Church as we know it today is the result of several mergers. 

First, in 1939, the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church South, which you will remember split over the issue of slavery, and the Methodist Protestant Church, which had split off in 1828 over issues of congregational autonomy and the authority of bishops, merged to form, simply, the Methodist Church.

Second, in 1946, the Church of the United Brethren in Christ and the Evangelical Church merged to form the Evangelical United Brethren (EUB) Church.  (It is important to remember that “Brethren” and “Evangelical” are used in the names of many different churches.)

Finally, in 1968, the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church merged to form the United Methodist Church.  On April 23, 1968, at the uniting General Conference in Dallas, Texas, Bishop Reuben H. Mueller from Evangelical United Brethren Church and Bishop Lloyd Christ Wicke from The Methodist Church  joined hands and prayed, "Lord of the Church, we are united in Thee, in Thy Church and now in The United Methodist Church."

As we look to the future the greatest challenges that face us are our continued debate about human sexuality, the continued decline of the Church in America, and our exponential growth in Africa.  However, we have Christ’s promise that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the church. (Matthew 16:18)

2015 UM History Series #11: Methodism, Slavery, and the Civil War

Thomas Jefferson once said that slavery was like “holding a wolf by the ear.  We can neither hold him nor safely let him go.”  Slavery and the conflicts and issues surrounding it have been the darkest part of the American story, and these issues and conflicts have included American Methodism.

Methodism from its very beginning in England was anti-slavery.  In a letter of encouragement to the famous English abolitionist William Wilberforce John Wesley wrote, “Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.”

Early American Methodism had a mixed history with race and slavery.  From the very beginning members of the Methodist Episcopal Church were forbidden to own slaves.  However, this rule was largely ignored in the south where many members and clergy were slave owners.

Meanwhile, particularly in the north, there were black Methodist preachers, including Harry Hosier and Richard Allen.  However, they were not treated as equals.  This led Allen to form the Africa Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church which became independent of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816.  Another black Methodist denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion, was formed in 1821. Blacks who remained in the Methodist Episcopal Church, north and south, often worshiped in segregated churches and were not treated as equals.

The issue of slavery caused a great deal of tension for the church.  Northerners continued to tolerate slaveholding southerners’ violation of church law for the sake of keeping the church together.  Some anti-slavery Methodists, including those who went on to form the Wesleyan Church, left the church due to the church’s unwillingness to take a principled stand.

Both sides were convinced they were right and both sides attempted to tolerate each other for the sake of an uneasy unity.  This is very similar to our current situation with regard to human sexuality and many feel that we are heading for a church split over this issue.  As we will see tolerance over what both sides believe to be a core moral issue cannot last long. 

All of this came to a head in 1844 when a southern bishop named James O. Andrew acquired slaves through marriage.  Northerners would not tolerate a slave owning bishop and refused to acknowledge Bishop Andrew as long as he continued to hold slaves.  Bishop Andrew and the southern delegates walked out of General Conference and began the process of separating from the church.  A Plan of Separation was approved by both northern and southern delegates and the church separated into the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church South.

This north-south spilt in the church continued throughout and well beyond the Civil War.  During the war southern slaves worshiped in segregated churches of the MECS.  After the war the MECS formed its segregated church into a new denomination called the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church (CME) now call the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.
            In 1939 the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church South and the Methodist Protestant Church (a small group that broke off in 1828 over the authority of bishops) united to form the Methodist Church.  However, one of the compromises that were made between the north and the south was the segregation of black churches and annual conferences into a separate structure known as the Central Conference. (Not to be confused with the current practice of calling regions outside of the United States Central Conferences.)  This practice of official segregation continued until 1968 when the Methodist Church united with the Evangelical United Brethren Church to form the United Methodist Church.  In fact, Iowa had one of the first African American bishops to serve a predominantly white annual conference in Bishop Thomas.

As you can see Methodists have been part of the unfortunate history of America.  We have come a long way and have a long way yet to go to be the people God calls us to be.

2015 UM History Series #10: History of the Evangelical United Brethren Church

            In 1752 a German Reformed pastor named Phillip William Otterbein came to America and served German-speaking German Reformed churches along the Pennsylvania- Maryland border.  In 1774 Otterbein settled in a church in Baltimore where he would remain pastor until his death in 1813.

            Upon arriving in Baltimore Otterbein met and befriended Frances Asbury and the two would remain life-long friends.  Otterbein assisted in Asbury’s consecration as a Methodist bishop as a guest at the Christmas Conference in 1784 and Asbury preached a memorial service for Otterbein.  Otterbein began to organize his church using the Wesleyan small group model which he learned from Asbury.

            In 1767 Otterbein attended a meeting at a barn near Lancaster, Pennsylvania where he heard a Mennonite preacher named Martin Boehm share his testimony of conversion.  When Boehm finished Otterbein rose from his seat and embraced him and said, “Wir Sen Brüder” (We are brethren.)  Boehm would later be expelled from the Mennonite church for his preaching of conversion and association with non-Mennonites.

            Otterbein and Boehm would begin working together to form and oversee a loosely organized evangelical movement, not unlike the Methodist movement, among German-speaking churches in the area.

            In 1798 Otterbein called together a conference of the preachers of the movement and began the process of organizing a new church.  In 1800 the next conference officially organized the Church of the United Brethren in Christ which would later be renamed the United Brethren Church.

            In our own community the former Iowa Juvenile Home was originally Leander-Clark College, a United Brethren College and the recently sold Education Center of Christ UMC was originally Otterbein United Brethren Church.

            Around the same time that Otterbein and Boehm were doing their work, a German-Lutheran pastor, Jacob Albright, had begun another Methodist-like movement among German speakers in Pennsylvania.  This movement would become known as the Evangelical Association and later the Evangelical Church.

            Brethrens, Evangelicals, and Methodists would continue to grow separately, have their own internal struggles and separations, and each become great churches throughout the 19^th century. 

In 1946 the United Brethren Church and the Evangelical Church merged to form the Evangelical United Brethren Church.  And, in 1968 the Evangelical United Brethren Church merged with the Methodist Church to form the United Methodist Church.  That is why it is very important to remember to say “United” when we say Methodist, because it reminds us of a very important part of our history.

Next time we will pick back up with the history of the Methodist Episcopal Church up to and after the Civil War. 

2015 UM History Series #9: “Early Methodism in America and Wesley's Death”

            As we saw in a previous article the history of Methodism in America began with Wesley's own lack-luster ministry in Georgia.  However, as English migration to the Colonies increased, many Methodists were among them.

            In the late 1760s Methodist lay preachers began Methodist societies.  Phillip Embury began a society in New York, Thomas Webb, also a British Army Captain, began one in Philadelphia, and Robert Strawbridge started one in Maryland.  Soon, Wesley found that the Methodist work in America was not as organized and regulated as he might have liked and so in 1770 he sent some his English preachers, including Francis Asbury, to put things in better order. 

            The Methodist work in America continued to grow until the Revolution.  The Revolution, and American independence which followed it, was a huge challenge for Methodism.  First of all, Wesley was opposed to American independence and wrote to American Methodists encouraging them to remain loyal to England, thankfully, they did not listen and yet remained Methodists.

            After the Revolution most of the Anglican ministers fled America leaving the Methodists, who, if you will remember, attended the Anglican Church to receive the sacraments, without sacramental ministry.  This prompted Wesley to take to the bold step of ordaining Thomas Coke as a "superintendent" of the Methodist work in America and send him with instructions to ordain Asbury as a superintendent.  Coke and Asbury (this is where the name Cokesbury comes from) were to organize a separate Methodist Church in America and to ordain other elders for sacramental ministry. (Methodists in England remained part of the Church of England until after Wesley's death.)

            On December 24th 1784 Coke and Asbury called the Methodist preachers to Baltimore for what has become known as the "Christmas Conference."  At the Christmas Conference a new independent church, the Methodist Episcopal Church, was formed.  Asbury insisted that he and Coke be elected by the Conference and they took the title bishop, rather than superintendent.

            Meanwhile, back in England, Wesley was growing old.  On March 2nd 1791, John Wesley died.  His last words were, "Best of all God is with us, farewell."  When he died, John Wesley had only six pounds to his name, he had always lived simply and generously.  Per his instructions, they were given to the poor men who served as his pall bearers.

            Methodism in America and England continued to grow as separate churches after Wesley's death.  We will continue the story of the Methodist Episcopal Church in two months.  But next month we need to pick up with the story of some other folks who make up the history of the United Methodist Church.  Next month we will tell the story of the Evangelical United Brethren Church.