June 28

Today is the birthday, in 1703, of John Wesley, co-founder, with his brother Charles, of the Methodist movement. The genius of Methodism was its focus on practical discipleship in small groups empowered by the Holy Spirit. Wesley described three ways God’s grace operates: preparing, saving, and then perfecting people in faith. 

Today also marks the day, in 1919, that the League of Nations was born as part of the Treaty of Versailles. Notably, Japan’s proposal for racial equality was rejected by the United States.

Today also marks the death, in 1993, of Reuben Snake, a Ho-Chunk tribal leader who was responsible for mobilizing and organizing support for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. He died the year before it was passed in 1994. 

Today is the feast day of Irenaeus, one of the early church fathers and mothers, who died in 202. He was one of the first authorities to describe the four gospels as canonical, and staked out Christian orthodoxy as opposed to gnosticism.

Reflection: 

Buckle up, because I’ve got a lot to share. 

Because of the harms done by the empire-aligned institution of the Church, many people today are looking for ways to vindicate theological perspectives once deemed heretical. Creeds are out of fashion. 

Having been called a “heretic” on more than one occasion, I’m also generally suspicious of the word “heresy.” I recognize a wide buffet of theological beliefs as legitimately Christian. But I am thoroughly Wesleyan in my understanding of “orthodoxy” - I use scripture, tradition, reason, and experience to determine what theological ideas are in line with Jesus’s teaching. 

So this is the place where I think tradition is important. One of the earliest markers of difference between gnosticism and Christianity was the emphasis on publicly-available means of salvation. The “good news” was not a hidden mystery: it was a proclamation. “Go and tell!” Salvation did not depend on secret esoteric knowledge transmitted in mystery cults, but on love that boldly declares itself in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. This love was public and brave enough that it did not go into hiding when threatened with crucifixion and martyrdom. It was not “gnosis,” or knowledge that saves, but God’s grace through faith. “Getting into heaven” does not depend on your IQ or insight. 

So I have an ambivalent relationship with our culture’s fascination with gnosticism. Some people just use the word to mean “forms spirituality that the oppressive church has rejected,” like feminine imagery for God, knowledge that was forced to become secret to survive. But the gnosticism that Irenaeus faced was not liberatory. It considered the material world evil, and the spiritual world good. It considered the god of the Hebrew Bible and the God of the New Testament two distinct beings—an antisemitic trope I still often hear among progressive Christians. Irenaeus rejected these ideas as being antithetical to the witness of Jesus Christ. 

But I also recognize that the paradox of the gospel is that it is hidden in plain sight. There is a difference between knowledge I speak with my mouth and knowledge I feel in my bones. Jesus points out this paradoxical message when he says, “listen if you have ears!” Not everyone who listens will get it. 

John Wesley was similarly pursuing a form of fatih that depends not on secret knowledge or secret societies, but action. Methodism was rooted in a conviction that the Chrisitan life should look different from mere “respectable citizenship in the British empire.” Wesley believed in the radical notion that Christians should give up a love of money and spend their energy, individually and collectively, in sharing good news to the poor. He condemned debtors prisons and social policy that impoverished the poor. 

A Wesley quote that often gets misused is this one: 

Traditionalists often want this quote to be about religious zeal. And it is, in a way, but not in the way they think. This quote is properly understood, I believe, in light of a Wesley sermon called “Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity” in which he asks the question, “Why has Christianity done so little good?” 

His answer? Christians don’t give away enough money. 

It’s not doctrine or zeal that is lacking, says Wesley, but generosity. Methodists are too in love with comfort and with getting rich. Considering that 60% of United Methodists voted for Donald Trump, I believe he is still correct. 

Finally, I want to share a bit about Reuben Snake, who I learned about while attending the Psychedelic Science Conference. In 1990, after the US Supreme Court made thousands of Native Americans into criminals overnight by rejecting religious use of peyote in Employment Division v Smith, right-wing judge Scalia quipped that indigenous people could try to get congress to pass a law permitting peyote use. Reuben Snake took up the challenge and managed to make it happen just four years later. 

The criminalization of peyote was much like the criminalization of the Ghost Dance and other Native American spiritual practices. This led to incarceration and killing, at worst, and at best it forced indigenous people to re-organize their practices to look more like Western religions to gain legitimacy. The politics around protection of peyote is too complex to explore here, but I want to let you know that there are efforts to protect the endangered sacred plant through the Indigenous Medicine Fund. 

Prayer: God, keep us safe from all heresies that cause us to despise your creation and other human beings, especially the heresy of Christian supremacy that causes so many of us to criminalize other religions. Amen.