As Methodists Unravel, Remember: John Wesley Disregarded His Own Quadrilateral When He Changed His Mind on Slavery
The United Methodist Church is in the drawn-out throes of splitting over whether to retain or reject the global policies against LGBTQ+ people. While UMC traditionalists claim the orthodox high ground in this fight, it’s worth reading John Wesley’s, Thoughts Upon Slavery. Tellingly, the founder of Methodism violates the much vaunted “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” when opposing slavery. The “Quadrilateral” refers to the four-legged stool of Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience — needed to keep us sitting squarely in the camp of knowing-what-God-thinks. As today’s Methodist traditionalists know, Wesley ascribed only a limited role to Experience (for him it referred to the witness of the Spirit in conversion and the forgiveness of sins.)
You need to limit the role of experience to keep things neat and tidy. But here’s the problem: Wesley himself abandoned the Wesleyan Quadrilateral (a term coined by Albert Outler in the 20th Century) when it came to his late-in-life opposition to slavery, unveiled in Thoughts on Slavery.
Thoughts in Service to a Prophetic Screed
As a title, Thoughts Upon Slavery, is a whopper understatement. His treatise amounts to a prophetic screed against…
