The United Methodist Church, being formed in 1968 by a merger between the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church (i.e., the German speaking Methodist church), is finally at an end. Torn apart on the issue of same-sex marriage (a debate Methodists have been fighting over since 1972!) several thousand congregations have left to form a new Methodist denomination, the Global Methodist Church.
But the issue is much deeper than the issue of homosexuality. At the root of our differences is a difference in our understanding of Biblical Authority. Having abandoned the authority of God’s Word roughly half a century before the formation of the United Methodist Church, we in the Methodist tradition likewise lost our Evangelical Arminianism that we once championed. Again, did we United Methodists abandon our Wesleyan-Arminian theology? No, for we never adhered to it, nor did we ever understand it! We lost our way over half a century earlier, around the beginning of the 20th century.
But with the formation of a new Evangelical Methodist denomination comes the potential of restoring our Evangelical Arminian theology.
It has been proposed that the formation of a new Methodist denomination should bring with it a new confession of faith that once and for all defines the Methodist faith -something we Methodists have lacked for our entire existence. Upon learning this, I set out on a quest to see if we Arminians already had any confessions of faith that could be resuscitated. I believe we do have one: the Arminian Confession of 1621.
While a Th.M. student in Church History at Regent University, I wrote out my post-graduate thesis paper to see if the Arminian Confession of 1621 was compatible with our Methodist doctrinal standards. The answer is yes, with some modifications and improvements, the Global Methodist Church can (and should) adopt a modified and improved form of the Arminian Confession of 1621 and by doing so create the first ever Wesleyan-Arminian confession of faith that can rival the Calvinistic Westminster Confession and the Lutheran Augsburg Confession.
The attachment contains the first of seven chapters from my thesis paper from Regent University in which I go into further detail concerning issues in the doctrinal standards of Methodism. Please click on the link to view Andrew Sullivan, “Harmony of the Arminian Faith: A Proposal to the Global Methodist Church.” Andrew Sullivan, “Harmony of the Arminian Faith: A Proposal to the Global Methodist Church.”
