The Methodist Backbone Is Breaking

The United Methodist Church was engineered to hold disparate streams of the broad Christian tradition together. Born amidst the fervor of the modern ecumenical movement, it joined liberals, evangelicals, and pietists under one denominational roof. This commitment to theological diversity was the very reason for the first instantiation (problematic as it was) of the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” in 1972. The revision of the Quadrilateral in 1988 provided more specific guidelines for structuring our theological conversations. It stipulated particular functions for Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, and specified the primacy of Scripture. It remained, however, a theological statement meant to accommodate a considerable level of diversity within this “big tent,” as our denomination has often been called. There are other ways in which we could have framed a theological statement that would allow for doctrinal diversity, but we chose the Quadrilateral.