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Methodism 101: Theology Through Charles Wesley's Hymns
No full textProject under the direction of Professor Joe Burnett
Why should United Methodist members care about their Christian foundational beliefs? United Methodist members know less and less about the theology of the church. Charles Wesley’s hymns, specifically those in The United Methodist Hymnal, grounded in Methodist theology. This study utilized Wesley’s hymns, found in The United Methodist Hymnal to instruct the learner about foundational United Methodist beliefs. The aim of the study was to use the hymns to increase knowledge in a believer’s faith, which leads to a deeper relationship with God. This, in turn, motivates the believer to witness and use their gifts to serve others within the church and their communities.
A program model of a church group study was used to encourage the education in the United Methodist doctrine. The studies were held on Wednesday evenings at a rural Appalachian church, Central United Methodist, in Bean Station, Tennessee. Central United Methodist Church averages sixty-four attendees per Sunday morning service. This program was ten sessions in length, lasting 1-1.5 hours each. The study was a lecture-style approach with Power Point visuals, along with audio and video of Charles Wesley’s hymns from The United Methodist Hymnal. Furthermore, a written pre-test was administered prior to the study starting time and then a written post-test was administered at the end of the lecture to assess if learning had increased. Average attendance was twenty-two individuals. The average pre-test grade was 40.9%, and the average post-test grade was 88.7%. The ten session titles, along with their respective hymns from The United Methodist Hymnal, are as follows: Introduction to Charles Wesley/Trinity/God the Father (Maker), (“Maker in Whom We Live”); Jesus Christ, (“Hark the Herald Angels Sing”); Holy Spirit, (“Spirit of Faith, Come Down”); Prevenient Grace, (“Come, Sinners, to the Gospel Feast”); Justifying Grace, (“And Can It Be that I Should Gain”); Sanctifying Grace and Perfection, (“Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”); The Means of Grace, (several hymns, see session 7); The Sacraments, (communion –“O the Depth of Love Divine,” baptism – “Come, Let Us Use the Grace Divine”); The Church, (“Christ, from Whom All Blessings Flow”); Resurrection of Saints/Concluding Statements on Charles Wesley’s Life, (“Come, Let Us Join Our Friends Above”).
Developing a deeper knowledge of the key concepts of United Methodist doctrine is vital for a Christian’s foundational understanding of their faith. Targeting individual concepts in the Christian faith through dissecting Charles Wesley’s hymns gives the learner insight to why they believe what they believe. Increasing their knowledge could have a profound impact on their faith development.
The Trinity/God the Father (Maker) teaches about who the Trinity is: God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and the Maker, meaning God is the creator of humanity. Next, the learner understands that Jesus is the reconciler between humanity and God, as well as our redeemer through his crucifixion and resurrection. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit makes God known to the unbeliever and inspires the Christian’s faith. Through prevenient grace, the learner can understand that God loved all humanity before humanity understood they needed it, God welcomes all into a relationship through salvation. Justifying grace shows the learner that by accepting God’s love through faith in Jesus Christ, one is saved from sin. Sanctifying grace and perfection is striving to live out the love of God in one’s life. The learner is taught the means of grace are channels to experience God’s grace through prayer, worship, fasting and scripture. Through the sacraments of communion and baptism, the learner understands the importance of remembering Christ’s crucifixion and their own commitment to God and the church. Session nine on the nature of the church instructs learners in the significance of keeping Jesus Christ the head of the church, and the importance of unity among the church members. In the resurrection of the saints session, the learner understands more about eternal life and Christ’s second coming.
In conclusion, Methodism 101: Theology through Charles Wesley’s Hymns was a study to promote increased learning about the United Methodist doctrine utilizing Charles Wesley’s hymns in The United Methodist Hymnal.Dr. Joe Burnet
Hope in the Physicality of a Fallen World: New Environmentalism and the Reconstruction of Human Identity
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Transforming Communities: The formation of monastic communities in the 19th Century And the formation and impact of Episcopal Service Corps houses in the 21st Century
No full textOne of the persistent patterns in Church History has been the emergence, development, and, usually, the decline of intentional communities of a monastic nature. In the 19th century Episcopal Church, against a good deal of suspicion and despite some direct opposition, several orders for men and women, came into being. Some lasted just for a time and others continue to the present. In the late 20th century and as the 21st century began, another pattern of intentional communities emerged in the Episcopal Church as the Episcopal Service Corps began as isolated programs and then grew in numbers. These two institutions work from different lengths of commitment, monastic houses assume a life-time commitment and the Service Corps is for a year or so. Still there are similar themes as both attempt to provide a community that is focused, in different measure, on prayer and service. Both, with different approaches, involve some experience of simplicity of life if not a commitment to poverty. There are in a few places direct connections between the religious orders and the work of deaconesses with the Episcopal Service Corps, and in a few instances, Interns have gone on to explore a vocation to monastic life.
This study will examine the story of four communities that arose during the 19th century. Two of them begin as efforts to provide local formation for clergy and a base from which missioners could go out to serve isolated and unchurched areas. One fails, largely because of opposition and suspicion of Romanizing tendency in its founder which was either confirmed or caused his move to the Roman Church; one goes on to become an seminary continuing to serve the Church. The Order of the Holy Cross never focused on offering formation for priests, but began with a mission in New York’s tenements; its first instigator wrote of the likelihood that failures would precede an enduring foundation. The story of Holy Cross is one of transformation, but his comment is borne out in the history of other orders. The Sisterhood of St Mary’s grows out of an attempt to form a community based solely on mutual love and compelling mission; the lack of structure for development and change led to a new beginning which gave rise to St Mary’s. They continue and now offer a connection between their own life under vows and internship program that shares their life.
In the 20th and continuing in the 21st Century, the Episcopal Service Corps arose as one of many programs offering young adults a year or more of intentional community and service. It shared with the earlier monastic revival a desire to be engaged in work that responded to human need and to provide time and structure for spiritual formation. In addition, it drew from the monastic tradition a pattern of shared resources and, for at least a time, an experience of limited consumption. The study will present an account of several programs, their development and particular mission; it concludes with reflections from a number of current and former participants in the Episcopal Service Corps.
The Christian life has always carried the memory of a deeply communal experience as the Acts of the Apostles’ reminds us in the days after Pentecost when as they “continued in the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread and in the prayers”, they also had all things in common. There is a challenge to following Christ that is never quite edited out of the Gospel even in the most prosperous of congregations, “sell all that you have, and come, follow me”. If monastic communities have provided the larger Church with an image of a few who take up that memory and bring it to fruition across a lifetime and in an on-going community, the intentional communities that are formed around the model of Episcopal Service Corps makes it real in a number of people's lives for a period of time. That time might be shorter or longer for the individual or for the hosting community as programs emerge, flourish, and then come to an end. What continues is the impact the experience has on those who participate and on the larger Church that can be inspired to ask something more of itself. For those who take it up for a lifetime, or at a particular juncture in their life, there is grace to be found and that race will, necessarily reach beyond themselves.
Rowan Williams, in a lecture reflecting on his perspective of the impact Augustine’s monastic community had during his 6th century mission to Britain, Williams wrote that the “converting power of poverty and vulnerability, of silence and praise, of labour and fidelity.. .” shines in the lives of those who give themselves- and together give to the world a sign of God’s presence and gives to the Church both challenge and encouragement. In every age and in whatever state the Church finds itself, there is the constant need for Christians to learn to live together, to learn to live in generosity, and to pray deeply and honestly. The monastics teach it their way, those who engage newly formed intentional communities will as well. Both in their challenge to a faith that is easily incorporated into ordinary patterns of consumption and competition. Williams goes on to say: “ Monasticism is in this regard a significant defense against the absorption of the newness of the Gospel into the familiarity of this or that cultural environment; and in this way, monasticism is a necessary part of any truly theological strategy of mission” An intern answered the question, “What do you think the impact of the Episcopal Service Corps” is on the Episcopal Church with an emphatic, “it is the lifeblood”. For a time during a Service Corps Year, or for a life time under vows, life in community, offered in service and carried out in intentional simplicity of life expresses the challenge and the invitation that the Gospel poses. The Church’s lifeblood is the converted life shaped in community. When people are drawn into the “the Apostles’ Teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread and the prayers”, there is an impact within and beyond the Church. For the present moment, one of the most obvious places where that impact is found is the intentional communities of the Episcopal Service Corps, and the impact will shape the Episcopal Church for decades.Rev. Dr. Benjamin King and Dr. Courtney Cowar
SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM: HOW THE BIBLICAL BOOK OF JOB ILLUMINATES THE WORK OF FLANNERY O’CONNOR
Get PDFAmerican author Flannery O’Connor, a devout Roman Catholic, made no attempt to disguise the theological nature of her work. Her short stories and novels contained numerous lessons about faith, God, and human failing. Yet O’Connor’s theological message was often overshadowed by her use of the “grotesque,” as well as absurd coincidences, dramatic action, and frequent reversals of fortune.
To what end did O’Connor employ these things? Did she do so simply in service to the narrative, or was there, perhaps, a greater agenda at work? This paper will argue that O’Connor used coincidence, violence, dramatic action, and reversals of fortune to parallel the biblical text of the Book of Job, in order to convey a specific lesson about the nature of grace. The first task of the paper is to delineate the various ways the Job text
has been understood (as well as misunderstood) in the centuries since its initial circulation, and to show how the Job text subverts the Deuteronomic understanding of faith that was prevalent during the redaction of large portions of the Old Testament. Then, by examining five of O’Connor’s short stories (“A Good Man is Hard to Find,” “The Artificial Nigger,” “The Enduring Chill,” “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” and “Revelation”), this paper will identify three distinct elements shared by the Job text and the O’Connor stories: first, that the characters in both the Job text and the O’Connor stories exist within cultures that operate on the honor/shame model, the basics of which will be explained; second, that O’Connor’s use of hyperbolic situations of duress mimic the legendary suffering of the biblical Job; and third, that the grace of God becomes active, and apparent, as a direct result of the duress suffered by O’Connor’s protagonists, much as it does in the story of the biblical Job. Following the examination of the Job text and the O’Connor short stories, this paper will conclude that understanding the biblical book of Job in its original context illuminates the work of Flannery O’Connor, allowing the author’s message about grace to be more readily understood by readers.Dr. John Grammer; Dr. Rebecca Wrigh
Dorothy's Daughter
Get PDFTo see the full text of this thesis, please contact the author. This submission contains only the abstract.I was home alone on the evening of September 14, 2015. Clay, my husband, was out of town on business, and our youngest daughter, Rebecca, had gone out for dinner with friends. To pass the time, I was watching TV and snuggling on the couch with our little Chihuahua. I had just finished grading a batch of essays and wanted to relax a bit before bedtime.
The house phone rang, which surprised me, because it was nearly 8 p.m. The only calls we ever receive on that line are sales calls, usually from someone trying to talk me into buying a timeshare or a vacation package. If it hadn’t been so late, I probably would have ignored the call altogether. Instead, I hit the mute button for the TV, made my way to the kitchen, and reluctantly reached for the phone, changing the course of my life once again.
It was my brother on the line, my birth father’s oldest son. Family. But why was he calling me now, after nearly 15 years of silence? Calls late at night usually follow some kind of tragedy. Right?
We spent the next few minutes catching up. But the main reason he called was to tell me that our father, whom I had not seen in more than 25 years, had read an article about me in his local newspaper, and this had apparently sparked his curiosity anew. He had asked my brother to find out if there was any chance he and I could get reacquainted.
I listened respectfully to everything he had to say about our father, but I didn’t know if I wanted to give him a second chance, or another opportunity to make me feel bad about myself. His absence had left a gaping hole, which I had tried, unsuccessfully, to fill with various substitutes over time. Over the next couple of weeks, however, my brother continued to call. And each time, he insisted that our father was full of regrets regarding our past and that allowing him back into my life now could bring a sense of healing to all of us. That was something I had wanted for a long time, too, if I was honest with myself, so I finally gave him permission to give him my number. I hoped I wasn’t making a mistake by reopening those doors.
Several months later, I went on a journey to re-establish contact with my birth father, and to legally claim my identity. As I passed through Blountstown, Florida, the place of my birth, I thought of my mother, and all the suffering she had gone through because she had chosen to keep me, to raise me herself, without any help from my father or his people. And I realized that I wasn’t going through all this trouble just for me; I was doing it for Mama too. I was claiming her truth, as well as my own. I was on a mission to secure the rightful ending to my story, so there would be some record of my mother’s sacrifices, even if it meant stirring up old memories. As the one traffic light in town turned green, I stepped down on the gas, moving forward. I studied the asphalt stretched out in front of me, the solid centerline looking like a yellow brick road to follow home
Role Play and Other Stories
Get PDFRole Play and Other Stories navigates the displacement and bi-cultural identity of an Albanian immigrant family. Moments of surprising strength, defiance, and compassion redefine a history marked by despair, misunderstandings, and secrets. The characters in these seven linked, fictional stories live on the periphery of American society and strive to reinvent themselves against a backdrop of old world rituals, superficial comforts and new world challenges
The Episcopal Church and the Hope of Communion
No full textThis thesis suggests that, by virtue of its history and polity, The Episcopal Church in the United States of America (TEC) is uniquely positioned to advance the role and reach of the worldwide Anglican Communion. While the Episcopal Church began its life as a seventeenth century colonial outpost of the Church of England, over time, out of necessity, it began to organize and govern itself quite differently from the "mother church." Yet, in spite of the unique polity it developed, TEC remained loyal to Anglicanism in the seventeenth century; it vigorously pursued new ways to strengthen its relationship with the Church of England in the nineteenth century; and it was instrumental in making the Anglican Communion a global church in the twentieth century. Therefore this thesis will argue that because The Episcopal Church has been a prominent leader in the Communion and a catalyst for its expansion, this role need not be relinquished. Instead, The Episcopal Church might well be indispensable to the Communion's future.Prof. Robert MacSwain and Prof. James Turrel