Free Methodism Post #1

“Generosity without orthodoxy is nothing, but orthodoxy without generosity is worse than nothing.” --Hans Frei, as quoted in Brian McLaren’s “A Generous Orthodoxy”

I was raised a Free Methodist. I’m not sure why that’s the right way to start this entry, but it is, so here we are.

Sumus quod sumus. We are what we are. So said Garrison Keillor referring to Lake Wobegonians, and growing up, I found the same to be true of members of my church.

There's a certain charm to people willing to so grossly indulge in the sin of gluttony as demonstrated at every major holiday potluck, yet so intolerant of even a taste of alcohol; so terrified to seem guilty of the sin of adornment that women abstained from wearing jewelry and men from neckties, yet so fiercely competitive at slow pitch, interdenominational softball that they'd argue with a referee to the point of shouting over a called third strike that clearly was high and outside.

This was my childhood.

But I'm jumping a little ahead, I suppose, because you need to know something about Free Methodism, with regard to both the history and the current state of affairs. Many of you reading this will know much of this already, but please indulge me.

The denomination started in 1860 with a man name B.T. Roberts, who'd been 'defrocked' as it was stated in one publication I recently read, by the Methodist Episcopal Church of New York. Trying to figure out exact truth from hearsay is a little complicated, so I'll only say he began Free Methodism as a denomination in part to get back to what he saw as the Wesleyan roots that he perceived the Methodist Church had lost.

Early Free Methodism held strongly to several views, most notably: 1) a support for the abolition of slavery; and 2) a belief that churchgoers shouldn't be required to pay money for church pews. It now seems a little odd to think of a church needing to use these platforms as part of a basis to form an entirely new denomination, but what can you say? This was the nineteenth century...

As a kid of eight or nine, I had grand visions of our Church forefathers, brave, radical men with the Santa Claus beards shown in all the photos of that time period, men willing to swim upstream against a worldly tide of idolatry and deceit that could clearly be seen even today in the likes of Democrats and those who would buy Chrysler products.

So saith my father, and yea, verily I did believeth him.

But this vision blurred as I grew older, finally washed away altogether by the time I was a teenager and old enough to see the truth for what it was. Our local congregation wasn't full of high ideals or brave trailblazers, it was just a lot of male pattern baldness and potbellies and men with too much Brylcreem.

These were good people, though. You had to admire their grim determination and hard work. The year we decided the church building needed renovation and an addition we raised hundreds of thousands of dollars selling bonds, all of which were paid off in just a few short years -- and this from a congregation of just over a hundred people!

This kind of thing amazed me. What they weren't spending on liquor and fancy cars they were more than willing to give to build hospitals in Africa or to send missionaries to New Guinea. Real salt-of-the-Earth stuff.

So now I'm back in another Free Methodist Church some twentyfive years later and I'm wondering, am I doing my kids an injustice by raising them in the same church I grew up in? Perhaps. It's a thing I wrestle with sometimes, I guess, because I’ve come to believe two things: first, that any human organization has its inefficiencies and deficiencies. You can only hope to minimize the bad stuff and maximize the good – and you make your choices based on that; and second, that it’s better to teach your kids how to think and learn rather than to teach them facts – an Education degree gave me that.

I’d rather have them raised in any church that I believe is teaching them truth about God and life and themselves, and I’ll take the shortcomings that come with humanity and a human organization – if it gets them closer to God.

I think it’s what we’re commanded to do.