The session will explore the role of Pneumatology in shaping Wesleyan-Methodist identity. The papers and response explore the role of the Holy Spirit in Wesleyan-Methodist spiritual disciplines, theological development, and revivalism. Attention is also given to the contributions of Pneumatology to the spread of Methodism into different geographical locations, especially in the Global South.
Generally speaking, the pneumatology of John and Charles Wesley can be summarized with words like fullness, assurance, and confidence. In this paper, however, I explore an overlooked and underemphasized dimension of the Wesleyan understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit: spiritual emptiness, or the sense of distance or absence from God. Within the writings of the Wesleys, spiritual emptiness, as a work of the Holy Spirit, can motivate a return to God (prevenient and justifying grace) or facilitate amenability to the divine will (sanctifying grace). Identifying a connection between emptiness and the work of the Holy Spirit provides a more nuanced view of John and Charles Wesley with respect to their pneumatology; their theology of divine grace; and their understanding of Christian maturity, sanctification, and perfection.
This paper investigates the power and place of *witnessing* and *experiencing* Spirit-led worship in a multiracial, international, intersectional atmosphere, namely 1830s and '40s Liberia. By analyzing the journal of white Methodist missionary Walter P. Jayne through the methods of religious history, literary analysis, and a critical intersectional approach, this paper explores the racial, gender, and national boundaries that American Methodism attempted to establish in Liberia. By focusing in on how Jayne understood the Spirit to be working in and through the church, and how the experiences of native Africans like King Tom challenged him, this paper can further see how these boundaries structured and were in turn shaped and contested by the worshipping together of white and black American and African peoples.