In this session, the Wesleyan and Methodist Studies unit recognizes that there are more people within the Wesleyan and Methodist traditions outside the historic denominational centers of the United Kingdom and United States. If this is the case, why are our histories, whether denominational or general Church History, are often taught from a Eurocentric or American-centric point of view? The session will explore historical narratives from global communities. It will also examine how decolonized methodologies shape the teaching of church history.
The United Methodist Church (UMC) in the United States has become the minority of membership in the world’s largest Wesleyan denomination. In 2022, Boston University School of Theology (BUSTH) celebrated 23% international students in its incoming class of Masters students, evidence that American Methodist seminaries are now training clergy from around the world and for service in a diversity of cultural context. Yet the curriculum of Methodist Studies coursework has yet to catch up to the realities of this diverse and globalized church. Through historical case studies and experiences with the diverse student body at BUSTH, this paper considers necessary adjustments to decolonize and diversify Methodist Studies (with a focus on History and Doctrine) in the MDiv curriculum, provides a review of exciting new global sources, and names gaps in research still needed to meet the needs of educating clergy in a diverse and globalized Wesleyan/Methodist church.
Amid the Korean War in 1951, Maoist China initiated the Denunciation Movement among the Protestants – a total denunciation of the churches’ past relationships with the Americans and the missionary enterprise. During the Movement, Methodist Bishop Z. T. Kaung accused his fellow bishops and missionaries of being American imperialists and KMT spies. He also accused the Methodist Church as a tool of American imperialist invasion. Many church members, shocked and frustrated, left the church. Methodism in Red China shrunk and was dismantled in 1958.
This paper studies this so-called anti-imperial and decolonizing Movement and its impact on Chinese Methodism. It argues that such a state-led political movement was spiritually destructive even if framed as part of an indigenization effort, including the structural reform of discontinuing all relations with the sending church. The Movement also hindered organic decolonial reflections and reforms as it left no room for fair historical reassessments.
This study suggests us read Wesleyan and Methodist history from indigenous perspectives and use transnational framework to expand the understanding of Wesleyan and Methodist traditions. Wesleyan and Methodist history has long been dominated by histories told from western perspectives focusing on its history in Europe and North America. However, the focus has limited its history to the West or Methodists from the West overlooking the development of Wesleyan and Methodist traditions in the rest of the world through its encounter with people, culture, and ideologies in the global South. Furthermore, the regional focus on the West not only ignored its history in the global South but multifaceted transnational influences shaped through the friendships, exchanges, negotiations, and tensions between Methodists worldwide. In this paper, I ask how reading history from indigenous perspectives and using transnational framework may help us reconceptualize Wesleyan and Methodist history.