Belief Matters

And it doesn't happen by osmosis.

Back in March I wrote a piece highlighting the fact that many evangelicals don’t know basic Christian doctrine. What’s more, they don’t know that they don’t know it. That’s a problem.

And now, a story:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away….

Billy Abraham was my evangelism teacher. I was a twenty-something seminary student who thought he knew stuff. (Spoiler alert: I didn’t.) Billy kept using this word—catechesis—that I hadn’t encountered in my upbringing. Sure, I’d gone through confirmation. I’d been a part of the United Methodist Youth Fellowship. I went to Sunday school. None of these, however, was what he was talking about. He meant a focused course on the core teachings of the Christian faith. I sat in his class and thought, “Yeah, we Methodist types probably need that.”

As I got older, taught Sunday school, served on the staff of a church, and began to teach in a seminary, the seriousness of the problem Billy had described became clearer to me. An alarming number of the people I worked with in these settings didn’t know basic Christian doctrine. Some explicitly rejected it. They would say things like, “I believe in the resurrection, just not a bodily resurrection.”

Sure, I remained calm. I would try to explain that a non-bodily resurrection is like a married bachelor or a square circle. The concept doesn’t make any sense. Resurrection involves a body. There are other words for spirits, visions, and illusions. Most of the time these conversations were unproductive. Decades of theological malformation had taken their toll on congregations across America and beyond.

Over the years, Billy became as much of a friend as he was a teacher. I always learned from him, but our relationship changed. At one point I ran into him at a conference and we began to chat. I asked him, “Remember that catechism idea you always talked about? Why don’t we write that?” I didn’t expect him actually to agree to this. He always had several writing projects going at once.

“Okay!” he said. “I think we can do that.”

And that’s how I came to write a book with Billy Abraham.

We mapped out a division of labor and then I went to work meticulously writing my sections. I would call Billy from time to time to see how he was doing on his sections. Each time I called, he hadn’t started yet. I knew the man could write quickly, but I was getting nervous.

The night before the publisher’s deadline I called him. “Hi, Billy! What are you up to?”

“I’m enjoying a nice glass of wine.”

I confess a bit of panic, but I kept my cool. “So, um… the deadline is tomorrow. You remember that, right?”

Shortly thereafter, Billy sat down at his keyboard and the entire manuscript was complete. It was all in his head. He just had to type it out.

We sent it to the publisher, and they came back with the title Key United Methodist Beliefs.

Wait… what???

That’s not the book we wrote, I objected. We wrote a book for the broader Wesleyan movement—yes, United Methodists, but also Free Methodists, AMEs, AMEZs, CMEs, Wesleyans, Nazarenes, and the many other groups that inhabit the Wesleyan ecosystem. It was a description of basic Christian belief from a Wesleyan perspective, not a UMC-specific work.

These days, they said, we have to consider things like search engines and Amazon. Key words are crucial. They insisted that title would help to maximize sales.

I wasn’t convinced. I called Billy and asked him to throw his weight around, but he had already moved on to writing project number four since we finished up the writing of our book. Publishers do this, he said. We’re not going to win this one. Thus we ended up writing a book called Key United Methodist Beliefs. As Mrs. Watson would say, worse things have happened at sea.

That book was published in 2013. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. Some of that water has involved some brutal battles within the UMC and the disaffiliation of no small number of churches. Some churches joined the nascent Global Methodist Church. Some remained independent. Some joined other Wesleyan denominations, such as the Free Methodist Church. I was in the first group. I joined the GMC shortly after it was formed. I feel confident Billy would have done so had he lived to see its formation. He died in 2021—far too young, if you ask me.

Last year I wrote to the publisher of our book and asked if they would restore the rights to Billy’s children and me. After all, it isn’t likely that many UMC congregations will use a book by William J. Abraham and David F. Watson. I am grateful to Abingdon Press for their graciousness in releasing the rights to us. They didn’t have to do that. I want to give credit where it is due.

Having secured the publishing rights, I reached out to my friends at Invite Ministries, and they were interested in re-releasing the book under a different title. On June 2 they will release Key Christian Beliefs. This book fulfills the original intent of our writing: to provide clear, accessible, and orthodox teaching on major Christian beliefs from a Wesleyan perspectives.

Why do we need such a book?

We’d known for a long time that the mainline traditions had not taken orthodox doctrine seriously. The theological liberalism that dominated so many of the mainline institutions had eroded the doctrinal foundations that once connected us to the church across time and the globe. Today we see a similar problem in evangelicalism. As I began this post by reminding us, evangelicals are increasingly heterodox (or heretical, if you prefer) in their beliefs. They don’t know basic Christian teaching, and they don’t know that they don’t know it.

There are several reasons for the erosion of evangelical belief. One is that evangelicals just haven’t taken catechesis seriously enough. We haven’t taught the faith. We’ve relied on preaching as the primary means of teaching our beliefs, but preaching isn’t enough. Its purpose is to proclaim the gospel. Teaching our doctrines is a different matter that requires a different process. This is why catechesis has been a part of Christian practice for so long. Theological liberalism and evangelicalism have, by and large, neglected catechesis, though for different reasons.

I’d also suggest that, in recent years, political affiliation has displaced the faith community as the primary identity marker for many people in the U.S. Even many people who claim Christian identity nevertheless identify more closely with a political party than with the church. Some scholars have defined religion as “ultimate concern.” Too often, our ultimate concern is not Christ and his kingdom, but the kingdoms of this world. It is imperative that American Christians regain a clear sense of their primary identity in Christ. As a Cuban friend of mine likes to say, God has many enemies, but no rivals.

Another reason for the decline in evangelical doctrinal commitment is an underdeveloped sense of Christian tradition. Yes, Scripture is primary. It always comes first. But simply to write off important elements of Christian tradition such as the creeds and liturgies as “traditions of man” is a mistake. At its best, the Christian tradition represents the sanctified reason and imagination of praying saints across time. We aren’t the first people to think deeply about the Christian faith. We have at our disposal a wealth of resources, a deep and wide canonical heritage, means of grace by which we can deepen our relationship with the living God.

This isn’t a book simply for Wesleyans. It’s a book for anyone who wants to learn more about the faith. It is clearly written from the perspective of two Wesleyan Christians, both of whom value their doctrinal lineage. By and large, however, the book simply communicates basic Christian teaching. The Wesleyan tradition, after all, is a subset of the broader orthodox faith of the church. We place particular emphasis on God’s sanctifying power and we don’t believe in individual predestination (that God has ordained salvation or damnation for every person who has ever lived, and we have no agency in this regard), but these distinctives in no way set us apart from the faith once and for all entrusted to the saints.

I’ll always treasure this book because I wrote it with a friend and theological mentor, but my reasons for wanting it republished have nothing to do with sentimentality. I yearn to see Christians across the world take a renewed interest in the teachings of our faith, and for those who don’t know Christ to receive his love and salvation. My prayer has always been that this book will bless many people in the church. I hope it will help them to enter more deeply into the mysteries of our faith, and thereby grow in the knowledge and love of God.

If you happen to pick up a copy, please let me know what you think!