Word: methodistic
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...Methodist seminaries-notably Drew in New Jersey, Southern Methodist's Perkins, and Claremont in California -are almost interdenominational in faculty and student membership, and are wide open to the study of fresh currents in modern theology. Last month, for example, Drew imported a number of ranking European thinkers for a seminar on hermeneutics-the science of reinterpreting the Bible's message for contemporary man. Out of this environment is emerging a new generation of preachers who sometimes annoy their elders by their contempt for church routine, but please them by their sense of commitment. "If they stay...
...19th century," says Lutheran Theologian Martin Marty of Chicago. "If it is true to its own genius, it should be a religion that 'heats up' again easier than some others." Some of the heat can be felt now in the Inner City slums, where young Methodist ministers are beginning to rehabilitate all-but-abandoned churches. It can even be felt in the suburbs, where thousands of Methodist laymen have formed Christian "cells" for Biblical and theological study...
...there is plenty of vitality in the Methodist debates on the moral issue of race and the relevance of the church. Obviously, it is relevant, and fully entitled to the optimism summed up by Gerald Kennedy in the episcopal address to the conference: "We do not share the current pessimism which speaks of a 'post-Protestant era.' We believe that the signs of the times proclaim that ours is still the relevant Word. Let the Methodist Church proclaim that so far as it is concerned, the best...
...bishop is also a stylish and fluent writer whose lectures and 23 books (his latest: For Preachers & Other Sinners) sometimes express complex theological issues as gracefully and clearly as did the works of Anglicanism's late C. S. Lewis. As writer, preacher and bishop, Kennedy is the contemporary Methodist who best seems to express the peculiar quality of his church's active, outgoing faith: pragmatic but perfection-aimed, equally concerned with personal morality and social order, loving discipline yet cherishing freedom. Kennedy calls it "sanctified common sense...
...Bishop Kennedy, the genius of Methodism is uniquely displayed at a General Conference, which he describes as "democracy at its best and worst-the process of a large church trying to find its way." This year's conference, suggests Methodist Layman Charles Parlin, a Manhattan lawyer and a co-president of the World Council of Churches, "might be historic." In twelve brisk days of debate-interspersed with sessions of prayer, preaching and hymn singing-the Methodist legislators are considering petitions and commission reports that could, if accepted, help rekindle much of the church's old zeal. Among...