Asbury Seminary and the Unmasking of Grievance

As a graduate of Asbury Theological Seminary (1971) and one who served on the United Methodist University Senate for many years (2004-2012) I am all too familiar with the grievance mongering and binary thinking in an article by Dale Coulter in “First Things” journal.

Dale Coulter’s article promises to “unmask” the relationship between Asbury Theological Seminary and the United Methodist Church. Ironically, what remains masked is the much larger story—the shared history, the institutional changes on both sides, and the gradual replacement of missionary imagination with the politics of grievance. The article illustrates what I have come to think of as a binary grievance machine. Every disagreement requires heroes and villains, victims and persecutors, orthodox and apostate. That machine has been in operation for most of my adult life.  The history told becomes selective and all nuance or possibility for cooperation disappears.

There is a sad ignorance in this article as to the history of the relationship between Asbury Seminary and Methodism over the years. My father graduated from ATS in 1944 and was required to do an additional year of study at an “approved school.” In his case it was Louisville Presbyterian. Dad spoke of this additional expectation as an important addition to his pastoral ministry and theology – which remained resolutely Evangelical. Serving on the University Senate, I know the efforts made to welcome a fuller relationship between ATS and the UMC during my years as pastor and seminary president.

This is missing from the so-called “unmasking” article. It was always the expectation that for a seminary to be “on the approved list” it should have UMC faculty, even if adjunct, teach the basic courses for ordination. ATS currently is refusing to do this… and they now want special treatment. Also missing in this flawed “unmasking’ is any admission that ATS has been on its own theological journey in recent decades. It has been transitioning toward a neo-Calvinistic theological stance. In my view, this is as much about the societal culture-wars being fought as it is about either institution’s (ATS or UMC) theology, polity, behavior and consistent practices.

There is no mention here of ATS’s loss of accreditation in the early 1950s for the dismissal of FINE Evangelical scholars like Claude Thompson for social reasons: let’s name one clearly – racism. Doug Fitch, one of the early ATS African American students would share with me the bigotry and abuse he faced at the seminary in those years. Racism and what I would call a cultural imperialism has been all too often a bubbling ugliness just beneath the surface. Look at the makeup of the faculty today – I will say no more. Even with all of this, there was a time when ATS struggled to begin to move in a more inclusive way and I value my experience at the seminary in this regard during those years.

So, it has been more than theology. The UMC is not the only institution going through change of institutional life… or in the case of racial equality on Asbury’s part a reluctance to change. When one compares Asbury with the transitions at another Evangelical school like Fuller Theological Seminary, in terms of seeking to welcome all, Asbury has been left in the dust. Asbury increasingly embraced theological and political commitments that many alumni—including me—believe narrowed rather than broadened its historic evangelical vision. It has opened the door to an easy Christian Nationalism and the use of wedge issues to divide, conquer and reduce the influence of Mainline Christianity in the last twenty years.

There is no mention here of the persistent attacks and push toward schism by always painting ATS as the victim, that have been employed by the Institute for Religion and Democracy or groups like the so-called Good News or Confessing Movements. They provided a perpetual set of dichotomies wherein they were the righteous and the United Methodist Church and/or many of its leaders were the truly unfaithful and intolerant ones.  It was an impressive slight-of-hand that avoided the many irenic approaches for cooperation.

There is more, but let me end with this observation and question. My pride in ATS and Asbury University upon graduation in 1971 was the critical and imaginative role they played in missions around the world and the work with the underprivileged in this country. A high percentage of missionaries up to the 1950s and 1960s, in Methodism and many other denominations, were Asburians. We were told, “if you are called to be a missionary don’t stoop to be a king.” The likes of E. Stanley Jones, J. Waskam Pickett, James Matthews, Kilbournes, Corbitts, Seamands, Moores, Stewarts, Laws, Eddys and dozens more come to mind. I knew many of them and was privileged to work with some.

This “unmasking” article misses the tragic shift away from mission toward an ecology of cultural, commercial and political success sought after today. Where did that missional impetus disappear? Why is this change “masked” by all the talk of being a victim? Finally, let me ask it this way, the dismantling of much of USAID’s work has already been associated by many humanitarian groups with increased hunger, illness, and preventable deaths for millions around the world. Where is the outcry from today’s Asbury community and leadership? I can guarantee that those names mentioned above, along with thousands of Asbury-trained pastors, university professors, bishops, medical doctors, social workers, nurses and persons who believed in,, and supported Asbury over the decades are, and would be, appalled by this SILENCE.

Also missing is a recognition is that at bottom this is not a binary situation at all. I remember the fear I had as an Asburian that I would not be welcome – but along my long life, I found my fears were wrongly placed. It was not the UMC that sought to limit me, but my own failure to be open to the ways God is at work in both worlds – Asbury and the UMC. Asbury grads CAN still serve in the United Methodist Church. Like my father or me, they may need to do more study. Those who are open to a place of hope and the welcome of others will be surprised by the welcome that the UMC has for persons. All are welcome to this wider place of service. Asbury’s cultural captivity, let me call it the Babylonian captivity, is what is truly being masked. What is masked is the reality of God’s open-hearted and open-minded way of preparing Christian leaders today and for the future.

The deepest Wesleyan question has never been, “Who is right?” It has always been, “How is my love of God and neighbor being perfected in love?” That question is larger than Asbury or the United Methodist Church. It calls both to move beyond fear, beyond grievance, and beyond the divisions that impoverish Christian witness.