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First Wesleyan Conference Well Attended

More than 180 persons attended The Wesleyan Center for 21st Century Studies' conference at Point Loma Nazarene University, January 22-25 1997.

The conference featured Wesleyan scholars engaged in the debate on 'person' in a postmodern era. Dr. Stanley Hauerwas, Professor of Theological Ethics, Duke University, gave the keynote address. His thesis argued that sanctification is about being made part of the body which is called the "church," the continuity of the body of Christ. By being part of this church, we are made different than the world's narrative.  Dr. Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, Professor of Psychology and Philosophy, Eastern College, spoke from her view as a Christian feminist who identified the "challenges of church ministry and gender reconciliation in a postmodern age." Dr. Gene Edward Veith, Professor of Humanities, Concordia University, drew distinctions between modern and postmodern thought by using examples of art and architecture.

 

Conference participants and presenters came from a variety of institutions as such as Drew University, Claremont McKenna School of Theology, Messiah College, Seattle Pacific University.Dr. Ed Crawford represented Northwest Nazarene College, Wesley Center for Applied Theology, and Dr. William Faupel represented the Wesley/Holiness Study Center, Asbury Theological Seminary.

An art exhibit and a concert featuring Dr. Steven Kimbrough, Charles Wesley scholar, added to the interdisciplinary nature of the conference. As one Point Loma student noted, "The conference allowed me to realize that Christianity is in a struggle to find its identity in a world being torn over modern-postmodern ideas. If this question is not debated by the church, the people of God, we will our voice in this generation."

A newsletter, "Along the Road," will elaborate on some ideas that grew from from the intellectual stimulation at the conference as well as announce future Center activities.

John Wright's Conference Summation

Concluding Observations from the Conference

In John Wright's summary given to conference participants, two responses emerged to postmodernity and the person:

1. Apologetic, i.e., postmodernism is embraced in order to heal the person as a universal basis for Christianity and postmodernism checks the excesses of modernity.
2. Thinking within postmodernism, i.e., the person is eclipsed as a means of opening new theological agenda and new insight into pre-modern convictions.

These views of person correlate with two understandings of postmodernism:

1. Postmodernity is a phase within modernism. Modernism is chastened and refined.
2. Postmodernity is a repudiation of modernity even as it works out of a modern environment.

These two views of postmodernism correlate with two different groups:

1. Evangelicals with classic reformed referential/realistic humanism.
2. Particular Wesleyans who articulate catholic Christian convictions.

These outlooks correlate with a respective understanding of God's activity in the world:

1. God is at work ultimately in society at large. God speaks from the center of society to bring Christian vocation to transform culture.
2. God is at work ultimately in the church. God speaks from the margins. The vocation in the church is different from the world to provide the possibility of conversation of the world.

Dr. John Wright is assistant professor of religion and philosophy at Point Loma.