Talk:Wesleyan Church

Removal of Illinois Wesleyan
Despite the name, Illinois Wesleyan is actually affiliated with the United Methodist Church.--Benfergy 01:14, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

George McGovern?
Wasn't G. McGovern, former Presidential candidate, raised Wesleyan? [Unsigned comment by User:66.72.215.225]

George McGovern was raised Wesleyan Methodist, before the merger of the pilgrim holiness and wesleyan Methodist churches in 1968. PatrickMunsell (talk) 05:22, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

First Denomination to Ordain?
According to this site, The Wesleyan Church was the first to ordain a woman in America- yet I was taught that abolitionist Antoinette Brown was the first woman ordained in America. This is confirmed on Wikipedia also- by roughly a 4 year margin. Anyone know who can claim to be the first to ordain a woman- Congregationalists or Wesleyans? ~JdM [Unsigned comment by User:63.254.139.59]

Fundamentalist, Mainline or Liberal?
Is the Wesleyan Church considered fundamentalist, Mainline or Liberal? How does it compare to other Methodist traditions? As other pages seem to be orginized, it should be under "Beliefs". [Unsigned comment by User:Amyanda2000]


 * None of the above; as the article states, it can be categorized as evangelical and holiness. Pollinator 07:09, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I've added a beliefs section, as it is important to flesh out the beliefs. However, I would categorize the Wesleyans as fundamentalists.  As with other Holiness churches, they believe in the inerrancy of scripture, the reality of the miracles, the virgin birth, Christ's death as atonement for sin, etc.  I'll try to flesh the beliefs section out more in the days to come. Dawynn (talk) 03:14, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Merge Wesleyan Methodists?
Should Wesleyan Methodists be merged with this article? Deco 03:33, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * A redirect should do it. I'll fix that. Pollinator 04:48, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Careful on that. The Wesleyan Methodist Church was a distinct historical denomination, and still exists, although in vastly limited numbers in Great Britain and the USA.  In other countries, like Australia, the Wesleyan Methodist Church is still a strong current denomination. Dawynn (talk) 19:13, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Please do not merge. Many Wesleyan Methodist churches did not go with the merger, and are still knowm as Wesleyan Methodist. There are already references in that article รัก-ไทย 13:22, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Position
It is unclear in the article if the position of the church in the splitting is pro-slavery or against it. Could someone make it more clear? WikiprojectOWU 06:52, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Anti-slavery. February 1, 1843, a convention was held which led to the creation of the Wesleyan-Methodist Connection; its Discipline was modified from the Methodist Episcopal Church to reflect, among other things, that owning of slaves was prohibited by its members and that the new church rejected any claim that it was ever right to own slaves. (An Outline History of The Wesleyan Church, 5th Edition, Lee Haines & Paul Thomas, (c)2000, Wesleyan Publishing House, pg 71-72) Rwsutler 02:21, 3 June 2007 (UTC)rwsutler

Most notable on position of the wesleyan church is the anti gay political activist, rev. Jim garlow, pastor of megachurch, skyline wesleyan. Jim garlow was a prominent leader of the prop 8 bill in california to ban same sex marriage by state reforendem. He famously stated through his broadcast on 800+ radio stations that "America is now dead." PatrickMunsell (talk) 05:29, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Globalization: Wesleyan Church, Wesleyan Methodists, Wesleyan Methodist Church etc.
I'm removing the globalization tag. The article topic is a U.S. and Canadian denomination, that article is therefore going to be North America-centric. The problem, I think is with the redirects, specifically Wesleyan Methodist Church, which was the name of the primary strain of British Methodism that eventually became the Methodist Church of Great Britain. I'm going to repoint WMC to MCGB, but leave Wesleyan Methodists pointed here, as it could refer to either, and leave the disambig text at the top intact.  VT hawkeye talk to me 02:09, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Where should the disambig point?
I am reverting the change of the redirect of Wesleyan Church to this page; I'm afraid that just looks like Americocentrism from outside North America. seglea (talk) 19:59, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Can someone confirm or deny whether this is the only real Wesleyan Church? Indications on Wikipedia are that the Wesleyan Methodist Church as it existed in Britain is now a part of the Methodist Church of Great Britain.  In Australia, its still the Wesleyan Methodist Church of Australia.  Although the Wesleyan Church is currently governed from the United States, Wikipedia indicates it is an international organization.  I'm having trouble tracking down what other foreign denominations exist that are truly called The Wesleyan Church (as opposed to Free Wesleyan Church or Wesleyan Methodist Church). Not to propose Americocentrism, but if Wikipedia is any indication, then perhaps Wesleyan Church (United States) is misnamed -- and it should possibly be renamed back to just Wesleyan Church. Dawynn (talk) 18:37, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * This is tricky, because (so far as I know) the US-based (but international) Wesleyan Church is the only denomination that uses exactly that title, but historically many denominations with very slightly different titles have been referred to in everyday speech "The Wesleyan Church"; so, for example, to me as a British Methodist "Wesleyan Church" automatically means the pre-1933 Wesleyan Methodist Church, whereas to an American I suspect it automatically means the current denomination of that name. Under these conditions my view is that the best thing is to have Wesleyan Church point to a disambig page.  But I entirely agree that Wesleyan Church (United States) isn't a terribly satisfactory title for the article about a denomination that, though US in origin, is now well established in some other countries.  To make matters worse, we have two different conventions running in Wikipedia for cases where several different topics have the same name: in some cases the simple name points to the most significant entity of that name (e.g. London), in others it points to a disambiguation page (e.g. Colin Morris).  The latter solution is preferred (I don't know if there's a policy on this, but this is what seems to happen) when different substantial constituencies could not be expected to agree on which is the most significant entity.  I'd like to suggest that the two or three of us interested in this case have an amicable discussion about which kind of case we have here, and then go with the majority opinion - I am certainly willing to do that.  I think it's the second case, but I am open to persuasion seglea (talk) 20:16, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * As an attempt at a starting point in discussion, I see pages for Grace Tsutada, David Tsugio Tsutada, and Immanuel General Mission that indicate that Immanuel General Mission works with the branch of the Wesleyan Church in Japan. Is this the Wesleyan Church (United States) or some other denomination?  I see references on Christoph Gottlob Müller's page, indicating that he started the Wesleyan Church in Germany.  What denomination is that?
 * In researching this subject, I've also started to find indications that the Wesleyan Methodist Church was not one denomination, but two. I will try to find proper resources, but the denomination in the USA intentionally called itself the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion (sic) in order to distinguish itself from the church founded in Great Britain.
 * There's indications that, here and there, congregations that call themselves Wesleyan, may actually have been Wesleyan Methodist, in some form or another. And now that the US and Great Britain Wesleyan Methodist denominations have mostly merged with other churches, some of these congregations still associate with the much depleted Wesleyan Methodist church, in one form or another, creating more confusion.
 * I guess I would argue, if the Wesleyan Church, based in Indiana, is the only denomination that truly calls itself The Wesleyan Church (with no other adjectives), then references to "Wesleyan Church", and "Wesleyan church" should point to that page, with a disambiguation indicating that other historical and current denominations also contain the word Wesleyan in their title.
 * Further, the Wesleyan Church (United States) is the denomination that started as the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion (later corrected to Connection), so references to that denomination should point to the Wesleyan Church (United States) page. References to other Wesleyan Methodist churches (like those from Great Britain, or Australia) should point to those respective denominations.  There should be some indication (either directly or to an additional page) of churches formed by detractors from the various mergers that eventually formed the current Wesleyan Church (United States).  That all being said, the Wesleyan Methodist Church page should no longer be a primary reference for anything related to the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion / Connection.
 * In this context, I'm having trouble justifying both a Wesleyan Church disambiguation page, and Wesleyan (adjective) disambig page. I would think that the Wesleyan page could better cover all bases.
 * At least that's my opinion. Dawynn (talk) 18:55, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I am coming round to agreeing with your view - partly driven by what we have done about United Methodist Church, which is both a current US-based (but international) denomination and a former denomination in the UK (and quite possible elsewhere). For that we have the simple name pointing to the current denomination and then a link to a disambiguator.  After the reflection above (and some more research on my own behalf motivated by your very useful additions) I think the situation with Wesleyan Church is parallel and should go the same way.  Sorry for having messed it about.  I'd change it back now but I have to go home for dinner in a moment.
 * With regard to other comments above:

seglea (talk) 20:13, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I wasn't sure what you meant by the Wesleyan Methodist Church not being one denomination, but two, but then I discovered that we have a page with that title which points to a historic forerunner of the current US-based Wesleyan Church. But probably the much larger body was the British Wesleyan Methodist Church - though I am not even sure when that took that name.  I believe the original Methodist organization, set up in the UK by John Wesley, was originally called the Methodist Connexion (Wesley of course wanted it to remain within the Church of England).  When it formally split from the CofE (as a result of Wesley taking upon himself the right to ordain people to serve the Methodists in newly independent America), I think that it took the name "Methodist Church", but soon afterwards other groups calling themselves Methodist split off (the first were the Primitive Methodists), and the original group took the name "Wesleyan Methodist Church" to establish itself as the authentic successors of Wesley (which indeed they were in a legal sense, and in the sense of wanting to stay close to the CofE).  I am having trouble establishing what its formal names were in the early days, though, so this may not be quite right.
 * "Connexion" is not wrong, it is simply an authentic 18th Century spelling that was widely used in early Methodism and has been preserved to this day in the UK. Indeed we frequently have to correct "Connection" to "Connexion" in articles on early or UK Methodism.
 * I am beginning to think that we need a short article to deal with the historic British Wesleyan Methodist Church - the redirect to Methodist Church of Great Britain is not very helpful if you don't already know the history. This will mean yet another dismabig issue.  I suggest that we do make the head page of this the disambiguator, since we are dealing with at least two and possibly more denominations that have since disappeared as independent entities.
 * I absolutely agree that the situation is confused and confusing! And I suspect that it will get worse as we probe the history and the international scene further.

Ongoing construction
I found a couple denomination templates in Wikipedia. So, I reformatted the page a bit to conform to these templates. This leaves a few gaps that need to be fleshed out. I also see that what *was* already in place of this page is poorly cited. I've started expanding the page, but your participation in this process is desired! I was raised in a Wesleyan church, and currently attend a Free Methodist church, so I am deeply rooted in Arminian / Wesleyan / Holiness denominations, and very well may not be able to see my own biases. I hope to raise the quality of this page, and welcome your feedback along the journey. Dawynn (talk) 03:22, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Notable People
I've been bulking the "Notable People" section. Basically, following the "What Links Here" connections to Wesleyan Church, Wesleyan Methodist Church, and the various colleges. I'd be happy to hear input on this area. A) What counts as notable, and B) who should be listed here? My guess is that there are a number of people that may have attended one or another university, but may not ever consider themselves to be or have been Wesleyan in any way shape or form. Determining those that would truly consider themselves "Wesleyan" (or "Wesleyan Methodist", if they lived in previous centuries) is difficult at best. So, the list I'm building is probably over large. Dawynn (talk) 17:25, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Basically, if being connected to the church is specifically relevant to the lives of the individuals, then they should be included. Otherwise, in general, only individuals who have their own separate articles are included in such lists. John Carter (talk) 19:16, 15 July 2012 (UTC)


 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: earlier move reverted JHunterJ (talk) 12:34, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Requested move
Wesleyan Church (United States) → Wesleyan Church — There have been several denominations with Wesleyan as part of their title, but only one Wesleyan Church. See the "Where should the disambig point?" discussion above.—Dawynn (talk) 18:54, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Support It certainly appears to be primary topic. The viewed stats certainly appear to show that.--Labattblueboy (talk) 21:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Support I was the one who originally moved it to its present location, but in the light of the discussion above (and data that have been added to this and related pages) I support moving it back - sorry for having caused the shuffling around. seglea (talk) 20:24, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Notable Wesleyan leaders
The most notable Wesleyan is currently Jim Garlow, pastor of megachurch, skyline Wesleyan Church in California. A national anti-gay leader, he was a prominent leader of the I'll fated prop 8 initiative in california, which defined marriage as between only one man and one woman. While prop 8 passed by a slim margin, it eventually became the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized same sex marriage in all 50 states. The Supreme Court declared prop 8 to be unconstitutional, denying equal protection to all citizens. Upon the Supreme Court decision, Rev. Garlow famously predicted on his radio show aired on 800+ stations that "America is now dead." Further documentation of dates and other notable quotes to come. Mr. Garlow should be included on this page because 1. He pastors what is largely considered the flagship Wesleyan Church in America and has national notoriety for spearheading "Pulpit Freedom Sunday" which encourages pastors to instruct their congregations on how to vote, specifically during presidential election cycles. It is intended and stated to be in defiance of IRS rules which would take tax free status from churches who are found to cross the line between separation of church and state. PatrickMunsell (talk) 06:01, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Correction. The Supreme Court case specifically came from plaintiffs from the state of Ohio. The Supreme Court decision, however did declare same sex marriage legal and stated that same sex marriages must be recognized in all 50 states. This overruled the prop 8 constitutional amendment vote in California of which Rev. Garlow was arguably the most prominent leader. PatrickMunsell (talk) 06:25, 28 June 2016 (UTC)