The New Holy Clubs: Testing Church-to-Sect Propositions

Sociology of Religion, Summer, 2001 by Roger Finke, Rodney Stark

Throughout most of the twentieth century, the Methodist clergy have pressed for increasing liberalism (Peters 1985; Finke and Stark 1992). Their success in doing so has been mirrored by a corresponding decline in membership -- what once was by far the largest Protestant body in the nation has experienced a century of decline. In 1890, 84 of every 1,000 Americans were Methodists. In 1990 there were only 36. This was not due to the growth of Catholics or to any general decline in church membership. As the Methodists slumped, the Southern Baptists increased their "market share" from 33 per 1,000 in 1890 to 61 in 1990, while the Assemblies of God and the Church of God in Christ went from 0 to 9 and 22 per 1,000 respectively. Meanwhile, the church membership rate increased from 45 percent of the total population in 1890 to about 65 percent in 1990.

As the century passed and the bad news continued for the Methodists, there has been growing discontent among the rank-and-file who have remained within the church and repeated efforts have been made to return to the higher tension stance on which the church's original success was based.

CLERGY AND THE NEW HOLY CLUBS

The origins of Methodism can be traced to the Holy Club at Oxford, an outside the church organization, led by the Wesley brothers for young men determined to revive the spirituality of the Church of England. Today, somewhat similar "Holy Clubs" are attempting to revive the United Methodist Church.

One of the first new "Holy Clubs" was the Good News movement founded by Charles W. Keysor. In 1965 Keysor was asked to write an article for the Methodist minister's journal, New Christian Advocate, outlining the central tenants of evangelical Methodists. After Keysor's essay "Methodism's Silent Minority" appeared, he received over 200 letters and phones calls from other Methodists, mostly pastors, lamenting their lack of contact with other evangelical Methodists and their feelings of being "cut off from the leadership of [their] church" (Circuit Rider 1989:6). So, less than a year later, Keysor launched Good News magazine. Incorporated as "A Forum for Scriptural Christianity" and seeking the revival of the United Methodist Church, Good News quickly became more than a magazine. By 1970 the Good News board sponsored their first national gathering, attracting 1,600 Methodists; and by 1976 they sponsored a newsletter for seminarians (Catalyst), published their own church school literature, launched efforts to pr omote evangelical delegates and statements at the General Conferences, established the Evangelical Missions Council, and promoted the founding of renewal groups at local conferences (Heidinger 1992:1419). As the circulation of the Good News magazine swelled to 20,000 and the growing list of services increased, many expected the young movement to split from the church like the holiness groups of the past. But the leaders of the movement have consistently denied any desire to split from the denomination, insisting that they are "dedicated to the spiritual renewal and theological reform of our United Methodist Church" (Circuit Rider 1989). In this they resemble earlier reformers such as Benjamin Titus Roberts (who founded the Free Methodists in 1860 after being expelled by the Methodist Episcopal Church for protesting the move to lower tension) and the many leaders of the Holiness Movement. The ability of contemporary conservatives to avoid expulsion seems due to the unwillingness of the Methodist bishops to imp ose any corresponding punishment on the constant challenges to their authority from the lower tension direction.