Islamaphobia is real and has expressed itself in recent Christian publications in ways that simply don’t reflect the heart of the gospel. Drawing on the example of Raymond Lull, who lived through the Crusades, Timothy Tennent puts forth a proper Christian response to radical Islam like that of ISIS.
At issue was the question of what made Methodist worship distinctly Methodist. Drawing from Wesley’s example, Summers argued that form and freedom should go hand in hand in Methodist worship. Even today these disagreements over what makes Methodist worship “Methodist” continue. For all the talk over “high” and “low” church; “spirit-led” and “ordered;” or “contemporary” and “traditional”—whatever the current iteration of the debate—we might do well to take a page from Wesley and Summers who both understood that form and freedom are two sides of the same coin for Methodists.
