Deconstructing Methodist Mythology: The Search for a Usable Postcolonial Ethic

Abstract

This article offers a postcolonial and liberationist hermeneutic for reinterpreting and reassessing Wesleyan and Methodist history. It argues that much of Methodist and Wesleyan history has been shrouded in ‘Whiteness’; this term is concerned less with the epidermis of those racialized as ‘White’, and is more focused on systems, structures, policies, and procedures, all of which incorporate the totality of this phenomenon. As a cradle Methodist and a local preacher, I argue that for contemporary British Methodism to be a truly more radical, inclusive, and diverse ecclesial body, it will need to decolonize its history, rethinking how we see traditional, visible figures and consider the lack of agency of those condemned to the shadows. This work is not a revisionist ‘take down’ of John Wesley; rather, it is a postcolonial-inspired, Black theology hermeneutical reappraisal of our common history, seeking to give agency to often invisible Black voices.