In the Wesleyan traditions, social religion is more interesting and more

challenging. Social religion is a matter of being in relationship with God and

with others, and it is a public matter, as religion, in John Wesley's words,

“cannot subsist at all without society, without living and conversing” with

other people.3

These others—and this is crucial—include not only other

Christians but also those whom most Christians would rather avoid, like

people who, according to Wesley, «do not obey, perhaps do not believe,

the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ» and others who are hungry and naked.4

This insight is a major contribution of Wesleyan theology picked up by liberation

theologies (many of them Wesleyan, as we shall see), and it turns

many dominant understandings of the church upside down.5

Without such

relationships there would be no real religion, and the gospel would make

no difference.

Pulling all stops, Wesley concludes that those who do not care about

others “shall go away into everlasting fire.”

Helmut Renders

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