As an African American who was a senior pastor in both white and black churches between 1966 and 1974, Edward Wimberly encountered shame as the feeling of being unloved and being unlovable primarily when his parishioners and counselees experienced a loss of a loved one. Grief was the dominant psychological category for talking about loss in those days, and the feeling of shame of being abandoned and resulting in feelings of being unloved were described as temporary. However, in the middle 1980s pastoral theologians began to recognize shame as a dominant psychological and spiritual long lasting experience that needed to be addressed. Thus, pastoral counselors and pastoral theologians began to explore psychological object relations theory, self-psychology, and the psychology of shame to understand the persistence of the experience of shame. Today shame as the feeling of being unloved and unlovable is a major experience of many modern people given the nature of the loss of relational connections and close-knit communities. Many psychologies are surfacing focusing on cultural narcissism or selfish love, the cult of self-admiration which is replacing self-actualization, and the equating of wealth and social status with being loved. Growing up in the Methodist tradition in an African American church, Wimberly was sensitized to John Wesley's small group experience hearing about the class meetings. Moreover, he had been exposed to the use of small groups in Zimbabwe, Africa in 1998 based on African Methodists attempts to recover the village which was disappearing on account of technology, industrialization, and the colonialism's destruction of the family.Thus, based on the author's family of origin community's fascination with Wesley's small group and witnessing this same phenomenon in Africa, Wimberly decided to explore Wesley's cell group practical theology for its contribution to twenty-first century ministry to people who could be classified as relational refugees.

This volume deals with the varied forms of shame reflected in biblical, theological, psychological and anthropological sources. Although traditional theology and church practice concentrate on providing forgiveness for shameful behavior, recent scholarship has discovered the crucial relevance of social shame evoked by mental status, adversity, slavery, abuse, illness, grief and defeat. Anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists have discovered that unresolved social shame is related to racial and social prejudice, to bullying, crime, genocide, narcissism, post-traumatic stress and other forms of toxic behavior. Eleven leaders in this research participated in a conference on "The Shame Factor," sponsored by St. Mark's United Methodist Church in Lincoln, NE in October 2010. Their essays explore the impact and the transformation of shame in a variety of arenas, comprising in this volume a unique and innovative resource for contemporary religion, therapy, ethics, and social analysis.

Most people who attend their church services each week are not hearing the gospel. They are hearing an anti-gospel. The devil is a very subtle liar who opposes God and his gospel. See Genesis 3:1; John 8:44. That old serpent has stealthily introduced his deceptive anti-gospel into the pulpits of churches around the world. He has very craftily mixed the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees into the gospel and ruined the whole loaf. Matthew 16:6-12. The resulting false gospel is premised on the idea that all men are freed from the bondage to sin and therefore have the ability to choose of their own free will whether or not to believe in Jesus. This is not a dispute over a fine distinction that is only of interest to theologians. This issue goes to the heart of the gospel. It goes to the heart of salvation. It goes to the heart of who is Jesus. The bible states that man is spiritually dead and must be born again by the power of God. Ephesians 2:1-6; John 3:3-8. God has elected certain to be saved by his grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Ephesians 1:3-9; 2:8-10. He imbues his elect with the faith needed to believe in Jesus. Romans 3:21-26; John 1:12-13. The devil’s false gospel reverses the order of things. Under the false gospel preached in most churches, Jesus does not choose his elect for salvation, instead all men have a free will to choose Jesus. Instead of God choosing man, man chooses God. This mythology is not supported by the bible. It is at the heart of a devilish conspiracy against God and man. The free will anti-gospel denies the sovereignty of God and blasphemously makes God out to be a liar. The free will gospel is a heathen gospel that has a god, but that god is not the God of the bible. The calling of the true Jesus is effectual; all who are chosen for salvation will believe in him. John 6:37-40. The free will gospel has a false Jesus who only offers the possibility of salvation, with no assurance. The scriptures warn about such a false Jesus. 2 Corinthians 11:4. The free will gospel denies the total depravity of man and the sovereign election of God. The true gospel has a Jesus who loves only his children and saves them for eternity in heaven. The devilish anti-gospel has a false Jesus who loves everyone in the world, but this false Jesus casts most of those whom he loves in hell, suffering in torments for eternity in a lake of fire. The true Jesus makes it clear in Matthew 7 that he never loved those who are sent to hell. “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” Matthew 7:23. See also Romans 9:21-23. The true God of the bible saves those whom he has elected for salvation and he condemns those whom he has elected for condemnation. See Romans 9. The false Jesus of the anti-gospel looks on helplessly while the sinner who is spiritually dead in trespasses and sin decides whether to believe in him. The true Jesus preordained and chose his elect to believe in him before the foundation of the world. Ephesians 1:4-5. The false Jesus is an impotent Jesus, who must yield to the desires of men; if men decide after they are saved that they would rather reject Jesus and take their chances with being thrown into hell, they can forfeit their salvation. The false Jesus is powerless to stop them. The true Jesus is Lord of Lords and King of Kings, who is able to preserve his elect and will lose none of those whom he has chosen for salvation. John 10:27-29.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Raw, intimate, and timely—a no-holds-barred celebration of our bodies that flies in the face of antiquated ideas about sex and gender. “A triumph.”—Glennon Doyle • “One of the most important, life-changing books I’ve ever read.”—Rachel Held Evans, author of Searching for Sunday and Inspired Negative messages about sex come from all corners of society: from the church, from the media, from our own families. As a result, countless people have suffered pain, guilt, and judgment. In this instant bestseller, Nadia Bolz-Weber unleashes her critical eye and her vulnerable yet hopeful soul on the harmful conversations about sex that have fed our shame. Bolz-Weber offers no simple amendments or polite compromises. Instead, this modern-day reverend calls for an inclusivity that empowers us to be loyal to people and, perhaps most important, ourselves. “Christianity is not a program for avoiding mistakes,” she writes. “It is a faith of the guilty.” With an alternative understanding of Scripture passages that have been weaponized against Christians for decades, Bolz-Weber reminds us that sexual flourishing can and should be for all genders, all bodies, and all humans. She shares stories, poetry, and Scripture that wage war on perpetual anxiety around sex by celebrating sexuality in all its forms and recognizing it for the gift that it is. If you’ve been mistreated, confused, angered, and/or wounded by shaming sexual messages, this one is for you.

Seeking to establish the causes and consequences of shame, Shame and the Church explore how theology and the Bible engage with shame, and consider personal firsthand accounts of shame in a church context.

Congregations are made up of people with all sorts of theologies. Pastor Mike Slaughter even says that these can stand in the way of the church’s mission of social and personal holiness. But most people do not adopt a theology on purpose, mostly they merely breathe in the prevailing cultural air. The theology "de jour" seems to be Calvinist, with its emphasis on “the elect” and “other worldly salvation.” In fact, there is so much Calvinism saturating the culture, that some do not even know there is an alternative way of thinking about their faith. They don’t know where to go to find a viable option; they don’t even know the key words to search Google. So people are left thinking like Calvinists but living with a desire to change the world, offering grace and hope to hurting people in mission and ministry—loving the least, the last, and the lost. In other words, they are living like Wesleyans. This book shows what Calvinist and Wesleyans actually believe about human responsibility, salvation, the universality of God’s grace, holy living through service, and the benefits of small group accountability--and how that connects to how people can live. Calvinists and Wesleyans are different, and by knowing the difference, people will not only see the other benefits of Wesleyan theology but will be inspired to learn more. By knowing who they are as faithful people of God, they will be motivated to reach out in mission with renewed vigor. And they won’t be obstacles to grace and holiness, but they can be better disciples and advocates for Christ through service in this world.

The Routledge Companion to John Wesley provides an overview of the work and ideas of one of the principal founders of Methodism, John Wesley (1703-91). Wesley remains highly influential, especially within the worldwide Methodist movement of some eighty million people. As a preacher and religious reformer his efforts led to the rise of a global Protestant movement, but the wide-ranging topics addressed in his writings also suggest a mind steeped in the intellectual developments of the North Atlantic, early modern world. His numerous publications cover not only theology but ethics, history, aesthetics, politics, human rights, health and wellbeing, cosmology and ecology. This volume places Wesley within his eighteenth-century context, analyzes his contribution to thought across his multiple interests, and assesses his continuing relevance today. It contains essays by an international team of scholars, drawn from within the Methodist tradition and beyond. This is a valuable reference particularly for scholars of Methodist Studies, theology, church history and religious history.