by Joel V Webb | Oct 5, 2026 | Free Methodism, Methodism, Resources, Theology & Practice
Anyone who has known me for the last few years knows that I am a nerd, especially when it comes to all things liturgical. To highlight this, during the past weekend a pastor friend sent a message asking about why the lectionary readings between the Book of Common Prayer she uses, and the Lectionary readings in her worship planner from Seedbed (Which uses the Revised Common Lectionary) are different. I then proceed to send a 4 minute voice memo about the variances between the ACNA Lectionary and RCL and the developments that brought them to their current forms. So, maybe my knowledge is super specialized and more than I actually need to know; but I enjoy it.
Last week I was very excited that the Global Methodist Church revealed its new draft liturgies for Baptism, Communion and membership/confirmation/baptismal reaffirmation. I knew they were on the way as I am connected to several of those involved in their development and had several inklings as to what they would look like. The liturgies are available for download HERE and they are in a 3-month period of open commenting for suggestions of changes and adjustments.
In the introduction to the document, the Chair of the Liturgy Task Force, Dr. Tesia Mallory who also serves as the Dean of Chapel at Asbury Theological Seminary writes, “At its core, liturgy is the Church’s communal prayer and conversation with God. We believe that our practices of prayer shape what we believe, and what we believe shapes how we live as faithful followers of Jesus. In light of this, we offer this draft resource as a means of honoring Christ in our mission to spread scriptural holiness across the globe through the worship life of The Global Methodist Church”
One of the things we fail to see in our day and age is that worship is formative. Worship is not just the songs we sing, it is every part of our gathered times on Sunday, and every thing we do from the Scriptures we read, the silence we keep, the actions and posture of our bodies, and then the music we sing is a part of worship. This more holistic vision of what worship is, of course includes the summit of it which is celebration of the Eucharist makes how we are formed and give God what He is due a much richer reality than the sickly and myopic picture we often put ourselves in.
In conversations about the liturgies in the lead up to their release, one of the comments concerning them was that they would be the Book of Common Prayer that is contextualized for Methodist worship. And, when you think about it, that is very appropriate. The Methodist tradition gains much when we look back to our Anglican heritage; something that has often been left behind for American Methodists.
I’ll save specific comments about the liturgies for an upcoming podcast episode interviewing some of the members of the liturgy task force. What I will say is that these liturgies have done the solid work of recovery. For anyone familiar with the Book of Common Prayer (especially the 2019 published by the ACNA), there is a lot of material that will feel familiar. The biggest reclamation of these liturgies are the Sacramental elements that have been mostly issued the last several generations in Methodism. The prayer of blessing over the water, anointing of oil/chrism after baptism, What I found to be a wonderful Methodist addition to the baptism liturgy was the Wesley Covenant prayer following the baptism, said by all as a collective affirmation to Christ.
Similarly, in the communion liturgy the use of an explicit epiclesis (invoking of the Holy Spirit upon the elements) and the Prayer of Humble Access (rather than something like a “Prayer for Spiritual Communion”) really land the participant into the gravity and beauty of what happens when we come to the table and encounter Christ as He is revealed in the breaking of bread.
While these liturgies are from the Global Methodist Church, they represent a resource and a sign for the rest of us in the pan-Methodist world as the orthodox core of our heritage is being reconstituted, and the spiritual descendants of Wesley are striving to revive the heart of our movement; a Church that is set on fire by the holy love of God to spread Scriptural holiness across the land.
What should these draft liturgies mean for the Free Methodist Church (my ecclesial home) and other pan-Methodist denominations? We should not delay by our varying capacities to make liturgical adjustments ourselves. This of course is easier said than done, and even ironic in the case of the FMC where liturgy in the same sentence looks like spelling a word with the English “u” in color or something like that.
At this point what is undeniable is the draw for the younger generations is the rooted grounding of liturgy, Sacraments and not being catered to. Something that is sadly confounding to the “boomer generation” who is still seeking to be relevant to the “fellow kids” in the hopes of drawing them. Rather, we need to reclaim as the GMC is doing, not for the sake of loving antiques, but by coming back to the heart of why we gather. Recounting and participating in the ongoing work of Christ in the Gospel which is the power of God.
As of now the Communion Ritual in the FMC Book of Discipline 2023 is a bit like a house originally built in the 1800’s and then has had 4 or 5 additions put on. The Lord’s Prayer is tacked on as an extension of the confession (something very strange, especially considering how Cranmer used the Our Father as a post-communion prayer. Similarly, the language of the “Prayer for Spiritual Communion”takes an almost anabaptist approach to understanding the Real Presence of Christ in the elements.
Supposedly there are big changes coming to the Free Methodist Church. We have no idea what they are because no one in the know has publicly said anything that actually lets us know what is happening. But, I would add to the list of things to adjust or change is revamping our liturgies for baptism and communion to reflect this reclamation of our heritage as we seek to become the Church that is not thrown about by the winds of the time and is rather seen as a steadfast rock (ultimately Christ) that those battered about can cling to.
by Joel V Webb | Sep 28, 2026 | History, Methodism, Sacraments, Theology & Practice
In the study of the theology and practice of John Wesley one of the most evident realities was the very high place that John placed on the Sacraments. When you survey his journals it is obvious he celebrated the Lord’s Supper multiple times as week, and it became a cornerstone of the practice of the early Methodists so much so that it played a part in reshaping how often Communion was celebrated in Anglican parish life from as little as only a couple times a year (usually quarterly) to weekly.
But when it comes to the actual practice of the Methodist societies, class and band meetings, they are seemingly silent on their practice in those settings. While many a modern reader would take this silence to make it seem they were unimportant, I think when you read between the lines, a different story comes to bear. This question was recently pointed out to me by Rev. Dr. Doug Cullum, now retired pastor and faculty from Northeastern Seminary at Roberts Wesleyan University in Rochester New York.
We first need to work from the presupposition that Wesley did not set out to start a church. He was, in fact, a churchman in the Church of England, and remained so for the entirety of his life (something his brother Charles held strongly to as well). And, it wasn’t until the last few years of John’s life that a communion table was even present in one of the established Methodist gathering places.
This silence then is not because the Sacraments of Baptism & the Lord’s Supper were unimportant. Contrarily, they were seen as essential! But the nature of this silence or deficiency seems to be intentional, and it is from this place that we can come to understand the original purpose of Methodism.
John & Charles saw the Methodist movement as a renewal movement within the Church, not as a separate ecclesial movement. So with this in mind you can then see what this “sacramental deficiency” existed. Any Methodist society, class or band was for the spiritual growth of the individual to then go and be active and spiritually alive in the context of their local parish. It was then there where they were to receive the Lord’s Supper as often as it was offered, and to have their children baptized.
It was only when the Methodist movement, specifically in the American context became its own mother church in 1784 did the sacramental practice pass from the Anglican clergy to their own appointed and installed Elders. But what has happened over the last few centuries, as often does with the passing of time, is the loss of the context that provided the basis of understanding what was actually going on on that day.
If we look and see the lack of sacramental practice within early Methodism as an argument from silence, that the Evangelical focus that we are all familiar with was the sole focus, we then lose the full picture of who Wesley was, and the intent for what the Methodist movement was all about.
When you place the original Methodist movement within the context of an already existing parish system where the adherents of society, class and band meetings were already apart of, then it all clicks into place. What could be seen as intentional neglect or unimportance becomes in fact intentional deficiency; where the Sacramental need was already fulfilled in the churches these people were already members of.
What this then means for all forms of Methodism in the 21st Century, which now represent the status of “Mother Churches”, no longer a separate movement within an ecclesial body, but ecclesial bodies of their own is then the responsibility to faithfully administer the Sacraments of Christ. Baptism following birth or conversion, and the Lord’s Supper, weekly or more often as Wesley intended for his followers to partake.
It is this reality, both the Sacramental and the Evangelical that the Methodist movement holds in tension. Not in a contrary way, but in an complimentary way, understanding both for the need of the supremacy of the Word of God to drive us to personal relationship with Christ, and for Christ to then welcome us in through Baptism, and then continually feed us as He promised at the Table where He is both host and feast.
That is the picture of Methodism that Wesley intended for his descendants, a heritage we must reclaim and live in to.
by Joel V Webb | Sep 24, 2026 | Free Methodism, History, Methodism, Orthodoxy Matters, Sacraments, Theology & Practice
The following article, written by Free Methodist Bishop Emeritus Paul N. Ellis, presents a vigorous historical and theological case for the baptism of infants and young children within the Free Methodist tradition. Ellis argues that parents dedicate their children to God, while the church receives those children through baptism as members of the covenant community and pledges their Christian nurture.
Readers should approach the essay as a historical document and a constructive theological argument. Its language reflects the concerns and ecclesial debates of its original setting, especially the question of whether Free Methodists should replace infant baptism with child dedication.
The contemporary Free Methodist Church continues to affirm baptism as a sacrament and means of grace, and its Articles of Religion state that infants may be baptized at the request of parents or guardians who promise Christian formation. At the same time, current Free Methodist pastoral practice commonly recognizes parent-led infant dedication as an available alternative. The article below represents Ellis’s argument for recovering a stronger covenantal and sacramental practice of infant baptism.
This article was originally published in The Free Methodist Pastor, Summer 1983. is stored, and was scanned by the Marston Memorial Historical Center. You can read the original scanned article HERE
Parents Dedicate, the Church Baptizes
Paul N. Ellis, Bishop Emeritus
Winona Lake, Indiana
I have in my possession The Discipline of the Free Methodist Church, 1874, published fourteen years after the founding of our denomination. Article XVIII of the Articles of Religion includes the following constitutional guarantee:
“The baptism of young children is to be retained in the Church.”
From the beginning until 1974, this statement concerning the baptism of children was the denomination’s position.
In 1974, a new Constitution was adopted by the General Conference and ratified by the annual conferences. The new Constitution provided a fuller explanation of our historic position. Regarding baptism as a sacrament, Article XVII states:
“We believe water baptism and the Lord’s Supper are the sacraments of the church commanded by Christ. They are means of grace through faith, tokens of our profession of Christian faith, and signs of God’s gracious ministry toward us. By them, he works within us to quicken, strengthen, and confirm our faith.”
Regarding the baptism of young children, Article XVII affirms:
“Baptism is a symbol of the new covenant, and since infants are recognized as being included in the atonement, we hold that they may be baptized upon request of parents or guardians who shall give assurance for them of necessary Christian training. They shall be required to affirm the vow for themselves before being accepted into church membership.”
Accordingly, the bishops have made it clear to pastors that ministers violate their vows of ordination in the Free Methodist Church if they refuse to administer baptism to infants or children upon the request of parents or guardians. This is the historic position of the church.
Wesley’s View
The founders of Free Methodism, who felt called to “return to early Methodism,” agreed with Wesley on baptism.
In his Works, Wesley included “A Treatise on Baptism,” in which he wrote:
“By baptism we enter into covenant with God; into that everlasting covenant, which he hath commanded forever, that new covenant, which he promised to make with the spiritual Israel. . . . And as circumcision was then the way of entering into this covenant, so baptism is now. . . .
“Therefore, it is not only lawful and innocent, but meet, right, and our bounden duty, in conformity to the uninterrupted practice of the whole Church of Christ from the earliest ages, to consecrate our children to God by baptism, as the Jewish Church was commanded to do by circumcision.”
See Burtner and Chiles, A Compend of Wesley Theology (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1944), 266–68.
Inferences From Scripture
We must not forget that the Church of Jesus Christ from its beginning was—and remains—a covenant church, even as Israel was a covenant nation.
In Jeremiah’s promise of “a new covenant,” the prophet declares:
“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah” (Jer. 31:31).
The author of Hebrews identifies this new covenant with Jesus:
“Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant” (Heb. 12:24).
There is no dispute that circumcision was, and remains, the sign of the covenant relationship between God and Israel. An adult proselyte entering Judaism must be circumcised. Those born into Judaism, however, are circumcised on the eighth day after birth. The rite acknowledges the ancient covenant among faithful Jews.
In the New Testament, the recorded conversions and baptisms of households strongly imply the inclusion of children. Peter declared:
“The promise is unto you, and to your children” (Acts 2:39).
He did not qualify “children” with the adjective adult. Such a qualification would have seemed unnecessary to the early church, whose members were steeped in the tradition of family unity in matters of religion.
When Paul and Silas were released from the Philippian jail, we read:
“And he [the jailer] took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, straightway” (Acts 16:33).
Given the nature of family life in that day, one might expect a specific exception for “infants and young children” if Paul had intended to exclude children from the sacrament.
The classical statement in our baptismal ritual concerning the church’s acceptance of children in baptism is found in the words of Jesus:
“And they brought young children to him, that he should bless them; and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, he was displeased, and said unto them, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God’” (Mark 10:13–14).
A Methodist Scholar Speaks
Addressing the church’s responsibility to receive into its fellowship all those for whom Christ died when they themselves cannot yet make a choice, Olin Alfred Curtis writes:
“The church of our Lord has the right and the duty to claim the helpless. She should take into her atmosphere and association and, if possible, service all people who are unable to make a choice for themselves; not only all irresponsible children, but all the feeble-minded, and all those unfortunate souls who have been mentally wrecked by woes too terrible for human fortitude.”
Curtis describes this group as members “by Christian claim.”
He continues:
“If you ask what infant baptism precisely stands for as a rite, the answer should, I believe, be this: It stands for the sacramental acceptance by the church of the consecration unto Christ of a babe by a home.”
See Olin Alfred Curtis, The Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1956), 420–21, 438.
A Presbyterian Scholar Speaks
John Frederick Jansen asks:
“Must a child be outside the church? Does not Baptism rather say that from earliest infancy I am brought into the environment of grace and receive the seal of God’s love? Of course an infant does not feel any effect. But who is to say how soon a child becomes aware of love, and why not divine love?
“What shall the church say to its children? Shall it forbid them Baptism? Shall it assume that there is no such thing as a Christian child? Are children outsiders in the church, or are they members of the household of faith? If the old Israel included its children in the family of faith through circumcision, shall the new Israel exclude them?”
See John Frederick Jansen, The Meaning of Baptism (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1948), 102, 108.
Some Personal Observations
- Baptism does not regenerate either adults or children. For an adult believer, baptism is a sign of the covenant of grace entered into by faith; a public confession that the believer trusts in Christ’s atoning work for salvation; and a means of grace. For an infant, baptism is likewise a sign of the covenant of grace and a confession by the parents and the church that children are saved—not because they are innocent, but, as are all people, because of the universal atonement made by Christ for the human race. I also believe strongly that baptism is a means of grace to the child. Do we not pray for our children? Do we not anoint them with oil for healing? Should we think grace is given only to persons old enough and rational enough to understand fully the sacrifice of Jesus Christ? If so, who may be baptized? Who understands it fully?
- Parents dedicate the child; the church baptizes the child. Dedication is made by the only persons who can give a child to God: the parents. In baptism, the church accepts the child in a formal yet spiritual manner and pledges, in cooperation with the parents, to confirm that child in the Christian faith. It is meaningless for the church to assume that it can dedicate a child whom it has not accepted into the family of God.
- The Free Methodist Church historically stood within the classical catholic tradition of baptizing children. Until comparatively recent years, the Free Methodist Church stood alongside the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Episcopal, Reformed, Presbyterian, Methodist, and other churches of Catholic, Calvinian, Arminian, and Wesleyan traditions in recognizing the baptism of children as a valid sacrament of the Church of Jesus Christ. Today, we are being influenced, to our loss, by Baptistic branches of the church, including the Churches of Christ.
- Replacing baptism with dedication departs from Free Methodist intention and doctrine. In my opinion, Free Methodist pastors who persuade members to have their children “dedicated” rather than baptized turn away from the intention of our founding fathers, fail to transmit the letter and spirit of our Articles of Religion, and miss a significant opportunity to witness to the covenant character of the church.
- The New Testament church was not merely a believers’ church. It was—and continues to be—a covenant church. It receives believing adults into its fellowship, as Judaism has always done, but it also includes the whole Christian family until, if it should occur, a growing child turns away from that fellowship in unbelief, just as an adult may do.
- The nurture of children is therefore of supreme importance. We believe that a child’s confession of Christ as Savior—even at four or five years of age, or perhaps younger—can be valid. Therefore, we have a solemn responsibility to confirm our children in the Christian faith, guide them in Christian love, and bring them to an adult experience of Christ through the revelation of the Holy Spirit. The vows of adult baptism and church membership can become meaningful to a child who is assured that the church has received him or her from infancy into the loving family of God.
by Joel V Webb | Sep 20, 2026 | History, Orthodoxy Matters, Sacraments, Theology & Practice
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins…
This phrase of the Nicene Creed is declared in my church, like many around the world every Sunday. Much of the time we might not think about it too often, yet it carries much significance. I’ve written about Baptism at other times, and while there is various disagreement surrounding this Sacrament of entrance into Christ’s Body (the Church) very few orthodox Christians groups ignore its importance.
In this particular case I want to focus on the ONE portion of the Creed’s statement in regards to Baptism.
One means one. Article over I guess…
I wish. While this question does come up, for those churches that confess and take seriously the Nicene Creed there is something in common. They do not rebaptize. Baptism, as a Sacrament is seen as a one time act that happens, through which the person (infant or adult) is joined to Christ’s death and resurrection, being opened to and receiving grace by the Holy Spirit, and, drawing from St. Paul in Colossians 2, is a circumcision not done with human hands (v.11-12). Likewise, St. Peter in the New Testament makes the bold claim that baptism now saves (1 Peter 3:21).
The point here is not to get into the weeds on the question of baptismal regeneration and the working of faith. But suffice it to say, baptism is really important. And it is only ever done once. To continue to echo the words of St. Paul in Ephesians where he writes, “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:5).
One could then ask, what counts as a valid baptism? How the what we would now call Nicene faith answers is any baptism done in the name of the Father, the Son & the Holy Spirit is a valid Baptism. Why? Primarily because there are non-Trinitarian groups that may baptize only in the name of Jesus. While texts in Acts (2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5) speak of “baptizing in the name of Jesus”, it seems to be referring to the baptism’s identity and authority, not the actual formula.
In regards to Scriptural data, the most evident come from the words of Christ Himself in the famous Great Commission when He commanded the disciples to, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). Likewise, the earliest church discipleship manual The Didache very clearly states, “Baptize into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” and thus it speaks to the practice of the early church being what Christ commanded in Matthew, not a later development.
But what changed?
Well…as always. Heretics.
The first major debate in regards to Christian baptism came around 255–257 between Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, and Stephen, bishop of Rome. Their point of contention was if people who came into the orthodox faith from a heretical group needed to be baptized. To simplify the debate, Cyprian said they needed to; Stephen said as long as it was in the Trinitarian formula then they were set. The Sacrament was valid, no rebaptism needed. Sadly, both men were martyred before a resolution could be settled.
Next then came the post-Diocletian debate surrounding baptism. A heretical group named the Donatists stated that any clergy who handed over holy books to the Romans during persecution did not have legitimate ministry, and thus, their baptisms were invalid. Likewise, questions arose whether those Christians who recanted the faith to save their lives, and sought to come back into the Church needed to be baptized again.
St. Augustine of Hippo weighs in here and really sets the precedent that Western Christianity follows. Because Christ is the primary operator in Baptism, the “baptizer” (person doing the baptizing) does not impact the validity of the baptism itself as long as it was done in the Trinitarian formula. And, for those coming back into the Church (there was ferocious debate whether or not to let them back in), they did not need to be rebaptized because the work of Christ at their Baptism was still effectual. Even in the Council of Trent in response to the Reformation, the position of the Roman Church to this day is that even a Baptism done by a heretic or pagan; as long as it is done in the Trinitarian formula it is valid.
A brief sidebar before moving on. This point of Christ being the primary actor in Baptism is what by definition makes it a Sacrament. If we are joined in His death & resurrection, and if there is a circumcision that happens, not of human hands to us by God at Baptism…it is not the kind of thing that can be repeated. But, if you just see Baptism as some kind of ordinance, or just a visible sign of an interior faith or decision, then it doesn’t actually mean anything and you can do it as many times as you want.
While there are certainly many other moments in Church history to touch on, the next biggest one comes during the 16th Century and the Protestant Reformation. Despite what many American Evangelicals might believe, Luther, Calvin & the English Reformers, while they certainly had their disagreements with Rome, they didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater (pun intended). They all still held to some form of Christ truly being present in the Eucharist, they believed in Baptismal regeneration, held to some of the Marian dogmas, and had other views that would shock many today.
But it was the radical reformers who took things to the next level. It wasn’t good enough to separate from the accretions and power structures of Rome, you had to get rid of it all. (I wrote a piece on the radical reformers, and how I DO NOT like them at all. Despite their good intentions). One of the practices that rose among them was the rebaptizing of believers, even those who had already received baptism as infants. This is where the major break takes place in Chrisitan theology and practice in the Church. Now called the Anabaptists (a name given to them by their opponents), the practice is now found among many Chrisitna groups in the West; among groups like actual anabaptist denominations (Mennonites, Missionary Church), Baptists (Reformed and not), and generic American Evangelicalism. I know this part is very brief, and does not cover the full extent of their beliefs and practices, but you get the jist.
So now the big question comes. What stream are you in?
If you are someone who is a Methodist of any stripe, be it Free (like myself), Global, United, Nazarene, Wesleyan etc… your theological roots and inheritance is not found among the radical reformers. It is of the English Reformers like Thomas Cranmer, Lancelot Andrews and Richard Hooker, who like Luther & Calvin did not get rid of the ancient practice of the Chrisitan faith from the Early Church as likewise demonstrated in Scripture. So what does that mean? It means we should not do rebaptisms.
Why? Because Methodists, as our Anglican forebears do, believe the practice of Baptism is a Sacrament. It is an act by which God is the primary actor. Sure, as a parent I bring my child, or a recent convert comes to be baptized; but it is God who is doing a work. Something indelible, that only takes place once.
For those who have been baptized as infants, the continuing of that work happens at Confirmation where that faith entrusted at infancy is carried on by that young person as their own. Or, for someone who maybe has walked away from Christ for a time, and has come back to the faith, there are beautiful services where the vows taken at baptism are reaffirmed and renewed.
But as Methodists we do not rebaptize. Not because we don’t care about people who have come back to the faith or don’t remember their baptism because they were a baby, or didn’t understand the significance of it when it happened. We don’t rebaptize because You can’t repeat circumcision. Whatever the whole work that Christ does in us is marked once, and we then spend the rest of our lives receiving grace from Christ to live into our baptisms.
Whenever we look at the story of Scripture and our own lives it is never God who is faithless and who fails. It is always us. What God did worked. Yes, we need reminders and encouragement, but why do we think we need to repeat something that God only needs to do once?
Baptism matters. God does something in Baptism. Treat it that way.
by Joel V Webb | Sep 16, 2026 | History, Orthodoxy Matters, Review, Theology & Practice
Every once in a while you encounter a book that makes a deep and lasting impact. I remember when I read The Unseen Realm by the late Michael Heiser and my eyes were open to seeing the supernatural thread that was weaved all throughout Scripture. Taking seriously the cultural and historical context of the Old Testament, and its inherent influence on the New Testament provided a massive shift in some of my understanding of Scripture.
In a similar vein that happened once I finished the first chapter of Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth. Published in 2025, I first encountered this book when it was referenced during a plenary session at a conference I was attending. And then, a few months later, one of my Facebook friends posted a picture of the beginnings of one of the chapters, and I knew it needed to be on my reading list.
Kingsnorth opens, naming the reality that we know something is wrong in the West. As he states in his introduction, “I was sure of something else too: that the political and cultural upheavals which continue to roil the West have historical, technological and ultimately spiritual roots.” And it is this theme that he carries through the entire work with a scary amount of accuracy, tracking and tracing why we are where we are today.
As a personal note, this book came at a providential time. A few years ago when I read St. Augustine’s City of God, I felt a huge sense of affinity with what he was writing about. The seemingly timeless Roman Empire in a state of rapid decline and collapse, and having to ask the hard questions about the why. We are living in a similarly transitional time in history. As Kingsnorth points to, “The West” began in earnest around 1000 AD, with it;s apex in the high Medieval period, and then since the 15th and 16th centuries, it has been a slow march into the lightspeed acceleration of our era of advancing technology.
Kingsnorth is honest, there is no perfect society. The West has many skeletons in it;’s closet, and hanging from the battlements. And despite the narrative of critical theorists, every culture and society in the history of humanity does. He is not shy about addressing these issues, and in doing so provides an even playing field to address why we are where we are.
The feeling that is addressed most commonly in the book is the feeling (that I myself feel at times) is of not being rooted. Sure, I have a hometown, place I live, I know a bit about my genealogy and yet it feels like something is missing. This was highlighted even more when I lived in Cameroon for a year. Spending time in various villages, and with people who were connected to their families, and not just to people but to the land. Yet, in the modern west, we are not connected. Land is just where we are, and there is nothing special about it. And that is part of the problem. Not that we worship or idolize the land, but we are not connected to it, And it is this feeling Kingsnorth not just describes, but diagnoses.
Tracing the history of the West through to our day into what can be labelled The Faustian Age, where we are striving for knowledge, power, and self-realization, often associated with the themes of ambition and the pursuit of the infinite. This perfectly describes our time. Totally apprehended by materialism, we seek to not just know, but control, extract and break all limits. And, this is a culture that is dead. While the West began as Christendom, we have taken Christ from His throne, and eventually that vacancy will be filled. But until then, we will continue to experience the death throws of a culture in unrooted freefall.
Everything in our age is about limitless growth, progress, secularism, and ultimately a deep disenchantment that all of us feel when we think about it for more than am inute. It is this way that Kingsnorth thus defines “The Machine”
This, then, is the Machine. It is not simply the sum total of various individual technologies we have cleverly managed to rustle up—cars, laptops, robot mowers and the rest. In fact, such ‘technics’, as Mumford calls them, are the product of the Machine, not its essence. The Machine is, rather, a tendency within us, made concrete by power and circumstance, which coalesces in a huge agglomeration of power, control and ambition.
Kingsnorth then spends most of the book detailing the many different ways that the Machine was developed and grown at a steady and increasing pace for it’s own existence. Culture, the thing that once served people in the role of commonality of those around us has turned into the thing that actually uses humanity as its fuel to keep it going, in it;s own version of The Matrix.
It is this question of culture that becomes the pivotal core of the discussion of not just why we are here, but also what we need to do in seeking to leave or be against he machine. He concisely lays out culture as the summation of the 4 P’s. People, Place, Prayers, and Past:
Past. Where a culture comes from, its history and ancestry.
People. Who a culture is. A sense of being ‘a people’.
Place. Where a culture is. Nature in its local and particular manifestation.
Prayer. Where a culture is going. Its religious tradition, which relates it to God or the gods.
Similarly, Kingsnorth identifies the core realities of the Machine in the four S’ which represent not just “the culture of the Machine” but really the inversion culture where things are not defined by what they are, but rather by what they are not:
Science. Where we come from. Science can offer us a non-mythic version of this story, and assert a claim as to the true (i.e. measurable) nature of reality.
The Self. Who we are. The highest good is to serve the self and ensure its longevity.
Sex. What we do. Both the highest means of sacral pleasure and, through public expressions of ‘sexuality’, an affirmation of individual identity.
The Screen. Where we are going. The screen is both our main source of distraction from reality and the interface by which we are directed into the coming post-human reality of the Machine.
These four notions are the “ideology of the Machine” if one can be defined. As you can likely tell, these aspects are very relevant to what we see going on in the world around us. The insanity and lack of logic in the secular sphere, the inability to articulate even obviously true things, and our inability to know what is even going on.
So what about politics? If you are conservative or liberal/progressive you might be mistaken that Kingsnorth is writing this in support of your ideology. He’s not. He is very clear at numerous points that both sides of the political debates in our day and age are simply different parts representing the machine. Conservatism is simply just looking to change less quickly that the other side is wanting things to.The entire political spectrum as we know it is a product of the machine, and is in the end interested in its survival.
Now what about the Church? Well, if we are honest we see how the Machine has influenced and impacted the Church in the West, especially contemporary evangelicalism. Over the last few years the murmurings of conversions of young men, and those in Gen Z & A have started to grow louder. People I know across the board in traditional expressions of Chrisitanity, especially Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Anglicanism in particular are seeing this growing interest, and real growth. Why? Because outside of the necessity for authenticity in an age of advertising, the modern Protestant Church has wholly given in to the methods of the Machine.
How do we plant churches? We set everything up like the launch of a new IPO, gathering resources to then make the biggest bang possible. How do we prepare the next generations of clergy and layleaders in the Church? Give them fundamentals of leadership and management skills that will also serve them well in the secular business world. What about our “worship” and Sunday gatherings? We might have sound theology and a desire to honor God, but change a few words and you don’t have anything that is distinguishable from a concert with a motivational talk in it about how “God can do something for you”.
Our ways of thinking and doing are almost wholly the ways of the Machine, just dressed up in Church language. Do we need something to change? Launch and initiative to get people excited. Something not working as we think it should, restructure and reformat because doing something might help things change how we want them. This part might just sound like complaining or ranting, but there is a point to it which I will touch on later.
So what are we to do with this? Is everything just a drab and depressing situation that is hopeless? With Kingsnorth’s wide usage of seemingly prophetic philosophers and poets (especially the recently passed Wendell Berry), and especially for us as Christians, what does all of this mean?
First, none of this should be a surprise. Just as I referenced St. Augustine and the fall of Rome earlier, we should not think that all is lost. Cultures have risen and fallen throughout history, and who are we to think that we are any different? Yes, while the West spread the word of the Gospel across the earth, the West has also gotten in the way of the Gospel actually doing what it was supposed to, seating Christ as the true and ultimate King over all things. The West has become obsessed with her own grandeur, economic advancement and comfort, all things that detract from the reality that Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world.
The West is in the process of falling. It may outlast my lifetime, but that would be a miracle. Something over the next 50-100 years will take its place. But just as St. Augustine was sure, the Church will continue and the Gospel will be preached, and Christ’s Kingdom will expand, regardless of where the locus of power and culture is.
Secondly, in our world that is even more interconnected and global, we need to think smaller. This does not mean we stop world missions, but for our individual lives (our circles of relationships), our families and our churches we seem to be obsessed with the biggest reach possible. Rather, we need to ground ourselves closer to home. Be who we are, redeemed by Christ. One of the joking quips often used by other cultures is that “White people don’t really have culture”, and in the contemporary sense that’s not totally wrong. Those who are Caucasian and from Western Europe, especially those in North America have lost our distinctiveness. We need to become more rooted and grounded in that. Not for the purpose of tribalism, but so that we can then relate to others at our common points.
One of the defining characteristics of the Machine as Kingsnorth writes is that it steam rolls other cultures to become homogenized within it. From the Black Ships of Perry opening trade in Japan, to the global internet culture that is consuming our cultures into a single blob of humanity; we lose who we actually are. Again, the purpose of this call is to not become more suspicious of those different than us, but how can we truly appreciate others if we don’t even know who we are?
Third, as the Church we need to wholly reclaim what it means to be in and not of. We are all products of our times, and we can never escape that. But we also can be adapted by our times, which can compromise our witness of being of a different Kingdom. The West as it falls is a challenging time. And we might not even be sure its happening, but it is. What that means is that using the means that have brought us to where we are, is maybe not the way we are to be the Church. This isn’t wholly about aesthetics and worship style…but at the same time it is. The Western Church is dominated by the cult of individualism, and until we repent and cast that idol out, we will be stuck spinning our wheels in the mud of the age going nowhere.
I truly believe the Church is indefectable. While she errs, she will in the end accomplish the goal that Christ established her for. And that means that we at times need to course correct from where we have gone off.
The idea of the Machine has been in recent years somewhat grasped in the language of “Empire”. And while that language can be helpful, the idea of the Machine helps articulate the even deeper issues at play. The gods of old have disguised themselves in our modern era (note back to Heiser), and more often than not we are simply Modernists who go to Church. Our minds are shaped and we operate under the premises set out by the Machine (the 4 S’s). What could be the fruit of that?
A fantastic companion book to this would be The Desecration of Man by Carl Trueman, that David Watson, the President of Asbury Theological Seminary wrote a wonderful review of. Trueman and Kingsnorth touch on many of the same ideas, they give complementary language and verbiage to what we are living in now. And while Kingsnorth is a Christian (he converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in 2020), Trueman’s work is significantly more theologically directed as it is philosophical.
So we then, as Christians are ultimately called to be against the Machine. Just as the powers and principalities, and the “spirit of the air” as spoken of by St. Paul in the Apostolic Era, likewise we have “the Machine” as the all-encompassing spirit of the age that seeks to oppose Christ and His Bride. Seeking to hollow us out, distract us from reality and turn us from the beauty that is the creation He created us to inhabit. Resistance to the Machine looks like truly living out The Sermon on the Mount. It looks like rejecting to different degrees the things the Machine desires to make dogma.
There are so many other threads in this work that I did not even touch that are also vitally important and help flesh out the entire picture. But I focused on what I could and what seemed important as I am writing this. So rather, let this wet your appetite, and go pickup the book and read it for yourself.
Kingsnorth ends his work not by giving a tidy list of actionable items necessarily. His work, being more philosophical, seeks to set the stage for us to seek how Christ is calling us into the world of the Machine to shine His light of new life. I will end this review with the last few paragraphs of his book because I cannot put it any better than he.
I have come to the end now, and here is what I think: that the age of the Machine is not after all a hopeless time. Actually, it is the time we were born for. We can’t leave it, so we have to fully inhabit it. We have to understand it, challenge it, resist it, subvert it, walk through it on towards something better. If we can see what it is, we have a duty to speak the words to those who do not yet see, all the while struggling to remain human.
People, place, prayer, the past. Human community, roots in nature, connection to God, memories passed down and on. These are the eternal things. We could form hedge schools to teach them. We could live them in any way we can. We could build communities. We could write books. We could plant trees. We could do anything, really. None of it will ‘solve’ all of the world’s problems, or all of ours. We are still going to die; and so, one day, is the Machine. But what will we do in the meantime? What will we do amidst the rise of the robots, amidst the ascendancy of all these tiny, laughable, tyrannical dreams?
Raindance on the astroturf.
Raindance to call down the Spirit upon them and us. Raindance to defy the Machine. Raindance to remember your ancestors. Raindance to offer up prayers to your home. Raindance to the forest and the prairie and the meadow. Raindance to reclaim your stories.
Raindance to discover where you are and where you come from. Raindance on top of your smartphone until it is nothing but splinters. Raindance against the myths of the age. Raindance against the false gods. Raindance with a smile on your face.
What have you got to lose?
Enter the Dreamtime. Begin the restoration.
Become human again.
Remain human despite it all.
I think that might be what home looks like, in the end.
Amen.
by Joel V Webb | Aug 31, 2026 | Sacraments, Theology & Practice
Protestant Christians have two Sacraments, ordained by Christ. Holy Baptism where one enters into the people of God. The second is Holy Communion, the Christian Passover, where we come to not just remember His death, but where we receive His grace as we encounter Him in eating and drinking. These two Sacraments have been central to the identity and practice of the Christian Church for its entire history.
It is especially in Holy Communion where as Christians we encounter Christ. As Scripture shows over and over again, worship requires a sacrifice of some kind. And, as those redeemed by the worthy Lamb the sacrifices of old have been replaced by the celebration, remembering and participation in His sacrifice, i.e. Holy Communion.
But something has happened over the last fifty years in Evangelicalism. A new “sacrament” has creeped in and has become the predominant place where we are told encountering Christ really happens. Worship music. The expectation of most modern evangelical worship services is that the primary place where you are meant to “encounter and feel God” is during the time of singing and worship.
When a congregation is trained to expect that God is most immediately present during a musical crescendo, what does that do to the church’s understanding of the Word, the Supper, prayer, and ordinary discipleship?
In a recent article from Christianity Today they addressed the massive amounts of pressure that “worship leaders” face to perform their jobs with excellence.1 And as a part of that are expected to make experiences and times where people feel the presence of God. The point of this article is not to address the “worship leader” label, something I hope to do in a future blog post. But to ask the question, is music in church supposed to do this?
The Christianity Today article on worship-leader burnout illustrates one pastoral consequence of this expectation: musicians can come to feel responsible not only for leading songs well, but for generating the conditions in which a congregation believes it will experience God. The article does not create the problem, but it helps reveal how deeply the expectation has taken hold.
You see, this expectation that we were meant to “encounter God” in a personal way during a time of singing is a very recent innovation in the Church, and does elevate the use of music in a church service to the status of a Sacrament. If a Sacrament is an action or ritual where God’s grace is encountered and received, then it certainly has done so. A sacrament is not simply any moment in which Christians are helped, moved, or strengthened by grace. It is a rite instituted by Christ and joined to a visible sign through which he promises to act for his people.
The problem is not that Christians may encounter God while singing, nor that music can move the affections. The problem arises when emotional intensity becomes the expected proof of God’s nearness, and when the congregation is implicitly taught that the Spirit is most active during the musical set rather than through the whole ordained worship of the church.
This is not to say singing is not a means of grace. It most certainly is. As the gathered Church sings praise to God, it is both a part of us demonstrating our love to Him, and it is edifying to the believer. Another benefit is that songs and hymns teach us the truths about God just as St. Paul encouraged (Ephesians 5:19). Maddox in his work Responsible Grace talks more specifically about hymns in the Methodist context were to both empower and encourage, and should be aligned with the rhythm of the Church calendar to shape and form the believer2.
The understanding of songs for this purpose is dramatically different that was normally understood in our Evangelical culture today. Rather the current expectation is that when we sing songs (usually a block of 3-4 songs in immediate succession in the first half of the service), it is during this time that the “atmosphere” is set and that it is the time the Holy Spirit moves and works and people are to “feel His move”.
Understanding the purpose of worship music, as already stated, is a very recent innovation. The role of music in the history of the Church has almost always been in support of the ministry of the Word and Table for the Sunday gathering. Any hymns, canticles, Psalms or other songs that are sung are done so throughout the Sunday service. An opening song, a song before the Gospel reading, musical settings to the Eucharist liturgy, songs sung or played during the distribution of the Sacrament, and some kind of hymn or song to close the service has been, with many variations, but the general same shape the norm of Christian worship.
The biggest contention I have with how modern worship music is perceived is that it has taken the primary and predominant place of the Blessed Sacrament as C.S. Lewis calls it. Even my own denomination of Free Methodism that speaks highly and centrally of the Lord’s supper as a primary means of grace has functionally replaced its use with the modern conception of worship music as the primary place of encountering God. While it is not stated, it is practiced. Johnathan Aigner offer this as what is offered in a Word & Table conception of worship:
Christ offers us everything in worship, for he offers us himself. There is where we find true meaning. In the gospel. In the Word rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered. In a rich biblical liturgy that preaches truth to our hearts. In the discipline of the church year.3
What are we to do? I would like to offer two potential steps in recovering the both the right understanding of music in the worship service as a whole, and returning to the centrality of the Table as the central focus of the Sunday gathering.
- Don’t look to emotional experience as the primary litmus test of attending Sunday worship. As I have already addressed in a previous post about the topic, our emotions are a terrible standard to derive whether we have encountered God or not. We have been relentlessly catechized in our modern Evangelical culture to look to our emotions (which are so easily swayed) as to whether we have met with God or not. Stop. Yes, emotions play a role, and they were created by God. But what we have functionally done is turn them into the standard we follow.
- Sing to know and declare, not just feel. A further extension of the first point is to reorient why we are singing. The declaration of truths about God and His mighty works are not just for us and those around us, they are a declaration to the spiritual world (1 Peter 1:12). When music becomes about giving us an emotional feel, we distort what we are there to do. Yes, emotion can and should be expressed in singing, but the purpose of that is to bolster the decoration of who God is and what He has done.
Keep singing. Don’t stop. Music has always been an important part of the expression of the Christian faith. But at the same time it is not a Sacrament. God has already given us his instituted means of grace, why would we replace them with something else?
