Wendy J. Deichmann

Our Heritage of Revival

While many yearn for religious revival of some sort, revivals and revivalism have their critics. Nonetheless, the fact is that revival and revivalism have...

The United in United Methodist

It may come as a surprise to the uninitiated in United Methodist history that the word United was not originally, formally associated with “the...

Reform and Separation from a Wesleyan Perspective

When efforts to reform one’s church fail, is separation a prudent choice? Or is it better to spare the church yet another division and...

The Wesleyan Tradition’s Long Road to Reclaiming the Ancient Church’s Practice of Ordaining Women

Although John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, respected and employed women in ministry, neither he nor his early successors in the eighteenth century advocated...

Divine Call and the Historic Struggle over Women’s Roles

In a previous Catalyst blog entitled “The Biblical Basis for the Ordination of Women in the Wesleyan Tradition,” I described various patterns of women’s...

The Biblical Basis for the Ordination of Women in the Wesleyan Tradition

In the past month or so, those of us in the Wesleyan theological tradition have been privileged to witness the ordination of numerous women...