A critical evaluation of the context and history of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa’s “One and Undivided Church” statement

Abstract

The statement “one undivided church” has always been at the centre of theology since New Testament times. Jesus in his greatest prayer in (John 17) appealed to God that his followers may be one, as he and God are one. For Jesus, oneness was proof that he was sent by God. In the history of Methodism, John Wesley, as late as a month before he died in 1791, wrote to Ezekiel Cooper in Philadelphia saying, “lose no opportunity of declaring to all people that the Methodists are one in all the world and that it is their full determination so to continue” (Wesley, 1997:260). Furthermore, the oneness theme was underscored by the World Methodist Council as their theme and logo for the 2016 Conference. The theme was used both to reflect the Council’s goal of being a body that unites the eighty member-churches and also to recall John Wesley’s quote. In 1958, the Methodist Church of Southern African (MCSA) Conference, added “and” to the statement and proposed the statement that the MCSA is a “one and undivided church”. Using the examples of Jesus, John Wesley and the World Methodist Council, this paper interrogates the MCSA’s 1958 statement to find out to what extent the MCSA is in fact one and undivided. The paper will conclude by proposing a novel theological approach that MCSA can consider, for it to be one truly undivided church. The article uses desktop methodology and reviewed credible and relevant academic literature available on the topic under study.