It’s time to get uncomfortable, says Dr. Ashley Boggan, author of “Wesleyan Vile-tality: Reclaiming the Heart of Methodist Identity,” a book that challenges United Methodists to reclaim our Methodist roots, embrace holy disruption, and live out the radical, inclusive love that defines our faith.
Guest: Dr. Ashley Boggan
- Learn more and/or order "Wesleyan Vile-tality" from Cokesbury.
- Boggan is the general secretary of the General Commission on Archives and History.
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This episode posted on April 4, 2025.
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Transcript
Prologue
It’s time to get uncomfortable, says Dr. Ashley Boggan, author of “Wesleyan Vile-tality: Reclaiming the Heart of Methodist Identity,” a book that challenges United Methodists to reclaim our Methodist roots, embrace holy disruption, and live out the radical, inclusive love that defines our faith.
Conversation
Crystal Caviness, host: Hi, this is Crystal Caviness. I'm your host with “Get Your Spirit in Shape”. And today we're here with Dr. Ashley Boggan. Hi Ashley. I'm really excited that you're here.
Dr. Ashley Boggan, guest: Me too. Thank you so much, Crystal, for having me on.
Crystal: Ashley and I work together really daily in our work with The United Methodist Church, and so it's just a real treat to have Ashley join me on an episode of “Get Your Spirit in Shape,”which is a different capacity in which we normally work. Ashley, before we get started, we're going to talk about a new book that you, well by the time the podcast airs, it will have been out for just a few days. We're going to talk about that, but before we do, I'd love for you to just share a little bit about yourself.
Ashley: All right. Let's see. I am United Methodist laywoman. I grew up in Arkansas, the Arkansas Annual Conference. Both my parents were ordained clergy persons who served that conference. My dad was an elder, my mom was a deacon, fell in love with history in high school, became an official metho-nerd in graduate school and decided to seek a PhD in Methodist history from Drew Theological School. So through that route, I am now serving as General Secretary of the General Commission on Archives and History.
Crystal: Our paths actually, we met in England in 2022, and that was an event known as the Wesley Pilgrimage and where we spend 10 days touring all the sites that are related to the Wesley family, particularly John and Charles Wesley, and really was the impetus for the book that you've written, which is titled “Wesleyan Vile-tality: Reclaiming the Heart of Methodist Identity.” And it's out April 1st and can be ordered at Cokesbury.com or all the places where you can get really awesome books. So before we dive into that though, the word “vile-tality” is in the title and you're going to talk about the word “vile” in a context that maybe is different. So we probably should get some definitions before we get started.
Ashley: Yes, definitions are always good. So vile, the way that I use it in the book and the way that John Wesley used it when he submitted to be more vile is actually, it's still the same meaning that we associate with it. Sometimes there are words that change meaning over time and vile is not one of them. So vile means something that others might find gross, something that goes against the standards or decorum of society or the things that we expect. Growing up in the South, if you were being impolite, someone might say you're being vile. So the things that break normative structures. And then the way that I've taken that word vile and how Wesley used it specifically in his context, I created the phrase “Wesleyan Vile-tality.” And that's to kind of put a critique on the insistence that we do, especially in the upper echelons of the church, of measuring things through statistics and numbers, often vile-tality, right?
A congregation or a church is vital if it has this many baptisms, this many people in confirmation, this many new members. And I instead think that the church should focus on vile-tality and how we as a church are doing ministry in ways that break the standards and the structures of society. So the official definition that I give in the book of “Wesleyan Vile-tality” is a willingness to look beyond today's acceptable practices, standards, and norms, and bend the rules in order to ensure that more and more persons can be included within the kindom of God. And that all persons, no matter who they are, how they identify, whom they love or how they live, can know and experience the love of God, can know their own self-worth and can grow to love themselves so that they can love others.
Crystal: To measure our success as a church by that definition. Wow, that would be, to be successful by that definition.
Ashley: That might bring about the kindom of God.
Crystal: That's right. I love that. Well, you were raised in The UMC as you said, and yet you say in the book that John Wesley really became real for you when you visited England, which was a second trip for you in 2022 and especially when you were in Bristol. Can you briefly share about that experience?
Ashley: Yeah, so growing up, being raised by two Methodist clergy. I tried to do the rebellious preacher kid thing of like, oh, John Wesley, nobody cares about John Wesley. He's not relevant, all this stuff, and he's annoyingly relevant today. I sit and read his tracks and they speak volumes to what's going on in today's world. And I think that the big pivot point for me in my approach and appreciation for Wesley was in Bristol on the Wesley Pilgrimage, we were at the New Room, which is the first Methodist building in the world, sitting on not the original pews, but sitting on some pretty old pews. You were there, Reverend Chris Heckert, my other colleague in crime and writing partner was there, and being in that space was really transformational. That may be really the only time where I have felt a spiritual energy from a space.
And David Worthington, who was then serving, I think as the global ambassador for the New Room or the global director for the New Room, was reading the words of John Wesley's from John Wesley's Journal from when he first arrived in Bristol to us. And David has a British accent. And so I don't know if it was the spiritual energy of the room, the words of Wesley being read and heard through a British accent, but something about it just clicked. And I'd heard the story of Bristol probably dozens of times. I had taught the revival in Bristol probably a dozen times and just being there, it rang different. So the story is that George Whitfield was in Bristol, this is 1739. George Whitefield was a longtime friend and one of the original Holy Clubbers from Oxford. And he is preaching to allegedly tens of thousands of people in Bristol and really needs some help.
He's kind of tired, he's a little burnt out, and he really wanted to go back to the American colonies and do one of his grand preaching tours. So he reaches out to a few people, Charles Wesley being one of them. A couple of the other original Holy Clubbers were some, John Wesley was his fifth choice, not even top three, fifth choice, but the letter that he writes to John just plays perfectly to John's ego about how no one else could do this work except for John, and he needs John to come look at the seeds that have been planted in Bristol. So John goes back and forth, talks with Charles, casts some lots, decides he'll go. So he arrives to Bristol and I think that George Whitefield left out the fact that he'd been field preaching and not doing all this inside the walls of the church.
And I get into why that is and the politics of it all in the book. So John arrives and sees Whitefield preaching in fields and not to the standard folks of the Anglican church, but predominantly to coal miners and their families. And John is kind of astounded is the word that he used at the way that Whitefield was preaching in the fields. And he goes on this long rant in his journal about how he thought it was a sin for most of his life to save souls anywhere that was not with inside the walls of the church. And so the next day, or April 2nd is when he finally submits, and that's the word he uses, submits to be more vile and makes the decision to go out and preach in the fields. And the two words that I think are so key, are “submits” and “vile,” and in a book that's coming out later this year called, “Calling on Fire,” Reverend Chris Heckert, and I really tease out those two words as well, the submit and the vile of submitting to something.
We often think of that as a giving up we're giving over. But for John, it was kind of an empowering, it was him living into the way that God was calling him and the way that God calls us sometimes to do vile things, like preach in some fields. So that for me, when we talk about John Wesley, we so often talk about a strangely warmed heart and Aldersgate, and I do think that's a critical point in his ministry, but for me, the place where he finds his role and he figures out how he's going to live into his call is in Bristol when he submits to be more vile.
Crystal: Something else I didn't realize until I read the book is that it was in his praying as to whether he should go and when he accepted, I believe he wrote in his journal or wrote in a letter, essentially all the world is my parish. There were all these really quotable soundbites that happened around this experience.
Ashley: Exactly.
Crystal: So it really was a pivotal part for him. His ministry, which became the denomination. In chapter one of the book, you wrote that wrestling with that journal entry from April 2nd where he writes at four in the afternoon, I submitted to be more vile that that was healing for you. Can you talk about the circumstances in which that were so for you?
Ashley: Yeah, so 2022 was one of those years where I think I finally come to terms with being okay with its existence. But for a long time I really wanted to just wipe the whole year off the map. I got divorced in June of 2022, went on the pilgrimage in July 2022, and my dad was supposed to come on the pilgrimage with me. It was a birthday, Christmas and Father's Day gift all rolled in one. It was essentially my preacher kid apology of saying, sorry that I hated Wesley for so long. Let's finally go geek out on this together.
And he unable to attend. He was unable to attend because my mother, Reverend Rebecca Boggan, had been diagnosed with cerebral angiopathy or something like that, something very science, in 2020. And she was expected to only live for three months. But with Covid and through my father being able to stay home and care for her 24/7, she lived two and a half years, which is wonderful that we had that time with her and hard, because she was not the same person. So my father decided that he couldn't leave her for two weeks to go on the pilgrimage. And so I went and on the way back, the first person I tried to call is my dad to kind of tell him about everything. We'd been texting some during the pilgrimage, but it's never the same. And he didn't answer. And so I was like, okay, I'll call him back in the morning.
I called back in the morning and still no answer. So I called my sister who lived in Arkansas. She was also away during that time and neither of us could get ahold of him. And so dad had had Covid a couple of weeks prior but had been getting better. We ended up doing a wellness check, called the cops, did a wellness check, and he was dead. He was kind of very suddenly no longer there. And that moment was soul crushing, faith crushing, shocking. It still seems surreal that here I am kind of from this big high of this pilgrimage and all I want to do is talk about my dad with it and to not be able to. So, fast forward a little bit. My mother was still alive in some sense of the word. She was still breathing. And so she lived another three months. And so the year 2022 was not my preferred year between divorce and the death of my two parents, but the way that I've kind of come to terms and healed that is that the pilgrimage was transformational.
And it did happen in 2022. And I formed relationships and friendships with you, with Chris Heckert, with others that have gotten me through the grief, the various forms of grief that are all wound up and intertwined from that year. The thing that kept coming back around. Even I was in the car for 22 hours driving from New Jersey to Arkansas when dad died. And I just, between making phone calls, letting people know that this is what happened, I just kept the words “be more vile,” just kept getting into my brain to where I was getting frustrated with it. I was like, listen, I am really good at compartmentalizing and I really need to be able to compartmentalize this. But it kept just creeping out or oozing out. And after I got back to New Jersey after the funeral and we cleared out dad's stuff and got mom in a hospice facility, I really kind of sat down and struggled, openly questioned, elaborated upon, “be more vile.”
And how is that, why does that phrase keep coming back around? What happened at the New Room kind of internally within my own faith that kept that phrase coming back around and how did it relate to the way that I was raised, the way that I was taught about Methodism and the way that I was taught about Wesleyan identity and Wesleyan faith formation and Wesleyan social action in this world. And it just kept coming back. And so I think the first time I tried to publicly talk about Wesley's submission to be more vile was actually at a funeral of Reverend Dr. Ken Rowe, who was the longtime Methodist who librarian. And for those of you who know Ken Rowe, he was a phenomenal scholar lover of Methodism. And doing this talk about him honoring his academic legacy, I realized probably very few scholars would appreciate being called vile as much as Ken Rowe.
And so I wrapped up this Wesleyan identity, this vile-tality with Ken Rowe's legacy. It was one of those presentations where I'm presenting as a person holding a PhD as general secretary, but it's in front of all my dissertation committee and professors. And so I went kind of back into student mode and was very nervous. But I had some great dialogue with former professors of mine who helped me kind of tweak, and that's where the “vile-tality” came from. So I think throughout that year, mom died a couple months later just continuing to think on our call as Methodist, our call as Wesleyans, my call and my ministry, my parents' ministries, and how they're the best definition of vile.
Crystal: Thank you for sharing that and that very tender story, that experience for you and how it impacted really your future and the things that from then on through that really difficult time. When you think back about, I want to talk about your parents for just a minute, how did you see Wesleyan Vile-tality modeled by them?
Ashley: I'll say through my dad, more of his actions might be considered vile in the Wesleyan Vile-tality Sense. So I think I was too young, or I don't remember if this was pre me, but one of the stories of dad's early ministry days was in, I think it was in Magnolia, Arkansas. So yeah, it was probably before I was born when my sister was little, there was a rumor that the KKK was going to come to the town square and hold some sort of protest or something. And my dad organized a group from the church to go and be the anti protestors, the kind of other viewpoint. And they all made signs that had Wesleyan quotes on them, and that had quotes from the Book of Discipline from scripture and put the signs on their back or on sticks, and they turned their backs to the KKK.
And so they weren't even facing them, acknowledging them, but they were standing there in that very Methodist form of silent resistance and nonviolent resistance. And he did a lot of witnessing like that, especially in being a pastor in Arkansas. He was on town councils to get rid of confederate statues in town squares where he served. I think the only time that the SPRC at one of his churches got mad at him is when they put up a no guns sign on their front door after Arkansas passed some sort of gun carrying law where you could carry guns. So I would say he was kind of through actions. My mom was more spirit of vile-tality. She was sassy in the best sense of the word. She loved hard. I don't think there's, and anyone who you ask about my mom. So she was a minister of music, and one of her favorite things that she did was she led choir tour every year for the Arkansas Annual Conference.
And by the time I was old enough to do choir tour, there were probably over a hundred kids going, and she was vile enough and brave enough to take a hundred United Methodist youth to Las Vegas, and they got to sing for President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton in the Rose Garden. But she took every one of those kids under her wing and considered them her own kids, and she would actually look at me and my sister and say, you are not my children this week. So we were not allowed to walk up to her and say, “mom, mom, mom.” But there were some kids who were really struggling, I think in their personal lives, who came from really rural, really poor parts of Arkansas whose families were dealing with addictions of various sorts, and mom was just such a pastor and a friend and a mother to 'em, and there's no person on this world that she did not radically reach out to in radical hospitality and love and just bring under her wing and give some sort of role to some sort of empowerment, some sort of purpose to you, which I think was really healing for some of the persons who went on choir tour, who came from places where people didn't really care about them and didn't care to give them a role or responsibility.
Crystal: I would say that definitely fits the definition of vile-tality. Yeah. I love though that your DNA with this just runs so deeply and yet you discovered it in your own time and in your own way was just, yeah. Well, in the book you talk about, you went into detail about how John Wesley's transformation went. Really. He came to Bristol after being in Oxford, highly educated in the proper Church of England, where to be in the church you had to be a person of means or at some higher level of society. And then he ended up being in what was known at the time as the dirtiest town in Europe, in Bristol, and he was preaching to commoners in the field. What I didn't know and really appreciated that I learned in your book is that he wasn't immediately successful. He strongly felt called by God, and he took this huge step of faith, and then he went and did something he'd never done before, and he was pelted, I'm guessing by rocks. They pelted him with rocks?
Ashley: Yeah.
Crystal: I didn't know that.
Ashley: That's one of those spaces too that I didn't know that until actually reading his journal, I guess, because we like to put our founders on such high pedestals where we assume they're successful and excel at everything that they do. And no, yeah, he finishes his sermon and I forget what he preached on, but it's something I think in the book of Acts, but people did not like, I guess his style or his message or just him. He was kind of a very clean and proper person, so maybe it was just such a contrast. And George Whitefield, who they'd been used to hearing, was a very, I guess, extravagant or expressive preacher. And I don't think John Wesley was as flamboyant and extravagant as George Whitefield was. So his style was probably a little drier. His message was maybe a little bit different. And yeah, it was not well received.
They threw rocks. They probably booed him or whatever the 18th century version of booing was. But for me, that's really kind of a beautiful ending to that story because sometimes when God calls us to do things and we don't want to do 'em, but we do 'em, they aren't always received well either by the listener or the church or whomever. And his preaching in the field was not received well by the listener or by the church, but he kept doing it because he believed in the idea that there were people out there who needed to hear the message. And it's so humbling and inspirational to know that even John Wesley failed. He didn't let it stop on. So it's okay for us in today's world and ministry to try new things and to know that they might not be successful the first time or to learn from it, adapt it, but don't give up.
Crystal: And I'm going to go on and just say, probably “Wesleyan Vile-tality” is the only book on Methodist history to quote a Pixar character. When you say that John Wesley liked Dory in “Finding Nemo,” Dory just kept swimming, swimming, swimming. John just kept preaching, preaching, preaching. And like Dory John found success.
Ashley: Exactly. Yeah, you can tell that “Finding Nemo” was also formative in my childhood.
Crystal: You know what, as it should be, lots of important life lessons there. The segue to that, Ashley, is that you have done some transformative things in your relatively short tenure as General Secretary of the General Commission archives in history. Most notably, a few that come to mind is the formation of the Center for LGBTQ+ United Methodist Heritage, in-depth research into the Methodist involvement with Indigenous Boarding Schools and the denomination’s complicity with the Sand Creek Massacre, the creation of the American Methodist Pilgrimage. And there are others, but those just really are some of the highlights. How would you say that John Wesley's experience in Bristol informed some of your actions and some of your decisions?
Ashley: I think this is the type of history and ministry that I'm submitting to being called to holding the denomination accountable to its past so that we don't repeat harm. And so often we only talk about the bright spots and the happy stories and put methods history up on a pedestal or John Wesley or Charles Wesley or Francis Asbury. We put all these folks on pedestals and tell how inspirational they were, and we don't really get the full human picture of them. And I guess the vile thing to do is to look at that full human, to look at the full humanity of our leaders, to look at the social sins of our institution and to name them so that we can begin to repent for them, hold ourselves accountable and, God willing, don’t repeat harm. And I also think that one of the things that we've lost as The United Methodist Church is that willingness to be more vile. Instead, we've leaned towards respectability, being mainstream, being big, being powerful, and we are really nervous to shake things up and make headlines in a way that might be provocative. Whereas if you look at headlines during Wesley’s day, there was rarely a headline about Methodist that was not provocative in some way.
Crystal: And the first time the word Methodist was used in print was among the most vile of circumstances. And I'm going to ask you to share about that because I think there's probably a lot of United Methodists who don't know this story,
Ashley: And it's a really frustrating thing that Methodists don't know this story because scholars have known this story. I mean, since it happened, really. This has not been one of those things that's been recently discovered or covered up. It's just something that hasn't been talked about openly or in any kind of extensive manner. So Fog's Weekly Journal is an Oxford newspaper, and the first time the word Methodist gets printed in regards to John Wesley and his group is in 1732, I think it's November, 1732. And it talks about these Methodists who “were causing no small stir in Oxford.” And through the brilliant piecing together of primary sources, Peter Forsyth, who's a British Methodist historian, did that work of piecing things together and finally connected that the “no small stirs” that they were being accused of with what was going on in Oxford at the time. And so across 1732, Methodists, well, I guess the Holy Club since they were still called the Holy Club before this article, began doing prison ministry.
And they began doing that through the suggestion of one of their members named William Morgan. And by fall, so by late summer and fall of 1732, most of what they were doing was prison ministry. They were still doing their daily routinized prayer, fasting, devotion time, but in terms of their outward acts of faith, it was going to prisons and doing ministry, being with those imprisoned. And John Wesley wrote more about one inmate than any other inmate, and he wrote about him well beyond the person's trial. So he kept staying on his mind. And that person's name was Thomas Blair. And Thomas Blair was imprisoned at the Bocardo for what was then called sodomitical acts, which is essentially, he was accused of sodomy. For those of you who don't know the word sodomy, it is a word that has fallen out of fashion for various legitimate reasons, but it's essentially non procreative sex and tends to be used in a derogatory manner about male to male acts of sexuality.
So Thomas Blair is imprisoned for this alleged crime, and it was a death row case at that point. So John begins ministering with Thomas Blair and takes a special inquiry into his case. And we see this not only from John Wesley's diary, but from his journal, from letters he's writing back and forth to other Holy Clubbers from letters that he's writing to lawyers and to government officials, all trying to advocate on Thomas Blair's behalf. So John Wesley and John Clayton, who was another Holy Clubber, John Clayton was a lawyer, get together and they decide that they are going to legally advocate for Blair, and they make sure that all of the evidence is handled correctly. They show up at his trial, they write defenses for him. And then after Thomas Blair is found guilty, but he was not condemned to death, he was given a fine, John Wesley takes it upon himself to raise the funds to get him released from the Bocardo.
And so all of that is what's going on in September, October and November of 1732. And so when this editorial is written in the Fog's Weekly Journal in Oxford saying These Methodists are causing no small in Oxford, that is what it's referring to. And it's Peter Forsyth who made that link and has provided, I guess the documentary proof that those are connected. So the very name “Methodist” comes from doing vile things like being in ministry with the imprison, standing up for those most outcast in society and putting your own reputation on the line to make sure that people have a voice, are respected, have basic senses of humanity, and know that God loves them.
Crystal: Thank you for sharing that story. The first time I heard it was from you and was surprised, raised lifelong United Methodist and never heard about the origins of the name and the circumstances surrounding that. So I really appreciate that. That's our very foundation. That's where that sprung up. I've heard you say this, and I'm not going to say it as eloquently as you say it, so please, you can fix it after I ask the question, but I've heard you say that along the way, Methodism quit being a movement and became an institution, but that now it's time to move from being an institution back to being a movement again. What does that look like for us as a church?
Ashley: I think we have to start breaking some of our own rules. We've become an institution where our Book of Discipline is our book of law. It is full of mandates and consequences and committee structures. It is often used as a weapon against people right alongside scripture. And the Book of Discipline in its original form, coming from Wesley and from Francis Asbury was more of a devotional type thing. It did have rules, but the rules were asked in a question and answer formed where it was meant to help you reflect upon certain standards and question them and figure out how you grow in your faith in accordance to these kind of guidelines of the discipline. That's just not what our discipline is today. And I think that the discipline shows, it's a very physical, tangible example of how we've become so institutionalized. Oftentimes the church tries, The United Methodist Church tries to restructure itself or remake itself, and it's against our own dang constitution to do so.
And so we get in this quagmire of we want reform and renewal in The United Methodist Church, but we have over ruled and over politicized ourselves where it's really hard to do that. And one of the things that the book that Chris Heckart and I have that comes out this fall gets into is how the genius of Wesley's Methodism is how responsive it was. And that's because it was a movement, right? If there was a problem, Wesley was immediately on it trying to figure out ways working with the community to solve that problem. He didn't have to go through committee and committee and committee and wait for jurisdictional conference, annual conference or general conference to okay, the thing, it was responsive. And so how do we as an institution regain that responsiveness that shows that we are being creative, we are being missionally prophetic. We are doing things anticipating needs and anticipating mission of the world around us.
And so I hope that if we are able to lose some of our institutionality, that one of the places we can find that is through responsiveness and kind of getting outside of our own structures. I hope that maybe with regionalization and kind of having regional conferences, we might gain some of that more immediate responsiveness, and that may be a vehicle to where we can work to do some of that. But whenever I talk about we were an institution in need of some movement, I can't help but think we are a constipated institution that needs a good dose of Miralax! There's really no other visual for it. It's just we have just jam packed ourselves with rules, and at some point we need to just go back to the source and figure out how do we do things in a more spiritually responsive way.
Crystal: That is an image I've really never had before, and will never forget it now.
Ashley: You're welcome.
Crystal: Yes. So why is now the right time for a book about Wesleyan Vile-tality?
Ashley: So right now, The United Methodist Church has a really cool opportunity. We've been through as an institution, we've been through various mergers and splits in our 250 years of existence, and we've never taken advantage of those moments to think about who are we? What is our mission in our space and place in this world? What is our mission and space within Christianity, within Protestant Christianity, within worldwide Christianity? And for the first time since our beginning as an institution in 1784, we are not excluding anybody of any class, race, category from levels of ministry within the church. But that's only on paper. So we're not excluding persons on paper. And the trick is how do we get this from being a value that's written down within the Book of Discipline to a value that's actually lived out in our everyday lives and our everyday faith and our everyday mission and just basic engagement with people.
So for an example, the Central Jurisdiction, which was created in 1939 as a racist space for all Black Methodists to join, was officially dissolved on paper in 1968. It was officially dissolved in practice in 1973, but I don't think you would find many people who would say that because those things went away on paper and in practice that we're no longer a racist church. So it's kind of the same thing now. And so how now that we aren't excluding anybody on paper, make sure that that is able to be lived into practice and becomes, again, a part of our core identity? So this is the moment where I'm trying to call us back to our roots, call us back to that radical hospitality, that radical love of Wesley and challenge The United Methodist Church to submit to being more vile.
Crystal: One of the things I loved about the book, Ashley, is that after every chapter you have discussion questions. So it's meant for personal reading, but it's also perfect for a group study, small group, Sunday school, whatever group might come together. And one of the questions you asked is, where do you see God calling you to submit to be more vile? And I thought maybe it was only fair to ask you that question about yourself since you're asking the rest of us.
Ashley: I mean, I think it depends on the day. I mean, in all honesty, Crystal, I feel like there are so many places and spaces where we need a good dose of Wesleyan Vile-tality these days. So I mean, for me personally, I have a 4-year-old daughter, and so I might be feeling called to live into my vile-tality through showing up and showing out for women and for queer people whose rights and identities are being stripped kind of by the minute in this world, not only in the United States, but it's very much a universal problem. And she and I went to, on International Women's Day, I think, which was March 4th or 5th this year, we went to a women's rights, an International Day, women's rights gathering in a nearby town. And it was so inspiring to see how many kids were there, how many kids with their moms and their dads or their parents or their grandparents or their neighbors.
And so that kind of re-energized me a little bit. And we have this small group that we're beginning at The UMC in Madison. We call ourselves Mad Mamas, but it's Madison Mamas, but Mad Mamas for short. And in all honesty, we're a little mad about some things. So I think through this type of social justice witnessing is kind of where I'm personally being called. And through this kind of group work, I'm doing the work of faith formation, of reexamining my faith, holding myself accountable and trying to figure out how us as a collective identity of mothers within Madison who go to this church might submit to be more vile too within our communities.
Crystal: We are going a little longer. But honestly, we could keep talking for two or three hours, but I cannot talk to you about, you don't just talk about John Wesley's vileness. You talk about Jesus' vileness in the book too.
Ashley: I know.
Crystal: And I love it. And we just can't not mention that because it's so, the way you talk about it, I mean the original vile person.
Ashley: Yeah, I, and I was really trying to wrestle with it, and I think it's written like this in the book of like, please don't just close the book and give up being like, she called Jesus vile, I’m out. Stick with me because we praise Jesus for the vile things that he did. We just don't name them as vile because we think that might sound good or sound judgy or sound off-putting. But he associated sinners of his day with prostitutes, with tax collectors. He critiqued the rich and uplifted the poor. And then I even think I say, and he had the vile audacity to overcome death. There are just so many moments in his life where he was like, cool, I see your standard, I'm going to break that and just does it time and time again, not only with social and political norms of his day, but with biology and physics.
Crystal: Yeah. When you said, you were talking about the Mad Mamas, which is such a great name for a small group, I was thinking about, I'm sure there are times that John Wesley was angry about something that he saw that wasn't right, these injustices, and we know because the Bible, we've got it in the Bible where Jesus was definitely angry at what was happening around him in the church, in society, in the church.
Ashley: There are great memes, and I think it's even a t-shirt now that says, “Don't find yourself sitting at a table that Jesus would've flipped.” Yes. That!
Crystal: Yeah. Well, I want to ask you, because I told you about the top of this, or maybe before we started recording, I had this list of questions and we didn't get to all of them, so I'll have to figure out what we're going to do about that later. But is there anything that you definitely wanted to talk about that we didn't?
Ashley: We really need to reclaim what it means to be Methodist, to be United Methodist, and to be Wesleyan. I think there are a lot of definitions of Methodism out there and Wesleyan out there. There are a lot of claims to orthodoxy of Methodism or Wesleyan, but there's no way to look at the life of John Wesley at the life of Jesus, at the life of a lot of people who have claimed and identified as Methodist in our past, and not see the underlying core concept of breaking the standards of society, of uplifting, not uplifting, of overturning those standards, of turning the world upside down. I'll share one more quick story if we have time. So this involves Charles Wesley. Charles was, I think it was 1744, was following some lay ministers to I think a town. The town's not going to come to my mind, but when he arrives, he greets this Methodist society and offers to accompany them three miles down the road to the preaching house.
And since it's Charles leading them, of course they sing the entire three miles, and they're just so disruptive to the town that protestors rush ahead of them and are waiting to essentially beat them up. Methodists were beaten up and jailed and harassed and all sorts of things back then when they arrive, when Charles Wesley and the group arrive at the preaching house, the townspeople are there screaming, “Here come the Methodists, the people that turn the world upside down.” And that's a direct quote from Acts where Paul showed up. This is where my scripture knowledge gets in the way, but where Paul comes into a town, might be Thessalonia, I don't really know, and the same thing is said, “Here come those followers of Jesus, the people who turn the world upside down.” And at our core, we are the people who turn the world upside down.
We are not the people who build the biggest churches and raise the most money and have the most influence on Capitol Hill. We can be those things, but we have to prioritize being vile, being the people who turn the world upside down, being the people who aren't afraid to break a few rules because God's love calls us to do that. So I'll leave it kind of there of that's really the impetus behind this book is getting us to reclaim that identity and to claim it with a sense of authority of this is what it means to be Methodist. This is what it means to be Wesleyan, and this is what it means to be United Methodist in this moment and moving forward.
Crystal: Wow. Thank you. That was awesome. I had never heard that Charles Wesley story. I love that. But again, here they are, ready to be pelted. Well, I'm going to ask you now the question that we ask all of our guests on “Get Your Spirit in Shape” and how do you keep your on spirit in shape?
Ashley: So I really think lately, so we've been doing the Mad Mamas Group since January. It's a new thing we're trying out where being a mom these days, you're pulled in so many different directions between kids and work, home, family life, and we meet once a month, which probably could be more often. But again, as moms, it's really hard to schedule it. And we sit in a circle and we drink wine. But we've started asking ourselves the questions that Wesley originally asked his bands. And again, this, I don't mean to keep plugging books, but this originally comes from Reverend Chris Hecker's Grace group models where he's updated these questions. And what we've discovered the three months that we've been doing this is that we never make it past the first question that takes the full time that we're there. And that first question is, how is it with your soul?
And we sit around drinking wine and just spilling our souls out to one another in a way that is beautifully vulnerable, in a way that breaks through. I think so many of us, because of social media and just the way that we are supposed to present ourselves in this world, think that everybody's life is going well except their own. And this is a space where we can really share how it is with our soul. And sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. We've learned, we all have a lot of souls. Some of them are doing good on a given day and some aren't. But that for me is where my spirit has been. Finding community access for growth and energy for growth and kind of a safe space to not be okay too.
Crystal: I love that. It sounds like it's a space where Wesleyan Vile-tality is thriving.
Ashley: For sure.
Crystal: Ashley, thank you for being a guest on “Get Your Spirit in Shape.” This was just so wonderful to get to talk to you about the book and thank you for your ministry and for writing this book and the book that's coming in August. And I know there are other books coming down the road too, but thank you so much.
Ashley: Thank you, Crystal.
Epilogue
That was Dr. Ashley Boggan, general secretary of the General Commission on Archives and History, discussing her new book, “Wesleyan Vile-tality: Reclaiming the Heart of Methodist Identity.” To learn more, go to umc.org/podcast and look for this episode where you'll find helpful links and a transcript of our conversation. If you have questions or comments, feel free to email me at a special email address just for :”Get Your Spirit in Shape” listeners, gysis@umcom.org. If you enjoyed today's episode, we invite you to leave a review on the platform where you get your podcast. Thank you for being a “Get Your Spirit in Shape” listener. I'm Crystal Caviness and I look forward to the next time that we're together.
