During the American Revolutionary War, a British soldier interrupted a Methodist service in New York and demanded that the worshippers sing “God Save the King.”
When the singing was over, the preacher called on his fellow Methodists to sing a proper concluding hymn by Charles Wesley: “Rejoice, the Lord is King.”
Ashley Boggan, the top executive of the United Methodist Commission on Archives and History, recounted the incident from the early days of John Street United Methodist Church at the Council of Bishops spring meeting.
“That tension between civic loyalty and theological allegiance has never really left us — not as Methodists, not as citizens of this world,” Boggan told the bishops meeting in Jacksonville and those watching online. “And it’s exactly where today's conversation is going to take us.”
Boggan was introducing two back-to-back panels — one consisting of United Methodist scholars and the other of bishops — about Christian faith and democracy.
The bishops and Boggan organized the conversation ahead of this year’s Fourth of July when Americans will mark the 250th anniversary of the adoption of its Declaration of Independence.
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