Glen O'Brien, Ph.D.
Research Coordinator and Lecturer, Eva Burrows College in the University of Divinity
Professor Glen O’Brien is a Minister of the Word in the Uniting Church in Australia, and an employee of the Salvation Army's Australia Territory. He is Chair of the Research Committee of the University of Divinity and Research Coordinator at Eva Burrows College where he lecturing in Christian History and Theology, specialising in Wesleyan studies. A graduate of Kingsley College (Bachelor Theology and Master of Arts in Biblical Studies), Asbury Theological Seminary (Master of Arts Theological Studies) and La Trobe University (PhD in history), Glen has engaged in postdoctoral research on John Wesley at Duke Divinity School (2011), Asbury Theological Seminary (2013) and Oxford Brookes University (2014). He was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Manchester Wesley Research Centre for six weeks in the summer of 2015, and was elected a Member of the Oxford Institute for Methodist Theological Studies in 2013 and 2018. He is a Member of the University of Divinity’s Religion and Social Policy Network, a Research Fellow in the Australasian Centre for Wesleyan Research and founding Editor of the Centre's peer reviewed journal The Journal of Wesleyan Thought (formerly Aldersgate Papers). He has published widely on Wesleyan and Methodist themes, including two volumes in the Ashgate Methodist Studies Series, many articles and book reviews in scholarly journals including The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, The Journal of Religious History, Methodist Review, Wesley and Methodist Studies, and the Wesleyan Theological Journal, as well as contributing numerous chapters to edited collections. The proposal of his monograph, Liberty and Loyalty: John Wesley’s Political World is currently in peer review with a major publisher.
Select Publications
John Wesley's Political World, Routledge Methodist Studies Series (Routledge, 2023), portions of the research were completed when he was an MWRC Visiting Research Fellow.
‘“I Wish Them Well but I Dare not Trust Them”: John Wesley’s Anti-Catholicism in Context’, Journal of Religious History 45:2 (June 2021), 185-210.
'John Wesley’s Sunday Service: A Methodist Urtext,’ in When We Pray: The Future of the Prayer Book Tradition, eds. Stephen Burns and Robert Gribben (Melbourne: Coventry Press, 2020), 65–87.
‘What Does Holy Leadership Look Like?,’ in Open and Relational Leadership: Leading with Love, ed. Roland Hearn, Sheri Kling and Thomas J, Oord, eds. (Grasmere, ID: SacraSage Press, 2020), 77–80.
'Holiness as Happiness: A Plain Account of Sanctification,’ in A Plain Account of Christian Faithfulness: Essays in Honor of David B. McEwan. eds. Rob A. Fringer and Dean G. Smith (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2020), 147–163.
Entry on ‘Methodism,’ in Adam Possamai and Anthony J. Blassi, eds. The Sage Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Religion (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2020), vol. 2: 491–493.
'“Seeing the Clouds through the Aperture of the Helmet”: Reading Ned Kelly’s Life as a Christian Life,’ in Finding a Home in the Uniting Church. The Proceedings of the Second Uniting Church National History Conference June 7-10, 2019. ed. Robert Renton (Melbourne: Uniting Church National History Society, 2020), 256-271.
‘What John Wesley Might Say to the Uniting Church on the Occasion of its Fortieth Birthday,’ in A Pilgrim People: Forty Years On. Proceedings of the Inaugural Uniting Church National History Conference June 9-12, 2017. ed. Robert Renton (Melbourne: Uniting Church National History Society, 2018), 234-255.
‘A Trinitarian Theology of Sanctification for the Wesleyan Tradition,’ Phronema 33:2 (2018): 63–81.
‘George Whitefield, John Wesley, and the Rhetoric of Liberty,’ in New Approaches to Religion and the Enlightenment, ed. B.C. McInelly and Paul E. Kerry (Vancouver: Fairley Dickinson University Press, 2018), 105–128.
Wesleyan-Holiness Churches in Australia: Hallelujah under the Southern Cross (London and New York: Routledge, 2018)
‘Freedom in the Atlantic World: John Wesley and George Whitefield on Slavery,’ in Wesley and Whitefield? Wesley vs. Whitefield?, ed. Ian Maddock (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2018), 161-182.
‘“A Good and Sensible Man”: John Wesley’s Reading and Use of Jonathan Edwards,’ in The Global Edwards: Papers from the Jonathan Edwards Congress held in Melbourne, August 2015, ed. Rhys Bezzant (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017), 247-60.
‘Methodist, Congregationalist, and Uniting Church Theologians, 1916-2016,’ St. Mark’s Review no. 242 (Dec 2017): 99-113.
‘“A Divine Attraction between Your Soul and Mine”: George Whitefield and Same Sex Affection in Eighteenth-Century Methodism,' Pacifica 30:2 (2017): 177-192.
‘Irving Benson: Preacher, Writer, Mission Superintendent (1897–1980),’ in Out of the Ordinary: Twelve Australian Methodist Biographies, ed. William Emilsen and Patricia Curthoys (Adelaide: Mediacom, 2015), 217-38.
'Introduction,' (co-written with Hilary Carey), ‘Methodism in the Australian Colonies, 1811 to 1855’; ‘Australian Methodist Religious Experience,’ ‘The Continuing Methodist Legacy’ (co-written with William Emilsen), and 'Conclusion' in Glen O'Brien and Hilary Carey, eds. Methodism in Australia: A History. Farnham, Surrey, Burlington, VA: Ashgate, 2015.