Kelly Diehl Yates, BA, MA, Ph.D. (NTC), FRHistS

'Testing the Limits of a "Catholic Spirit": John Wesley, Methodism, and Catholicism' (NTC), 2018. Published by Pickwick as The Limits of a Catholic Spirit: John Wesley, Methodism, and Catholicism, 2021.

Kelly's thesis is a study of the extent to which John Wesley, as an eighteenth-century evangelical Protestant in a society in which anti-Catholicism was prevalent, was able to put into practice his self-professed ideals of a Catholic Spirit and religious toleration.  Her research interests include John and Charles Wesley, the early Methodist movement, eighteenth-century British anti-Catholicism, and ecumenism. She has served in pastoral roles in the Church of the Nazarene in Oklahoma and Arkansas, and is currently on the pastoral staff at Oklahoma City First Church of the Nazarene. She teaches for Indiana Wesleyan University, Marion, Indiana. She is the founder and director of the Walt Crow Center, a retreat center for pastors in Oklahoma City. She maintains a website at kellydiehlyates.com. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Kelly was a Postdoctoral Fellow of the MWRC in 2019. Her reflection on this can be found here.

Select Publications

Books

Doctrinal and Controversial Treatises III, vol. 14 of The Works of John Wesley, edited with Sarah Lancaster and Randy L. Maddox (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2022).

The Limits of a Catholic Spirit: John Wesley, Methodism, and Catholicism (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2021)

Rush to the Heartland (a novel) (Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2021)

Book Reviews

Review of Donna L. Fowler Marchant, Mothers in Israel: Methodist Beginnings through the Eyes of Women (Wesley’s Foundery, 2020), in Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 63/3 (Autumn 2021), 121-122.

Articles and Chapters

‘Holy Clubs’, Christian History 132 (November 2019), 30-32.

8 entries in Reflecting God: Devotions for Holy Living 79:4 (Summer 2019), 89-95.

‘“Perhaps he cannot know”: John Wesley's Use of Doubt as a Principle of his “Catholic Spirit”’, in Christianity and Doubt: The Church and Doubt, Studies in Church History 52, eds Frances Andrews, Charlotte Methuen, and Andrew Spicer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 331-346. 

 'How do we View People of Other Religions?', in Essential Beliefs: A Wesleyan Primer, eds Diane LeClerc and Mark A. Maddix (Kansas City: Beacon Hill, 2016), 143-148.

 'Jeffrey the Jacobite Poltergeist: The Politics of the Ghost that Haunted the Epworth Rectory in 1716-17', in Wesleyan Theological Journal 50/2  (Fall 2015), 68-79.

'The Wesleyan Trilateral: Prevenient Grace, Catholic Spirit, and Religious Tolerance', in Wesleyan Theological Journal 48/1 (Spring 2013), 54-61.

 'Confederates Hugging Yankees and other Impossibilities our Church Promotes', in Grace and Peace Magazine (Summer/Fall 2011).

'Don’t let it Get You Down: Jesus’ Rejection at Nazareth' and 'We Just Don’t Get It: James and John Request Special Treatment: Mark 10:35-45', in Preacher’s Magazine (Pentecost 2009).

with Gnonhossou, Sègbégnon Mathieu. "Conversion as an Act of Reclamation: John and Charles Wesley’s Interaction with Two West African Enslaved Men." Wesley and Methodist Studies 15/1 (2023): 1-26.

Email: kelly-yates@outlook.com