MWRC Annual Lectures

The MWRC Annual Lecture is a perennial highlight for the MWRC in which a scholar of international standing in a field of studies that connects to the MWRC presents their research. This is a public event. Revised versions of most lectures have been published in Wesley and Methodist Studies (see below for details).

The 2024 lecture will be given by Prof David Bundy, Associate Director of the Manchester Wesley Research Centre. The lecture, titled ‘Religious Experiences and Institutional Identities: Globalising the Holiness and Pentecostal Networks’, will be on Tuesday 18 June 2024 at 5pm UK time. This event will be both in person and online. You can register to attend the lecture online here.

Future Annual Lectures

The 2025 lecture will be given by Prof Randy L. Maddox, William Kellon Quick Professor Emeritus of Wesleyan and Methodist Studies, Duke Divinity School, and 2026 lecture by Dr Deirdre Brower-Latz, Principal and Senior Lecturer in Pastoral and Social Theology, Nazarene Theological College. 

Past Annual Lectures

2023: ‘Holiness and Black Consciousness: The Social Witness of Black Saints, Shepherds, and Sages’. Professor Cheryl J. Sanders, Howard University School of Divinity. Video of the lecture and video preview of the lecture

2022: ‘Singing of the Holy Spirit: Wesleyan Hymnody, Methodist Pneumatology, and World Christianity’. Professor J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, Trinity Theological Seminary, Ghana. To be published in Wesley and Methodist Studies, 16:1 (Jan. 2024). Video of the lecture and video preview of the lecture

2021: ‘Theology and the Wesleyan Tradition’. Professor Thomas A. Noble, Nazarene Theological Seminary and Nazarene Theological College. Published in Wesley and Methodist Studies,14:2 (2022). Video of the lecture and video preview of the lecture

2020: ‘Another Look at the Methodist/Wesleyan Love Feast: Reception, Adaptation, and Emerging Possibilities’. Professor Karen B. Westerfield Tucker, Boston University School of Theology. To be published in Wesley and Methodist Studies,15:2 (June 2023). Video of the lecture

2019: ‘The Fall of Wisdom: Reflections on Evil and the Purposes of God’. Dr Chris E. W. Green, Southeastern University. Published as ‘Breathing Underwater: Re-forming the Wesleyan Theology of Evil’, in Wesley and Methodist Studies,13:2 (2021). Video of the lecture

2018: ‘Re-formation: Liberty in a Wesleyan Spirit and Praxis’. Professor Ulrike Schuler, Reutlingen School of Theology. The lecture focused on the Tolpuddle martyrs and reflections on a Wesleyan theology of liberty. Published as ‘Re-formation in Action: Liberty in a Wesleyan Spirit and Praxis—The Tolpuddle Martyrs, Part I’ and ‘. . . Part, II’, in Wesley and Methodist Studies,12:1 and 12:2 (2020). Video of the lecture

2017: '"Works of Grace and Providence": The Structure of John Wesley’s Theology’. Professor Howard A. Snyder, International Representative of the MWRC. Published in Wesley and Methodist Studies,10:2 (June 2018). Video of the lecture

2016: 'The Method of John Wesley's Practical Theology Reconsidered'. Professor Kenneth J. Collins, Asbury Theological Seminary. Published in Wesley and Methodist Studies, 9:2 (June 2017). Video of the lecture

2015: 'Beauty in Creation: John Wesley's Natural Philosophy'. Dr David Rainey, Nazarene Theological College. Published in Wesley and Methodist Studies, 9:1 (Jan. 2017). Video of the lecture

2014: 'Scriptural Holiness: The Wesleys' Use of Scripture'. Professor Morna Hooker, Lady Margaret’s Professor Emerita and Life Fellow, Robinson College, Cambridge. Published in the Wesleyan Theological Journal, 50:2 (2015). Video of the lecture

2013: 'Secession and Revival: The Louth Free Methodist Church in the 1850s'. Professor David Bebbington, University of Stirling. Published in Wesley and Methodist Studies, 7 (2015). 

2012: '"So much idolized by some, and railed at by others": towards understanding George Whitefield'. Dr David Ceri Jones, Lecturer in History, Aberystwyth University. Published in Wesley and Methodist Studies, 5 (2013). 

2011: '"An Exact Image": Portraits of John Wesley'. Professor Richard Heitzenrater, William Kellon Quick Emeritus Professor of Church History and Wesley Studies, Duke Divinity School. Extended and published as An Exact Likeness: The Portraits of John Wesley (Abingdon Press, 2016). 

2010: 'A Journey into God: A Wesleyan Theology of Evangelism'. Dr Philip Meadows, Lecturer in Missiology and Wesleyan Studies, Cliff College. Published in Wesley and Methodist Studies, 3 (2011).

2009: 'Wesley Agonistes and the Calvinist Sublime: The Spiritual Ideals of the Early English Evangelical School.' Dr Bruce Hindmarsh, James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College, Vancouver. A revised version was published as ‘The Inner Life of Doctrine: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Calvinist-Arminian Debate Among Methodists’, Church History, 83:2 (June 2014), 367-97 and incorporated into The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism: True Religion in a Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2018), chapter 8.

2008: 'John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards, with a focus on Wesley's edition of Edwards' The Life of David Brainerd. Isabel Rivers, Research Professor, Queen Mary, University of London and Co-Director of the Dr Williams's Centre for Dissenting Studies. Revised for publication in Vanity Fair and the Celestial City: Dissenting, Methodist, and Evangelical Literary Culture in England, 1720–1800 (Oxford University Press, 2018).

2007: 'Recovering Charles Wesley's Voice: Opportunities, Obstacles, and Achievements.' Dr Kenneth Newport, Professor in Christian Thought, Liverpool Hope University. Published in the Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 88:2 (2006), 19-38. 

2006: ‘John Wesley: Celebrity and Holy Man.’ Dr John D Walsh, Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford.

2005: ‘The Current State of Wesley Scholarship.’ Dr Henry D Rack, Bishop Fraser Senior Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History Emeritus in the University of Manchester. Published in the Wesleyan Theological Journal, 41:2 (Fall, 2006).