Where Brackettville's Slator Hall /Angel Food Ministries Fears to Tred! :)

Methodists & Microcredit:

"But it would be just like God to use a secular Muslim economist - turned - banker...

"...to remind the descendants of the Wesleyan movement just what it means for salvation to be both personal and social."



Adapted from the end of authors Jason Byassee and L. Gregory Jones article in First Things Magazine, November 2009.

It's called, naturally! Methodists & Microcredit.


"John Wesley was not the greatest preacher of his day.

"His occasional friend and sometime nemesis George Whitefield was that.

"Whitefield said My brother Wesley acted wisely. The souls that were awakened under his ministry he joined in societies, and thus preserved the fruit of his labor. This I neglected, and my people are a rope of sand...

"That's an arresting image.

"A rope of sand may seem to the eye like a rope of cords.

"At a glance you might think you could secure a ship to a dock with it.

"But as soon as you touch it, it falls to dust.

"Those who responded to Wesley's preaching were organized into class meetings for the subsequent spiritual quest for sanctification -- based on the understanding that, without a later move toward holiness, the earlier move toward justification counted for little.

"Class leaders would introduce sessions with such arresting questions as So, did anyone sin this week?

"Wesley's gift for organizing was also obvious in the early Methodists' loan fund.

"These Wesleyan gifts for organizing and empowering the poor survive in institutions launched by Methodism and its ecclesial offspring: universities, hospitals, and orphanages.

"But a more surprising descendant may be Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

"He's shown foreign - aid donors that what is a minuscule amount to Westerners, if given directly to a woman in a Bangladeshi village, can improve her entire family's life dramatically -- and that this can [then] be repeated millions of times over around the world.

"Yunus achieved a repayment rate comparable to what Chase Manhattan enjoys among wealthy Americans, by organizing Bangladeshi women into small groups: If one woman failed to pay back her loan the entire group's access to credit would be put in jeopardy.

"Wesley's loan fund makes it clear that his vision of salvation was not only social, it was holistic -- including bodily and economic well - being.

"The Methodist revival swept across the world because its preachers and converts saw a chance at a renewed, holier, and ultimately more joyful life now as well as eternal life in the future.

"Grameen [Bank] has no interest in the latter.

"But it would be just like God to use a secular Muslim economist - turned - banker to remind the descendants of the Wesleyan movement just what it means for salvation to be both personal and social..."