Worth reading, part II

Earlier this week I explained that I am going to spend the next few posts looking at a number of great resources - both in print and online - that specialize in the Wesleyan tradition and contemporary Methodism.

I want to point first to an interesting new online journal by the name of Methodist Review. I highlighted MR back in August in this post. MR is the successor to Quarterly Review, which was published for about 25 years by the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the UMC as a journal of theological resources for ministry.

Basically, that meant that its articles tried to bridge the gap between the academy and the church. Its authors included scholars as well as pastors and laity within the church. And its articles represented a wide variety of topics in theology and ministry. By the way, the entire QR archive is available for free online at this link.

I'm excited about Methodist Review for a number of reasons. First, it fills a need that was created by the demise of QR after it ceased publication five years ago. We need a journal that is committed to publishing broadly in the area of Wesleyan and Methodist Studies, particularly around issues of practical theology and ministry that find purchase in both academy and church.

Second, MR is free! All that is required is a quick and easy online registration. After that, subscribers have access to all of MR's content, which can be read from your computer or printed out in pdf format.

Third, MR is a "peer-reviewed" journal, which means that submissions are read and judged in a blind review process to determine suitability and fitness for publication. So while MR, as a journal, wants to fit a niche not occupied by most scholarly journals, it is committed to maintaining a high level of quality in the articles it accepts because of the peer-review process. That also means it can serve as an outlet for publication for those of us who write essay-length works in Wesleyan theology or Methodist history - both because it helps to distribute our ideas to an audience and because it can help in securing teaching positions and tenure status.

Fourth and finally, as an online journal, MR is at the front end of a trend in academic publishing in general, which is moving away from expensive print formats and going to online publishing. Some people see that as lamentable, and it may well be. But academic journals are expensive to print and have to rely on notoriously small subscriber bases. So going online is really about developing a model that is sustainable for the future. In that sense, MR is helping to give shape in an area of academic publishing that, no doubt, many other journals will be moving into in the coming years.

One reason I started with Methodist Review in this blog series is that I think it could be of significant interest to a wide variety of committed Wesleyan Christians. Look, for instance, at the table of contents for Volume 1, which was published last year. The articles range from a consideration of the nature of Wesleyan theology, to a retrospective look at the UMC's first 40 years, to an analysis of certain aspects of John Wesley's thought.

Those are all topics with relevance both to academic theological reflection and grounded Christian practice!

And as an added bonus related to MR's online format, I was glad to find out that it is not limited either in page length or publishing date. That means it can feature articles both longer and shorter than that which would be standard in a print-based journal. And articles can also be added to a given volume throughout the year by simply continuing with sequential pagination. Those two innovations, in and of themselves, show immediate benefits to having a specifically online journal in the world of Wesleyan theology and Methodist history.

So read and enjoy!

Check out Methodist Review

A new online journal featuring articles on Wesleyan theology and Methodist history is just out. Its title is Methodist Review. And I think its presence in the world of Methodism is really important.

This journal just went online a few weeks ago - check it out here - but it already promises to occupy a very important place in the space between the halls of academia and the pews of the church. Methodist Review (or what I'll call MR) is the successor to a journal called Quarterly Review, which ran in print format from 1980-2005. Quarterly Review (or QR) was published by the UMC, and you can access its archives free of charge at this site.

My understanding of the passing of QR and the birth of MR is from conversations I've had with people over the past few years, so I may not be right on every detail. But I think QR was shuttered due to the combination of cost (i.e., printing and distribution) and declining readership. Its demise was seen as a real loss by the groups that read and wrote for QR: clergy with a more academic bent and scholars with a commitment to the church. The search soon began for a way to provide the kind of church-oriented theological reflection that QR offered but in a way that could be sustained over the long term. The result - a few years later - is MR, which will exist entirely in an online format.

Why am I telling you this? For two reasons.

First, the mission of Methodist Review is important. We need a journal that prints articles aiming at scholarly quality (e.g., MR is "peer reviewed," which is an important criterion for academic respect), while still orienting its content at issues that matter to the church. The description on MR's website says it will be publishing "scholarly articles in all areas and eras of Wesleyan and Methodist studies." That may mean that it will lean more toward the academy than the church (as opposed to QR, which often did the opposite). But the articles in its first issue are all about the church - specifically, a number of retrospective views of the first 40 years of UMC history and a critical conversation about the nature of Wesleyan theology. This kind of content occupies a crucial and much-needed space for scholars, pastors, and laity in the Wesleyan tradition.

Second, Methodist Review is online and free. That means that the Methoblogosphere can tap into it with the ease of a mouse click. All you have to do is register and you can have access to pdf's of any article from any issue. With the exception of professors and graduate students, we'll probably never get church folks to subscribe to expensive printed & bound journals again. But if we can direct them to a website, then we can continue the important work of Wesleyan theological reflection as a whole church.

Handing out the kudos: The support for MR comes from the Perkins School of Theology (SMU), the Candler School of Theology (Emory Univ.), and the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry (UMC). Its editors are Prof. Russell Richey and Prof. Rex Matthews of Candler, and Prof. Ted Campbell of Perkins. I imagine that it took a lot of work to get this new venture off the ground, and the people & institutions that have made it possible should be recognized for the service they are doing for both academy and church.

I'm going to add a link to MR in my right-hand sidebar. I hope you'll consider becoming a regular reader (and maybe a contributor, too!).