Methodist theologians include those theologians affiliated with any of the Methodist denominational churches such as The United Methodist Church, independent Methodists, or churches affiliated with the Holiness Movement including the Church of the Nazarene, the Free Methodist Church, the Wesleyan Methodist Church (America), the Wesleyan Methodist Church (Great Britain), the Pilgrim Holiness Church, and the Wesleyan Church, as well as other church organizations.
Proto-Methodist theologians [edit]
18th century [edit]
19th century [edit]
- Adam Clarke - Biblical theologian uncomfortable with systematic approaches to Christian theology, argued that Christ's Sonship began with the Incarnation. Wrote a single volume theology.
- Richard Watson - outspoken British abolitionist, wrote against Clarke in defense of the eternal Sonship of Christ, one of the first theologians to systematize Wesley's theology.
- Phoebe Palmer
- Jabez Bunting - author of numerous articles and published sermons.
- Timothy Merritt
- Wilbur Fisk - religious educator, favored ending slavery progressively (rather than in the revolutionary way proposed by other notable abolitionists, so as to avoid a split in the Church), early influence on the temperance movement.
- Nathan Bangs - Arminian apologist, first editor of the Methodist magazine Christian Advocate, opposed the antinomianism of the New Light Baptist community. Wrote six significant theological letters to a Presbyterian pastor, Rev. S. Williston.
- Hugh Price Hughes - Welsh social reformer, first editor of the Methodist Times and first superintendent of the West London Methodist Mission.
- William Burt Pope - wrote a 3-volume systematic theology.
- Minor Raymond - wrote a 3-volume systematic theology
- Thomas N. Ralston - wrote a large one volume theology
- Amos Binney
- Daniel D. Whedon -
- John Miley - wrote a two-volume systematic theology (1893). Rejected the penal substitution theory of the atonement and advocated a moral government theory.
- James Strong
- Borden Parker Bowne - wrote numerous books on various theological themes; renowned as a philosopher and theologian.
- Thomas O. Summers - A significant editor and publisher. Published his own 2-volume systematic theology (out of print and not available online)
- Martin Ruter
- Henry Clay Dean
- Henry Clay Morrison
- Daniel Parish Kidder
20th century [edit]
21st century [edit]
- William J. Abraham
- Marcella Althaus-Reid - first female professor of theology at the University of Edinburgh in 160 years, associated with feminist, liberation, and queer theology.
- Thomas Jay Oord
- Thomas C. Oden - responsible in large part for founding the theological school known as paleo-orthodoxy, associated also with the confessing movement.
- Mercy Oduyoye - Ghanaian feminist theologian.
- Stanley Hauerwas - theological ethicist and outspoken anti-nationalist Christian pacifist, studied under neo-orthodox theologian H. Richard Niebuhr, associated with narrative theology and was influential in the formation of the Ekklesia Project.
- Christopher Morse - developed a prescriptive type of via negativa, described as "faithful disbelief."
- Marjorie Suchocki - current director of the Whitehead International Film Festival, one of the leading thinkers in the field of process theology.
- William H. Willimon - bishop of the United Methodist Church, sometimes associated with postliberal narrative theology, named one of the top twelve best preachers in the English-speaking world in a 1996 Baylor University survey.
- Geoffrey Wainwright
- Andrew S. Park - systematic theologian and pioneer in Asian American liberation theology, associated with Christian mysticism and the debate over the relationship between religion and science.
- I. Howard Marshall - New Testament Theologian
- The people of The United Methodist Church
