(…actually, Wesley was a teetotaler so not possible.)

Ladies and gentlemen, the Provcrew is at war. “Can you be a Wesleyan Protestant and a Christian realist?”

The battle lines are drawn. Providence editor Mark Tooley, a Methodist Christian realist, says yes; editor at large Robert Nicholson, a non-Methodist who knows about John Wesley’s optimistic theology, is skeptical. To break the deadlock, they hosted Methodist theologian and Reinhold Niebuhr scholar Robin Lovin to set the record straight.

Sin, grace, anthropology, eschatology, nationalism, fascism—they got to all of it. And the outcome was surprising.