A marker takes the colour of the side it landed on — blue toward the left pole,
orange toward the right. The shape says which tradition; the colour never does.
The rails draw traditional, non-Calvinist Southern Baptists and the family that came from John Wesley: the United Methodist Church, the Nazarenes, the Salvation Army. Calvinist Baptists sit far over on grace.
What they share
Grace reaches everybody. Both land in the same band: it runs ahead of anyone asking, and anyone can refuse. Wesley called that first move prevenient grace: grace that goes first.
Both were built by preachers who went looking. Methodist circuit riders and Baptist frontier preachers covered the same country, and either will still ask a congregation to decide.
Scripture is the rule for both, in different words: a Baptist says Scripture alone, a Methodist says Scripture first, with the creeds and Articles consulted underneath.
Where they differ
Both sides below are stated the way people who hold them would state them. Landing in
the same band is not agreeing, and landing in different ones is not a verdict.
Baptists call the Supper an ordinance rather than a sacrament: an act of obedience that remembers and proclaims Christ's death until He comes, kept monthly or quarterly. Whatever blessing comes with it comes through the faith of the person taking part, not through the bread. Baptism follows belief, by immersion, once someone is old enough to say what they believe.
Methodist
sacramental
Methodists call the Supper a means of grace: God really gives something there, and Wesley preached that a Christian should receive it as often as he possibly can. They baptise infants, holding that God lays claim to a child before the child can answer, and then ask that grown child to confirm the promise later, in front of the congregation.
In plain wordsBaptists ask you to believe and then baptise you; Methodists baptise the baby and ask the grown child to say yes for himself.
Worship belongs to the congregation and not to a book. There is no set liturgy and no church calendar past Christmas and Easter; the order is the pastor's to build, the songs were picked this week, and the sermon carries the hour. The instinct is that a service should be free to answer what God is doing in this church, this week.
Methodist
liturgy-leaning
Methodism came out of the Church of England and kept the furniture. There are service books and a church year, colours changing with the season and printed prayers a visitor can follow, alongside prayer made up on the spot and hymn singing loud enough to be the family trademark. Charles Wesley wrote thousands of the hymns himself, and Methodists learn their theology singing them.
In plain wordsIn one church a visitor can read what happens next; in the other only the pastor knows.
The Baptist reading leans dispensational: God's promises to the nation of Israel will be kept literally in a future earthly kingdom, and most expect the church caught up before a seven-year tribulation, which is what people mean by the rapture. No Baptist document requires it, but it runs through the preaching and the study Bibles this stream grew up reading.
Methodist
one-people-of-God
Methodists read one people of God across both testaments: the church, Jew and Gentile together in Christ, inherits what was promised to Abraham, and Christ is already reigning. A rapture and a separate future programme for national Israel form no part of it: the promises are read as kept in Christ rather than cancelled, and the church is not said to have replaced the Jewish people.
In plain wordsOne expects a chapter still to be written for the nation of Israel; the other reads one story with one people in it.
The Baptist reading leans cessationist without reaching the pole, and got there quietly. No Baptist confession announces that the gifts have ended. There is a long settled practice of not seeking them, a wariness of anyone claiming a fresh word from God, and a conviction that Scripture is enough. These churches still pray hard for the sick and expect answers.
Methodist
continuationist-leaning
Wesleyans never turned cessationist, which makes them unusual among older Protestant traditions. Wesley argued that the miraculous gifts faded because Christians' love had grown cold, not because God had withdrawn them, and Methodist holiness preaching about the baptism with the Holy Spirit is the soil Pentecostalism grew in. Most Methodist services are quiet all the same, but the door was never shut.
In plain wordsNeither church is likely to hear tongues on a Sunday, but one of them has a founder who said the gifts should never have stopped.
Beyond the compass
The Compass measures six things, not everything. These differences are real and
sit outside all six.
Can a Christian fall away?
The six questions do not measure this one, and it is the argument these two families have had longest. Baptists hold that someone who truly believes is kept for good: eternal security, or once saved, always saved. Wesleyans hold that the freedom which let a person say yes can be used to walk away, so the New Testament warnings are addressed to Christians.
Perfect in love
Wesley taught entire sanctification, also called Christian perfection. He did not mean that a Christian stops making mistakes. He meant that love for God and neighbour can come to fill a person so completely that nothing is left competing for the heart, and that it is worth expecting in this life. Baptists preach growth in holiness without looking for a moment like that.
How they came to differ
Wesley never left the Church of England. He was an Anglican priest who preached in fields, organised his converts into societies and sent them to their parish church for communion. Methodism became a separate church in America before it ever became one in England.
The break with the Calvinists came first. In 1739 he cast lots over whether to publish Free Grace, his sermon against predestination. The lot said print, Whitefield begged him not to, and the revival split in two.
Baptists came by another road, out of English Separatism, where John Smyth's congregation in Amsterdam baptised believers in 1609, and then into the American frontier revivals; the Southern Baptist Convention formed in 1845. In 1784 Wesley cut the Thirty-Nine Articles down to twenty-four for the Americans and dropped predestination. The two families ended up working the same country and disagreeing about what the water and the bread actually do.
Walking in
In the Methodist church there is a printed order to follow, a font near the front, a rail to kneel at, colours that change with the season, old hymns sung hard, and communion you walk forward to receive. In the Baptist church the pulpit is the centre, a pool sits behind it, the order is whatever this congregation does, the sermon runs long, and the Supper comes round in trays.
Did you know?
Methodism's founder was a communion enthusiast. Wesley preached that a Christian should receive the Lord's Supper as often as possible, and over his own life he communicated on average about once every four or five days.
What we read
Baptist
The Baptist Faith and Message (2000)
Article 4 on salvation and 7 on baptism and the Supper.
Baptist
A Statement of the Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God's Plan of Salvation (2012)
Ten affirmations and denials: this side on its own terms.
Methodist
John Wesley, The Duty of Constant Communion
A few pages, and why this tradition sits so near the sacramental end.
Methodist
John Wesley, Free Grace (1739)
The sermon against predestination that divided the revival.
Methodist
The Articles of Religion
Wesley's edit of the Thirty-Nine Articles for the Americans, 1784.
