Embracing the Wideness

The Shared Convictions of The United Methodist Church

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Embracing the Wideness
Paperback ISBN: 9781501871566
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Published September 2018

Heal the church by rediscovering a generous orthodoxy.

Embracing the Wideness contrasts a generous orthodoxy with the culture wars that seek to drive a wedge between Christians with deep faith convictions. A generous orthodoxy is possible for The United Methodist Church because scripture supports both a confessing movement and a reconciling movement.

In addition to our divergent understandings of holiness in The United Methodist Church, we apparently have two distinct conceptions of church. These two conceptions of church present in American Methodism grew from seeds planted in the earliest practice of British Methodism:

A separatist church, which views holiness as a calling that separates us from the world—“come out from among them and be separated” (2 Corinthians 6:17). Here holiness is a quality that distinguishes Christians from the world.
An activist church, which understands holiness as a movement for change in an unjust world. The boundaries between church and society are blurred, with the “wheat and tares” growing together (Matthew 13) until God’s final judgment.


At times, a denomination is able to hold these two conceptions of church in tension. And at times, as in recent experiences of American Christianity, there is fragmentation and division. The division may finally be the result of clearly articulated values that are not compatible. And the division may also be the result of how leaders do harm to each other.
What great things could be accomplished if we rediscovered orthodoxy in service of the healing, instead of dividing, of our bodies—our churches! Such a generous orthodoxy would help us not to become immersed in the emotional processes that pit people against each other. Such a generous orthodoxy would keep us from becoming stuck in cycles of harmful collusion and escalating conflict. Such a generous orthodoxy would know that the source of our capacity to be healed of our schisms is a miracle beyond our human power or goodness or intelligence.

About the Author

Rev. Kenneth H. Carter JR.

Kenneth H. Carter, Jr. is resident bishop of the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church. Along with the Cabinet, he gives pastoral and administrative leadership to almost 800 congregations, fresh expressions of church, campus ministries and outreach initiatives in an episcopal area that stretches from Tallahassee and Jacksonville to Miami and the Keys. He came to the Florida Conference in 2012, following a ministry of almost thirty years in Western North Carolina, twenty-nine as a local church pastor.
Bishop Carter is the immediate past-president of the Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church, and he was one of three moderators of the Commission on A Way Forward, the commission authorized by the General Conference in matters of unity and human sexuality.
He is author of a number of books, most recently Fresh Expressions of People Over Property and Fresh Expressions: A New Kind of Methodist Church (both with Audrey Warren) and Embracing The Wideness: The Shared Convictions of United Methodists.
He travels extensively across the state, preaching in local churches and encouraging lay and clergy leaders.
Bishop Carter and his wife, Pam have been married for thirty-seven years. Pam is also an ordained elder in The United Methodist Church, and was previously a regional team leader in disaster recovery for the Florida Conference. They are blessed with two adult daughters: Liz lives in Los Angeles, where she is a PhD. student at U.C.L.A., and Abby is on the staff of Martin Methodist College in Pulaski, Tennessee. Abby and her husband Allen are parents of Paige, the bishop’s granddaughter.
The Carters consider it a great blessing to live and serve in Florida.