Personal and Community Well-being: A Wesleyan Theological Framework for Overcoming Prejudice

Presenter: Associate Professor David McEwan

This paper focuses on the interrelationship of three critical components of well-being—the social, emotional and the spiritual—in personal and community formation. John Wesley believed that prejudice is found in all people but it is only when we are confronted by the presence of the ‘other’ that we become aware of all the negative feelings they stir up and expose. He believed it required habituated practices of Christian love demonstrated by the Christian community to overcome this prejudice, which can only flourish as love declines.

Image by: John Faber (1695-1756) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons