ACWR Open Access Research

Click here for open access to all issues of Aldersgate Papers.

Click here for a list of other recent research by ACWR scholars (not open access).

Bart B. Bruehler

• ‘A Partially, Merely Evangelical-Wesleyan Perspective on a Sociorhetorical Approach to the Theological Interpretation of Scripture.’ Theoforum 51 (2021): 19–48.

• ‘Sight, Insight, and Heartsight: The Rhetorical and Affective Impact of Vividness in Luke’s Passion Narrative.’ Conversations with the Biblical World 39 (2019): 1–26.

• ‘Reweaving the Texture of Luke 16:14-18.’ Journal of Biblical and Pneumatological Research 5 (2013): 49-67.

David N. Field

• (with Wessell Bentley), ‘“Setting the Bible out of the Question”—Pursuing Justice: The (Non) Use of Scripture in John Wesley’s Antislavery Argument and Its Relevance for the Contemporary Pursuit of Justice,’ Religions 16, no 8 (2025): 994.

• ‘“Priests are Obliged to be Turbulent”: The Continuing Relevance of Charles Villa-Vicencio’s Liberative Methodist Theology,’ Stellenbosch Theological Journal 8, no. 1 (2022): 1-21.

• ‘Imaging the God of Justice and Mercy: Theological Allusions in John Wesley’s Thoughts upon Slavery,’ Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 47, no. 1 (2021).

• ‘Christen Gemeinde, Bürgergemeinden, Migranten, Aktiengesellschaften, Finanzmärkte … Towards a Decolonial Reconfiguration of Karl Barth’s Theological Politics for Contemporary Europe,’ Stellenbosch Theological Journal 5, no. 1 (2019): 49–70.

• “But Could they Tell Right from Wrong? Evolution, Moral Responsibility and Human Distinctiveness”, HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies 73, no 3 (2017): 4505.

• ‘God's Makwerekwere: Re-Imagining the Church in the Context of Migration and Xenophobia’, Verbum et Ecclesia 38, no. 1 (2017).

• ‘Holiness, Social Justice and the Mission of the Church: John Wesley’s Insights in Contemporary Context,’ Holiness: The Journal of Wesley House Cambridge 1, no. 2 (2015), 177-198.

• ‘The Unrealised Ethical Potential of the Methodist Theology of Prevenient Grace,’ HTS Teologiese Studies/ Theological Studies 71, no. 1 (2015).

• ‘John Wesley as a Public Theologian: The Case of Thoughts upon Slavery”, Scriptura 114 (2015), 1-13.

• ‘I Believe in the Holy Earthy Church: Toward an Ecological Reinterpretation of the Holiness of the Church,’ Scriptura 111 (2012): 333-347.

Robert Gribben

• ‘Living Traditions in the Uniting Church’ (with questions for discussion) in Christopher C. Walker (ed.), Being and Doing Church, A Uniting Church Perspective. Adelaide: Mediacom, 2015.

Kerrie Handasyde

• ‘America’s Wild West in Kangaroo Flat: Methodist Masculinity, Heroism and Violence’. Uniting Church Studies 24, no. 2 (December 2022): 9-19.

• ‘Religious Dress and the Making of Women Preachers in Australia, 1880–1934’. Lilith: A Feminist History Journal 26 (2020): 103–119. 

• ‘Stories of Lost and Found: Finding a Home in Australian Children’s Religious Literature’. In Uniting Church National Historical Society Conference Proceedings (2019), 200–214. Melbourne: Uniting Church National History Society, 2020. 

Glen O'Brien

• Pre-publication draft: ‘John Wesley’s Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation as a Resource for a Wesleyan Eco-theology in the Late Anthropocene,’ forthcoming in Decolonising Methodism, edited by Upolu Luna Vaai. Suva: Pacific University Press.   

• ‘John Wesley and the Heretics’. A paper presented to the joint conference of The Australia and New Zealand Association of Theological Studies, The Australasian Centre for Wesleyan Research, and the Christian Research Association Conference, Remembering Nicaea: A Contested Legacy, Melbourne, 1-3 July 2025.

• ‘Sarah Jane Lancaster: Mother of Australian Pentecostalism’. A paper presented at the Evangelical History Association Conference, Discerning Patterns in History, Sydney, 10 May 2025.

• ‘John Wesley’s Catholic Spirit and United Methodist Schism,’ Holiness: An International Journal of Wesleyan Theology 10: 1 (April 2025); 20-30.

• ‘“You Write this Sermon for Hetty’: Reclaiming the Wesley Sisters,’ A paper presented at the 15th Oxford Institute for Methodist Theological Studies, Keble College, Oxford, held 4-11 August 2024.

• Pre-publication draft: ‘Christ as Bushranger: Ned Kelly as a Secular Saint’. In Seeing Christ in Australia since 1850, edited by Kerry Handasyde and Sean Winter, 33-51. Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700–2000. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.

• Pre-publication draft: ‘The Rust in the Wheat and the Dearth of the Dry Season’: Ned Kelly’s Victorian Apocalypse.’ In Reading the Bible in Australia, edited by Deborah Storie, Barbara Deutschmann and Michelle Eastwood, 159-174. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2024.

• Pre-publication draft: ‘Samuel and Catherine Leigh in Australia and New Zealand’. In Weteriana Methodism: Bicentennial Reflections from Aotearoa New Zealand, edited by Peter Lineham, 33-48. Wellington: Philip Garside Publishing, 2024.

• Pre-publication Draft: ‘Gestating, Birthing, and Nurturing Grace: Reframing Wesleyan Systematics.’ In Sanctifying Theology: At the Intersections of Wesleyan Theology, Dogmatics, and Practice, edited by Jacob Lett and Jonathan M. Platter (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2023), 21-36. 

• Pre-publication Draft: ‘Creatures Capable of God: John Wesley’s Theological Anthropology and the Posthuman Future.’ In ‘A Curious Machine’: Wesleyan Reflections on the Posthuman Future, edited by Arseny Ermakov and Glen O’Brien (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2023), 25-51.

• Pre-publication Draft: ‘Introduction’. In ‘A Curious Machine’: Wesleyan Reflections on the Posthuman Future, edited by Arseny Ermakov and Glen O’Brien (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2023), 9-24.  

• Pre-publication Draft: ‘Wesleyans in Conversation with a Posthumanist Philosopher.’ In A Curious Machine’: Wesleyan Reflections on the Posthuman Future, edited by Arseny Ermakov and Glen O’Brien (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2023), 242-65.

• Pre-publication Draft: ‘Wesley, Asia and Australasia.’ In The Routledge Companion to John Wesley, edited by Joe Cunningham and Clive Norris (London: Routledge, 2023), 465-476.   

• ‘Primitive Methodism in the Australian Colonies.’ A paper presented at the Hugh Bourne Centenary Celebrations, The Primitive Methodist Museum in Englesea Brook, UK, 19 Feb 2022.

• Pre-publication draft: ‘“I Wish Them Well but I Dare Not Trust Them”: John Wesley’s Anti-Catholicism in Context,’ Journal of Religious History 45:2 (June 2021): 185-210.

• Pre-publication Draft: ‘Methodist Lay Preaching in the Victoria-Tasmania Conference, 1902-1977,’ in Called to Preach: A History of Lay Preaching in the Uniting Churches in Tasmania and Victoria, eds. Robert Renton and Alastair Davison (Melbourne: The Lay Preachers’ Association of Victoria and Tasmania, 2021), 87-110.

• Pre-publication Draft: ‘John Wesley on the State of the Nation and Its People,’ in Wesleyan Perspectives on Human Flourishing, ed. Dean G. Smith and Rob A. Fringer (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2021), 63-80.

• Pre-publication draft: ‘Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, and the Possibility of an Alternative Methodist History,’ Colloquium 52:2 (Dec 2020): 23-40.   

• Pre-publication Draft: ‘John Wesley’s Sunday Service: A Methodist Urtext,’ in When We Pray: The Future of the Prayer Book Tradition, eds. Stephen Burns and Robert Gribben (Melbourne: Coventry Press, 2020), 65-87.

• Pre-publication Draft: ‘What Does Holy Leadership Look Like?’ in Open and Relational Leadership: Leading with Love ed. Roland Hearn, Sheri Kling and Thomas J, Oord, eds. (Grasmere, ID: SacraSage Press, 2020), 77-80.   

• Pre-publication Draft: ‘Holiness as Happiness: A Plain Account of Sanctification,’ in A Plain Account of Christian Faithfulness: Essays in Honor of David B. McEwan. eds. Rob A. Fringer and Dean G. Smith (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2020), 147-163.

• Pre-publication Draft: ‘Freedom in the Atlantic World: John Wesley and George Whitefield on Slavery,’ Wesley and Whitefield? Wesley versus Whitefield? ed. Ian Maddock (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2018), 161-182.

• Pre-publication Draft: ‘George Whitefield, John Wesley, and the Rhetoric of Liberty,’ in New Approaches to Religion and the Enlightenment, eds. B.C. McInelly and Paul E. Kerry (Vancouver: Fairley Dickinson University Press, 2018), 105–128.

• Pre-publication Draft: "'A Good and Sensible Man': John Wesley's Reading and Use of Jonathan Edwards", in Rhys Bezzant, ed. The Global Edwards: Papers from the Jonathan Edwards Congress held in Melbourne, 2015 (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2017), 247-60.

• Pre-publication Draft: "Irving Benson: Preacher, Writer, Mission Superintendent (1897–1980)", in William Emilsen and Patricia Curthoys, eds. Out of the Ordinary: Twelve Australian Methodist Biographies (Adelaide: Mediacom, 2015), 2015

• "Australian and New Zealand Methodists and the Great War", Methodist Recorder, 1 August 2014.

• "John Wesley and Athanasius on Salvation in the Context of the Debate over Wesley’s Debt to Eastern Orthodoxy", Phronema, Vol. 28(2), 2013, 35-53

• "Christian Perfection in Australian Methodism," in Sean Winter, eds. Immense, Unfathomed, Unconfined: The Grace of God in Creation, Church and Community (Melbourne: Uniting Academic Press, 2013).

• "John Wesley's Rebuke to the Rebels of British America: Revisiting the Calm Address," Methodist Review (Vol. 4, 2012): 31-55.

• "The Empire’s Titanic Struggle: Victorian Methodism and the Great War", Aldersgate Papers vol. 10 (Sept 2012): 50-70.

• “The Wesleyan Methodist Church of Australia," Uniting Church Studies 17:2 (Dec 2011): 67-81.

• “Why Brengle? Why Coutts? Why Not?” in Mal Davies, ed. Love Divine – Excelling in Love: The Salvation Army’s Place in the Wesleyan Holiness Tradition. Windows of Opportunity vol. 5 (The Salvation Army Tri-Territorial Theological Forum, n.d. [2011]), 51-66.

• “God in the Appendices: The Myth of the Unencumbered Self,” Lucas: An Evangelical History Review Series 2 no. 2 (2010), 15-22.

• "Reading Wesley's Sermons in Edwardian Melbourne," ch. 9 in Renate Howe, ed. The Master: the Life and Work of Edward H. Sugden (Melbourne: Uniting Academic press, 2009), 109-124.

• “Methodist Religion Among the Soldiers of the American Civil War,” Aldersgate Papers vol. 7 (September 2009): 90-105

• “They Made a Pentecostal Out of Her: The Church of God (Cleveland) in Australia,” Lucas Evangelical History Journal new series 1 (January 2009): 67-99.

• “A Beautiful Virgin Country Ready for a Revival of Bible Holiness: Early Holiness Evangelists in Australia,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 42:2 (Fall, 2007): 155-81.

• "Just Another Queer Sect from Over the Pacific": Anti-Americanism and the Wesleyan-Holiness Churches in Australia, Aldersgate Papers 4 (September 2003).

• "A Trinitarian Revisioning of the Wesleyan Doctrine of Christian Perfection," Aldersgate Papers vol. 2 (September 2001): 17-68

Matthew Seaman

• “(Re)discovering Watershed Discipleship”, Thought Matters 8 (2019): 11-24.

• “Salvation, Hope and Apocalyptic: Emerging Ecologies”, Thought Matters 6 (2018): 63-72.

• “‘To turn the world upside down’: Practical Holiness in the Anthropocene”, Word and Deed 19:2 (2017): 5-25.

• '“To turn the world upside down”: Exploring Salvationist dimensions of (eco)holiness' in J Leader (ed.) The Greening of Religion: Hope in the Eye of the Storm. Cherry Hill Seminary Press, Columbia: SC. (2017): 179-199.

• “Lord of all Creation” in Others 3:1 (2017): 12.

• “Salvationist Socio-ecotheological Histories”, Australasian Journal of Salvation Army History 1:2 (2016): 72-83.

• “Darkness and Deliverance: 125 years of the Darkest England scheme” in Pipeline 20:8 (2016): 32.

• “Darkness and Deliverance” in On Fire 17:6 (2016):10-11.

• Darkness and Deliverance: 125 years of the In Darkest England Scheme, Salvo Publishing/Chaordic Creative, 2016.

• ‘Introduction’ in Darkness and Deliverance, Salvo Publishing/Chaordic Creative, 2016.

• With Spiller, C., and Merrett, A. “Environmental Justice”. Salvos Information Pack. Melbourne, VIC: Salvation Army Australia Southern Territory. 2016.

• Review of Kapya J Kaoma (ed.) 'Creation Care in Christian Mission' in Australian Journal of Mission Studies 10:2 (2016): 74-75.

• “The Earthiness of Jesus” in Pipeline 18:12 (2014): 42-43.

• “Digging deep to grow community” in Pipeline 18:9 (2014): 32-33.

• “Holiness, Health and Consumption, Part 3: What we do with” in Pipeline 18:8 (2014): 30-31.

• “Holiness, Health and Consumption, Part 2: What we put in” in Pipeline 18:7 (2014): 30-31.

• “Holiness, Health and Consumption, Part 1: What we put on” in Pipeline 18:6 (2014): 28-29.

• “Down to Earth Salvation” in Pipeline 18:4 (2014): 32-33.

• “Holy Living, Sustainable Living” in Pipeline 18:2 (2014): 30-31.

• “The Salvaging Army” in Pipeline 17:11 (2013): 36-37.

• “Living Water, Liveable Communities” in Pipeline 17:10 (2013): 20-21.

• ‘Red, Yellow, Blue and Green: Examining the Relationship between the Spiritual, Social and Ecological within The Salvation Army’, MPhil Thesis, University of Queensland, 2013.

• ‘Dark Green Religion and the Wesleyan Tradition: Harmony and Dissonance,’ Wesleyan Theological Journal 48:1 (Spring 2013): 135-48.

• ‘Recapturing a Salvationist Vision for all of Earth,’ Thought Matters 2 (2012): 97-107.

• ‘Red, Yellow, Blue and Green: Eco-justice within the Salvation Army,’ Aldersgate Papers 9 (September 2011): 48-66.

• Review of Joseph Coleson, (ed.) 'Care of Creation: Christian Voices on God, Humanity, and the Environment', in Aldersgate Papers 9 (September 2011): 138-141.

Dean Smith

• Review of Rob Fringer and Jeff L. Lane, Theology of Luck, in Crucible 6:3 (Nov 2015).

• 'The Failure of Classical Theism Demonstrated in a Noteworthy Christological Puzzle,’ Aldersgate Papers 9 (September 2011): 34-47.