I grew up in a southern US culture that used euphemistic expressions like “God bless your little heart” to mean… Well, I can’t say what that really meant while discussing a Wesleyan ethic of speech. But I promise you that what it meant wasn’t always nice.

There’s a lot in the Bible, a lot in the words of Jesus, and a lot in Wesleyan and Methodist culture about what comes out of our mouths. The world would be a better place if we could pay more attention to the words we generate with our mouths and our keypads. But not just the world outside of our churches: in a time of Methodist rancor and division, this historic culture of carefully guarded speech (and writing) is as needed as ever.

“… it…