Biography

Rev. Dr. James Pedlar is a Wesleyan theologian whose scholarship focuses on ecclesiology – especially questions involving renewal and reform movements and the unity of the church. These themes feature in his recently-published book, British Methodist Revivalism and the Eclipse of Ecclesiology. His earlier book, Division, Diversity, and Unity, explored the use of the Pauline concept of “charisms” as a way of thinking about the unique gifts that renewal movements bring to the life of the church.

Dr. Pedlar is a past President of the Wesleyan Theological Society and a Fellow at the Manchester Wesley Research Centre, where he supervises doctoral students. He is Co-Editor of the academic journal, Wesley and Methodist Studies, and a member of the Review Board for the Wesley Works Digitization Project. Each spring, he convenes Tyndale’s Wesley Studies Symposium, an event that fosters Canadian scholarship on the Wesleyan tradition.

As an ordained minister in the Free Methodist Church in Canada, Dr. Pedlar serves on the denomination's Study Commission on Doctrine and leads the worship ministry at Wesley Chapel in Scarborough. He has previously ministered in various roles with The Salvation Army and the Canadian Council of Churches, and represented the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada for seven years on the Canadian Roman Catholic-Evangelical Dialogue.