Ours is an age of extremes—extreme sports, extreme make-overs, extreme politics. The best way to get your face on the evening news is to do something extreme—the weirder, the better.

When extremism infiltrates religion we have a problem. We have war between the Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. We have ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. We have endless conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinian. We have radical Muslims assuming all Americas to be infidels.

Our founder, John Wesley, knew about religious conflict. He saw it first-hand in England and he wanted no part of it. So he preached and practiced a religion of love. He navigated the high road of missionary zeal coupled with open-mindedness. He was neither rigid nor indifferent and he gave this instruction to this followers: “In e…