It was the bigness of The United Methodist Church that worried many of its critics during the 1970s. Wasn't the denomination too big, even with its membership losses, to be brotherly and sisterly? How was the individual's conscience to be safeguarded? This question became pointed when United Methodists learned in the early 1970s that a commission was working on their doctrinal standards. Would the commission write a new creed they would be expected to recite in church? No, said the commission, when it reported to the 1972 General Conference, making it clear it did not see itself as a theological Big Brother. After declaring the times were not ripe for a new creed, the commission went on to offer a fourfold test of any theological position: Is it true to the Bible, to the long history of Christian thinking, to logical analysis, and to the way the human heart responds to God? This proposal, which was adopted by a vote of 925 to 17, has become the basis for theological pluralism in United Methodism--the principle that many theological flowers must be allowed to open in the sunlight of Jesus Christ, if true religious fervor is not to be buried by bureaucracy.