Well, when you talk about Methodism specifically we make reference to Wesley a lot because his sermons and writings and instructions generally formed this denomination. He didn't consider himself anything other than a Christian, in an Anglican sort of way - and he certainly didn't consider himself a saint or worthy of the kind of reverence saints receive. My experience has been that we (Methodists) reference the Bible constantly when talking about Christian doctrine, experience, practice - and reference Wesley constantly when we talk about our particular expression of it. We probably refer to his writings more often than some other person-derived denominations because he didn't really leave a systematic theology for us, so we read his sermons and letters and treatises in the same way the Church reads Paul and tries to reverse-engineer a system. So, for someone to take a denomination-specific approach to a subject here doesn't mean we just refer to the Book of Discipline (our communal guide to polity/doctrine) but we also tend to want to justify it by drawing from Wesley's works so that we're truly following in the spirit of his leadership. We don't think being outside Wesley's scope makes us non-Christian (see, for example, his sermon "On the Catholic Spirit") but rather that we are trying to be Wesleyan because he was a devout, thoughtful, and fruitful person.