A Brief History of Methodism

The Origins of Methodism

Methodism, a religious movement, led by George Whitefield and brothers, Charles and John Wesley, originated as a reaction against the emphasis on logic and reason that characterized the Anglican Church in the early eighteenth century. The term originally applied to a religious society established at Oxford University in 1729 by Whitefield and the Wesley brothers. Nicknamed the "Holy Club," its members were pious young men who observed strict rules of fasting and prayer to promote piety and morality. 1

Subsequently, the term applied to a variety of evangelical religious groups who took their original inspiration from the movement's founders, who held different views on certain subjects. Whitefield, for example, accepted many traditional Calvinistic views, while the Wesleys tended toward Arminianism,2 a reaction against the Calvinistic tendencies of the Elizabethan Church of England that asserted a belief in free grace and the sacraments were central to worship. The Welsleys rejected, in particular, the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, insisting that if a man could acquire through the intercession of the Holy Ghost the conviction that Christ loved him and had sacrificed himself for him, God would forgive his sins.

John Wesley, the central figure in the Methodist movement, was a man of considerable intellect and enormous energy. During his lifetime, he traveled by horseback extensively and built up an enormous following among the laboring poor of the new industrial areas neglected by Church of England. , By the late eighteenth century, hundreds of Methodist chapels existed, presided over by itinerant lay preachers. Methodism was very much a religion of the poor. The movement remained officially within the Church of England, on a precarious basis, until after John Wesley's death in 1791, when it splintered into a number of factions of various sizes that did not reintegrate until the establishment of the united Methodist Church of Great Britain in 1932.3

Methodism in America

English and Irish emigrants brought Methodism to the U.S. before the American Revolution. The earliest societies formed in New York City circa 1766, in Philadelphia, and near Pipe Creek, Maryland. In 1769, John Wesley sent his first missionaries to America. Francis Asbury, commissioned in 1771, was the missionary most instrumental in establishing the American Methodist church. The church held the first annual conference in Philadelphia in 1773.

At the Christmas Conference held in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1784, the Methodist Episcopal Church formally organized as a body separate from the English Methodist structure. The Conference appointed Asbury and Thomas Coke bishops and made them heads of the new church. Wesley sent Twenty-five Articles of Religion, adapted from the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, to serve as the doctrinal basis of the new church.

Methodism, spread by the circuit rider and the revival meeting, advanced westward with the frontier. During the early 19th century, the tolerant doctrinal positions of Methodism and its stress on personal religious experience, universal salvation, and practical ethics gave it a major role in religious awakening and attracted converts in large numbers.4

The Origins of African American Methodism

Richard Allen (1760-1831) was born a slave in Philadelphia. In his early twenties, he and his brother joined the Methodist Society and started going to classes with John Gray (their class leader). Their owner allowed them to attend meetings, as well as hold them in his home. He eventually converted to Methodism and permitted Richard to buy his and his brother's freedom for $2,000 in continental money in 1783.5 The next year, the first conference of the Methodist church in the U.S. made Allen an ordained minister. During the next two years, he served as an itinerant preacher. While preaching at Saint George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia in 1786, an incident of racial prejudice occurred that started him working for the establishment of an independent Methodist church for black members.6 These black members purchased an old blacksmith shop, and move it to a lot on the corner of Sixth and Lombard Streets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where they organized Bethel AME Church (also called Mother Bethel) in 1794.7

Between 1815 and 1830, Richard Allen worked as a leader of free Blacks in the north. In 1816 the African Methodist Episcopal Church formed, uniting congregations of blacks in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. In 1817, Allen's Bethel AME Church hosted the first general mass meeting by Blacks to protest the deportation policies made by the American Colonization Society. Ordained by the Anglo-American bishop Francis Asbury of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Allen became the first bishop of the new denomination, a post he held until his death in 1831. Immediately after the American Civil War (1861-1865), the denomination sent missionaries into the South. Largely through their labors, the membership increased in ten years from 70,000 to 390,000.8

The African Methodist Episcopal Church reported 2.5 million members and 6,200 separate congregations in 1999. It is the second largest Methodist denomination in the United States.9

Footnotes and Notes

1. David Cody, who received his Ph. D. in English and American literature from Brown University in 1986 (http://www.victorianweb.org/misc/dc.html)

2. Kevin Williams, M. Th., [dikw@warthog.ru.ac.za], Department of Religion and Theology, Rhodes University (South Africa), with the assistance of David Cody, Associate Professor of English, Hartwick College

3. David Cody, who received his Ph. D. in English and American literature from Brown University in 1986 (http://www.victorianweb.org/misc/dc.html)

5. http://www.ame-church.org/rallen.html

7. http://www.ame-church.org/amehist.html