page_title: Methodist Church of Great Britain
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Methodist Church of Great Britain / History / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: Wesley's Chapel and Statue, City Road, London
context_page_description: The Methodist Church of Great Britain is a Protestant Christian denomination in Britain and the mother church to Methodists worldwide. It participates in the World Methodist Council, the World Council of Churches and other ecumenical associations.
  Methodism began primarily through the work of John Wesley, who led an evangelical revival in 18th-century Britain. An Anglican priest, Wesley adopted unconventional and controversial practices, such as open-air preaching, to reach factory labourers and newly urbanised masses uprooted from their traditional village culture at the start of the Industrial Revolution. His preaching centred upon the universality of God's grace for all, the effect of faith on character, and the possibility of perfection in love during this life. He organised the new converts locally and in a "Connexion" across Britain.
  Following Wesley's death, the Methodist revival became a separate church and ordained its own ministers; it is called a Nonconformist church because it does not conform to the rules of the established Church of England.
context_section_description: The movement which would become the Methodist Church began in the mid-18th century within the Church of England. A small group of students, including John Wesley, Charles Wesley and George Whitefield, met at Oxford University. They focused on methodical study of the Bible and living a holy life. Other students mocked them, saying they were the "Holy Club" and "the Methodists", being methodical and exceptionally detailed in their Bible study, opinions and disciplined lifestyle.
  The first Methodist movement outside the Church of England was associated with Howell Harris, who led the Welsh Methodist revival. This was to become the Calvinistic Methodist Church (today known as the Presbyterian Church of Wales). Another branch of the Methodist revival was under the ministry of George Whitefield, resulting in the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion.
  The largest branch of Methodism in England was organised by John Wesley; he took to open-air preaching to recruit followers to his movement. He formed small classes in which his followers would receive religious guidance and intensive accountability in their personal lives. Wesley also appointed itinerant evangelists to travel and preach as he did and to care for these groups of people. It is a tribute to Wesley's powers of oratory and organisational skills that the term Methodism is today assumed to mean Wesleyan Methodism unless otherwise specified. Theologically, Wesley held to the "Arminian" view that salvation is available to all people, in contrast to the "Calvinist" ideas of election and predestination that were accepted by the Calvinistic Methodists.
  Methodist preachers were famous for their enthusiastic sermons. During Wesley's lifetime, many members of England's established church feared that new doctrines promulgated by the Methodists, such as the necessity of a new birth for salvation, of justification by faith and of the constant and sustained action of the Holy Spirit upon the believer's soul, would produce ill effects upon weak minds. Theophilus Evans, an early critic of the movement, even wrote that it was "the natural Tendency of their Behaviour, in Voice and Gesture and horrid Expressions, to make People mad". In one of his prints, William Hogarth likewise attacked Methodists as "enthusiasts" full of "Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism". Other attacks against the Methodists were physically violent—Wesley was nearly murdered by a mob at Wednesbury in 1743. The Methodists responded vigorously to their critics and thrived despite the attacks against them.
  As Wesley and his colleagues preached around the country they formed local societies, authorised and organised through Wesley's leadership and conferences of preachers. Wesley insisted that Methodists regularly attend their local parish church as well as Methodist meetings. In 1784, Wesley made provision for the continuance as a corporate body after his death of the 'Yearly Conference of the People called Methodists'. He nominated 100 people and declared them to be its members and laid down the method by which their successors were to be appointed. The Conference has remained the governing body of Methodism ever since.
caption: Wesley's Chapel was established by John Wesley in 1778 to serve as his London base. Today it incorporates a museum of Methodism in its crypt.
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