Title: John Wesley and marriage
First published: 1996
Description: In this book, a Methodist minister examines the sources of John Wesley's ideas about marriage and shows how those beliefs found expression in the cleric's revision of the Anglican wedding service.

Author Bufford W. Coe describes the radical differences between a typical eighteenth-century wedding and a church wedding of today. He also tells the fascinating story of Wesley's romances with Sophia Hopkey and Grace Murray, based on his own private diaries, and shows how those relationships, as well as his miserably unhappy marriage, were affected by Wesley's beliefs about matrimony.

Four days after Wesley decided he would marry at the age of forty-seven, he spoke to a group of unmarried men and encouraged them to remain single. In the matrimonial service he devised for American Methodists, Wesley eliminated the custom of the bride being given in marriage by her father, although Wesley consistently taught that Christians should not marry without the consent of their parents.

Wesley strongly condemned the Roman Catholic Church for requiring celibacy of its priests, but his own rules required that Methodist preachers who married during their initial probationary period were thereby disqualified. In 1784, Wesley published The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America with Other Occasional Services. Coe studies the components of Wesley's marriage liturgy from the Sunday Service to try to determine why Wesley revised the Anglican wedding service in the way that he did.
Subjects: Anglican Communion, Church of England, Doctrines, History, History of doctrines, Liturgy, Marriage, Methodist Church, Religious aspects, Religious aspects of Marriage, Theologie, Ehe, Sunday service of the Methodists in North America (Wesley, John), Liturgics, Doctrinal Theology, Contributions in doctrine of marriage, Wesley, john, 1703-1791, Church of england, doctrines, Church of england, liturgy, Marriage, religious aspects, church of england, Methodist church, doctrines, Doctrine of marriage
Places: England
People: John Wesley (1703-1791)
Time periods: 18th century
LC classification: BX8349.M35 C64 1996