Methodismreligion
Worship and organization » Missions
The ceaseless travels of Thomas Coke were the beginning of the British Methodist missionary tradition. The first area where missions took root was the West Indies; then came Sierra Leone and southern Africa. The Gold Coast, French West Africa, and Nigeria received missionaries not much later, though the climate in many parts of Africa took a toll on missionary lives.
In India there were very few converts until about 1880, when many thousand low-caste Indians in the south joined the Methodist and other churches. In China, missionary work had a checkered career. Although there were mass movements there, the last missionary left China in 1949, when the communists came to power on the mainland. In Australia the Methodist Church began in 1815 and, like the Methodist Church in South Africa, became independent before the end of the 19th century. After World War II the missionary churches became autonomous; only a few small churches remain under the control of the Overseas Division of the British church. Most of the autonomous churches combined with other churches in their countries; for example, the Church of South India, which has been in existence since 1947, includes Anglicans, Methodists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians.
American Methodists have been equally enthusiastic missionaries, and their greater resources have carried them over still larger areas of the globe. North India, Mexico, most of Latin America, Cuba, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and many parts of Africa possess Methodist churches of the American tradition. The movement toward autonomy took place more slowly in these areas than in the British sphere of influence. The General Conference of the United Methodist Church makes plans for fraternal relations among the newly independent churches.
Citations
Link to this article and share the full text with the readers of your Web site or blog-post.
If you think a reference to this article on "Methodism" will enhance your Web site,
blog-post, or any other web-content, then feel free to link to this article,
and your readers will gain full access to the full article, even if they do not subscribe to our service.
You may want to use the HTML code fragment provided below.
18th-century movement founded by John Wesley that sought to reform the Church of England from within. The movement, however, became separate from its parent body and developed into an autonomous church. There were roughly 15 million Methodists worldwide at the turn of the 21st century.
John Wesley was born in 1703, educated in London and Oxford, and ordained a deacon in the Church of England in 1725. In 1726 he was elected a fellow of Lincoln College at Oxford, and in the following year he left Oxford temporarily to act as curate to his father, the rector of Epworth. Wesley was ordained a priest in the Church of England in 1728 and returned to Oxford in 1729. Back in Oxford, he joined his brother Charles and a group of earnest students who were dedicated to frequent attendance at Holy Communion, serious study of the Bible, and regular visitations to the filthy Oxford prisons. The members of this group, which Wesley came to lead, were known as Methodists because of their “methodical” devotion and study.
In 1735, at the invitation of the founder of the colony of Georgia, James Edward Oglethorpe, both John and Charles Wesley set out for the colony to be pastors to the colonists and missionaries (it was hoped) to the Native Americans. Unsuccessful in their pastoral work and having done no missionary work, the brothers returned to England conscious of their lack of genuine Christian faith. They looked for help to Peter Böhler and other members of the Church of the Brethren, who were staying in England before joining Moravian settlements in the American colonies. John Wesley noted in his Journal that at a Moravian service on May 24, 1738, he “felt” his “heart strangely warmed”; he continued, “I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was...
Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
-
major reference Methodism
Wesley’s ordinations set an important precedent for the Methodist church, but the definite break with the Church of England came in 1795, four years after his death. After the schism, English Methodism, with vigorous outposts in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, rapidly developed as a church, even though it was reluctant to perpetuate the split from the Church of England. Its system centred in the...
-
comparison with Primitive Methodist Church Primitive Methodist Church
conservative Protestant church that developed in England. It was formed in 1811 by Hugh Bourne and William Clowes after their expulsion from the Wesleyan Methodist Connection. The Primitive Methodists differed from the Wesleyan Methodists primarily in encouraging camp meetings and lay participation. The Primitive Methodist Church, U.S.A., grew as a result of the work of missionaries of the...
-
founded by O’Bryan O’Bryan, William
British Methodist churchman who founded the Bible Christian Church (1815), a dissident group of Wesleyan Methodists desiring effective biblical education, a presbyterian form of church government, and the participation of women in the ministry. The group originated in Devonshire and spread to Canada (1831), the United States (1846), and Australia (1850), although O’Bryan left the society over...
-
influence on Welsh language Celtic languages
...status. By the beginning of the 18th century, the position of the Welsh language had fallen very low, though it was still the vernacular of the vast majority of the people. It was saved by the Methodist revival of the 18th century, which established schools everywhere to teach the people how to read the Welsh Bible and which brought the Bible itself, together with Welsh religious books,...
- vegetarianism vegetarianism
Methodist ministerial role that was originated in England by John Wesley. The first of the American circuit riders was Robert Strawbridge, who arrived in the colonies in 1764. A few years later Wesley sent missionaries to the American colonies, but most of them departed when revolution threatened. One who remained was Francis Asbury, who, as Wesley’s general assistant, was responsible for organizing the circuits.
Each circuit of congregations—sometimes comprising as many as 25 or 30 meeting places—was under the supervision of a Methodist conference preacher who might have several lay assistants. Any young man who could preach and was willing to ride a horse for weeks over wild country might become an assistant and finally a circuit rider. Circuit riders numbered about 100 by the end of the American Revolution. The salary was $64 a year until 1800, when it was raised to $100, with the horse furnished. There were few actual meetinghouses; church services usually were held in cabins, in barrooms, or outdoors.
Circuit riders were a religious and moral force along the frontier and in rural areas of the South, and they were largely responsible for the propagation of Methodism throughout the United States. The practice was soon adopted by other denominations, too.
Peter Cartwright, Autobiography of Peter Cartwright (1856, reissued 1986), is a good source on the circuit rider’s life.
Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
-
Methodism Methodism
During the next 50 years the church made remarkable advances led by the circuit riders who preached to the people on the frontier in simple terms. At the same time, the church faced schism over issues of race and slavery. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (1821) and the African Methodist Episcopal...
Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
- Methodist worship Methodism
English clergyman, first bishop of the Methodist Church, founder of its missions, and friend of Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, who called Coke his “right hand.”
Coke was ordained an Anglican priest in 1772 and served as curate at South Petherton, Somerset, from 1772 to 1776. After meeting Wesley, however, he was dismissed from his curacy for conducting the open-air and cottage services Wesley recommended.
In 1777 Coke formally joined the Methodists. He became the first president of the Irish Conference of Methodists in 1782 and two years later was named by Wesley as superintendent of the new missions to North America.
In 1787, during one of Coke’s nine visits to America, he was designated “bishop” despite Wesley’s protest. As president of the English conference in 1797 and 1805, he sought to introduce the title among English Methodists. Rebuffed, he asked the prime minister, Lord Liverpool, to make him a bishop of the Anglican church in India. This request denied, Coke raised funds for his own Methodist mission and was en route to India when he died. A prolific writer, he was author of Commentary on the Old and New Testaments, 5 vol. (1801–03); A History of the West Indies (1808–11); several volumes of sermons; and a Life of John Wesley (with Henry Moore; 1792). Coke ardently opposed slavery.
Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
-
history of Methodism ( in Methodism: Origins
)
...the Bishop of London refused to ordain a Methodist for the United States. Feeling himself forced to act and believing that biblical principles allowed a presbyter to ordain, Wesley ordained Thomas Coke as superintendent and two others as presbyters. In the same year, by a Deed of Declaration, he appointed a Conference of 100 men to govern the Society of Methodists after his death.
in Methodism: America )...settled communities and of the frontier, but, unlike Wesley, Asbury supported...