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Methodism

The Methodist churches in common trace their origin to a movement started in Oxford University, in 1729, when John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, and a number of others, began to meet for religious exercises. Finding as they read the Bible that, as John Wesley expressed it, they "could not be saved without holiness, they followed after it, and incited others so to do." During the succeeding years the little company was derisively called "The Holy Club," "Bible Bigots," "Methodists," etc.; and this last term, intended to describe their methodical habits, seems to have been accepted by them almost immediately, as the movement they led soon became widely known as the "Methodist Movement."

The next step and its outcome are described by John Wesley as follows: "They saw likewise that men are justified before they are sanctified, but still holiness was their object. God then thrust them out to raise a holy people. * * * In the latter end of the year 1739, eight or ten persons came to me in London and desired that I would spend some time with them in prayer, and advise them how to flee from the wrath to come; this was the rise of the United Society." About this time the Wesleys came into intimate relations with the Moravians, first on a visit to America1 and subsequently at their headquarters in Herrnhut, Saxony, and to the influence of these conferences may be traced much of the spiritual power of the new movement.

The three leaders, although ordained ministers of the Church of England, soon found themselves excluded from many of the pulpits of the Established Church on the ground that they were preachers of new doctrines, and were obliged to hold their meetings in private houses, halls, and barns, and in the fields. As converts were received they were organized into societies for worship, and as the work expanded class meetings were formed for the religious care and training of members. Then the circuit system was established, by which several congregations were grouped under the care of one lay preacher; the itinerancy came into existence, as the lay preachers were transferred from one appointment to another for greater efficiency; and finally, in 1744, the annual conference was instituted, in which Mr. Wesley met all his workers. Thus the principal distinctive features of the Methodist organization grew out of the necessities of the work.

Though the Wesleys lived and died in full ministerial relations with the Church of England, serious differences arose between that church and the Methodists. In 1745 John Wesley wrote that he was willing to make any concession which conscience would permit, in order to live in harmony with the clergy of the Established Church, but he could not give up the doctrines he was preaching, dissolve the societies, suppress lay preaching, or cease to preach in the open air. For many years he refused to sanction the administration of the sacraments by any except those who had been ordained by a bishop in the apostolic succession, and he himself hesitated to assume authority to ordain; but the Bishop of London having refused to ordain ministers for the Methodist societies in America, which were left by the Revolutionary war without the sacraments, Wesley, in 1784, by the laying on of hands, appointed or ordained men and gave them authority to ordain others. He thus ordained Thomas Coke, D. C L., who was already a presbyter of the Church of England, to be superintendent of the Methodist societies in America, and set apart for a similar purpose in Great Britain, Alexander Mather, who had not been episcopally ordained.

The church has not been free from disagreements. In 1792 James O'Kelley, of Virginia, with a considerable body of sympathizers, withdrew because of objection to the power of the bishops in appointing the preachers to their fields of labor, and organized the "Republican Methodists," who later joined with others in what became known as the "Christian Connection." Between 1813 and 1817 many of the colored members in various sections of the middle Atlantic states, believing that they were not treated fairly by their white brethren, withdrew and formed four separate denominations of colored Methodists: the Union American Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Union Methodist Protestant Church, and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

In 1830 the Methodist Protestant Church was organized as the outcome of a movement for lay representation in church government. In 1843 the Wesleyan Methodist Connection was organized in the interests of a more emphatic protest against slavery and in objection to the episcopacy. Two years later the Methodist Episcopal Church, South withdrew because of the antislavery agitation. The latest schism was that of the Free Methodists, in 1860, on questions of secret societies, discipline, and certain doctrines, particularly sanctification. The other Methodist denominations in the United States arose otherwise than as schisms from the parent Methodist body.

As was natural, the doctrinal position accorded in the main with that of the Church of England, and the Articles of Religion were largely formulated from the Thirty-nine Articles of that church, although no formal creed was accepted except the Apostles' Creed. The stricter doctrines of Calvinism, predestination and reprobation, were cast aside, and the milder emphasis of Arminianism on repentance, faith, and holiness, was accepted. As John Wesley said: "The first of these we count as it were the porch of religion; the next, the door; the third, religion itself." This acceptance of Arminianism caused a divergence, though not a permanent breach, between the Wesleys and Whitefield. Whitefield was Calvinistic, though not of the extreme type, and became identified with the Calvinistic Methodists.

Wesleyan Methodism is by all admitted to be a great modern Arminian development. Beginning most humbly as a half-unconscious awakening amid the general religious chill of Protestantism, its theology was very definite, and very nearly the exact theology of James Arminius himself, and of the first three centuries. Cradled in both the Arminianism and High Churchism of the English establishment, Wesley's maturer years earnestly approved the Arminianism, but severed it from the High-Churchism. The connection between Arminianism and High-Churchisin was hereby clearly revealed to be historical and incidental rather than intrinsic or logical. Yet, even after adopting the doctrine that every Church has the right to shape its own government, as a lover of the primitive, post-apostolic Church, as well as from notions of Christian expediency, Wesley preferred, and provided for American Methodism, an episcopal form of government. Arminian Methodism apparently demonstrated that the Augustinian "systematic theology" was unnecessary, and, what it deems, the primitive theology amply sufficient for the production of a profound depth of piety.