methodism

methodism began as a religious revival in the 18th cent. and grew to become the largest of the nonconformist churches. Under the leadership of John Wesley, societies for cultivating religious fellowship were set up, intended originally as auxiliary to the established church, but soon forced into independence by the hostility of the clergy. The movement grew rapidly from the 1740s and developed distinctive institutions, notably the weekly class meeting of 10–12 members and an itinerant body of lay preachers, who visited the societies, preaching in the homes of members and in the open air. By 1850 membership was about half a million and an estimated 2 million persons (one‐tenth of the total population) were under direct methodist influence.

Socially methodism was a transforming force. Most of the 18th‐cent. ‘people called methodists’ were of humble origin without advantages of education, wealth, or social position. However, their puritan virtues brought them worldly prosperity and, by the 1830s and 1840s, the big Wesleyan chapels in northern towns were dominated by wealthy mill‐owners and businessmen. Yet underneath there was a more liberal and democratic spirit. The breakaway churches (such as the methodist New Connexion, primitive methodists, Bible Christians, protestant methodists, Barkerites, Wesleyan reformers) were characterized by differences of organization and personalities, not doctrine. Around the chapel there developed an intense world of personal and social relationships, which lasted into modern times.

Methodism made an important contribution to the leadership of working‐class movements like trade unionism and chartism by providing opportunities for self‐education and training in leadership and organization in running the chapel. The general culture of methodism was toward respectability through living a temperate, thrifty, hard‐working life. Indeed, historians have argued (some what exaggeratedly) that it was methodism that prevented revolution in Britain during the revolutionary decades 1789–1848.