Wesley, John

Wesley, John (1703–91), founder of the Methodist Movement. He was a son of the Revd Samuel Wesley, rector of Epworth, Humberside. At Oxford he gathered around him a group which became known as the ‘Holy Club’ or ‘Methodists’. In 1735 he set out on a missionary journey to Georgia, but he alienated the colonists and fled home (1737). He came under Moravian influence, underwent a conversion experience in 1738, and determined to devote his life to evangelistic work. Finding the churches closed to him, he followed G. Whitefield in preaching out of doors. He broke with the Moravians in 1740 and with Whitefield in 1741. He then developed his own organization with the help of lay preachers and extended his activity to cover the whole of the British Isles by 1751. He travelled extensively. From 1744 he held conferences of lay preachers which became annual events and for which a legal constitution was provided in 1784. From the 1760s the Methodist system gradually developed also in America. The needs of this field induced Wesley in 1784 to ordain T. Coke as Superintendent or Bishop, and to instruct him to ordain F. Asbury as his colleague. Wesley still wanted the Movement to remain within the C of E, but an increasingly independent system grew up.

Theologically Wesley combined the teaching of justification by faith alone with an emphasis on the pursuit of holiness to the point of ‘Christian perfection’. Intellectually he combined a strong belief in the supernatural with appeals to Scripture, reason, and the Fathers of the Church, and to experience. He valued liturgical prayer and Eucharistic devotion, as well as extempore worship. He is commemorated (with Charles) in CW on 24 May; in the American BCP (1979) on 3 May.