48 Fun Facts About Methodism

In a famous journal entry of 1739, John Wesley wrote that he looked on what as his parish?

All the world. 'I look on all the world as my parish,' he wrote, soon after parish pulpits were closed to him and he began preaching in the open air instead.

Within which established body did Methodism begin as a revival movement?

The Anglicans (Church of England). Wesley lived and died one of its priests and told his followers to keep attending their parish churches; they became a separate church only after his death in 1791.

Who first used the name 'Methodist' for members of the Wesleys' strict prayer club?

Fellow students mocking them. The taunt was aimed at the club's rigid routine of study, prayer and prison visits, and John Wesley later took the insult up as his movement's own name.

In his last week, John Wesley wrote urging which abolitionist to fight on?

William Wilberforce. Wesley, who had attacked slavery in print since 1774, wrote six days before he died, telling him to go on 'till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away'.

At which university did the Wesley brothers found the 'Holy Club'?

Oxford. Charles began the group while John was away, and John, back as a fellow of Lincoln College, took over as its leader; members visited the city's prisoners.

Which colony's founder invited the Wesleys to America in 1735?

Georgia. James Oglethorpe wanted the brothers as ministers to his colonists and missionaries to Native Americans, but John fled in December 1737 after a failed courtship ended in a warrant against him.

Where did John Wesley feel his 'heart strangely warmed' on 24 May 1738?

Aldersgate. At a small religious meeting in Aldersgate Street he heard Martin Luther's preface to Romans read aloud and felt sure, for the first time, that his own sins were forgiven; Methodists keep the date as Aldersgate Day.

Peter Boehler, who helped the Wesleys after their failed American mission, belonged to which group?

The Moravians. Boehler persuaded Wesley that what he lacked was simply faith, and the meeting where Wesley's heart was 'strangely warmed' soon afterwards was itself largely a Moravian one.

Wesley's Chapel, opened by John Wesley in 1778 and called the mother church of world Methodism, stands in which city?

London. He built the chapel on City Road to replace the Foundery, the makeshift base where he had lived and preached for nearly forty years, and moved into the house next door.

Which Dutch theologian's rejection of predestination shaped Wesley's thinking?

Jacobus Arminius. Wesley wore the label openly: in 1778 he founded The Arminian Magazine to teach that God wills all people to be saved, not only a chosen few.

Which early Methodist leader held Calvinist views and famously preached in the open air?

George Whitefield. He began by preaching to coal miners in the fields outside Bristol in 1739, then talked a reluctant Wesley, who had thought such preaching 'almost a sin', into doing the same.

Which 18th-century noblewoman used her fortune to build chapels and train Calvinistic Methodist preachers?

Selina Hastings. The Countess of Huntingdon held that a peeress could appoint as many chaplains as she pleased and staffed her chapels that way, until a church court ruled against her in 1779 and she became, in law, a dissenter.

John Wesley was rescued at the age of five from a blazing rectory in which Lincolnshire town, his birthplace?

Epworth. His father was the rector there, and the 1709 fire left a lasting mark on the boy; decades later Wesley came back and preached to a crowd from on top of his father's tombstone.

What were early Methodists' weekly groups of about twelve under a lay leader called?

Classes. They began in 1742 as a way to pay off a chapel debt, with one member in twelve collecting from the rest, and the weekly contact soon turned into a way of watching over each member's spiritual life.

Why did Wesley ordain ministers himself for the new United States in 1784?

Too few clergy remained there. The war had left American Methodists with almost no one to give them the sacraments, and when the church authorities at home would not act, Wesley, though only a priest, ordained men himself.

Whom did Thomas Coke ordain superintendent of American Methodism at the 1784 Christmas Conference?

Francis Asbury. Wesley had simply appointed him, but he refused the post until the American preachers had voted on it, so he was elected first and then ordained three times in three days.

In which city did American Methodists hold their founding Christmas Conference of 1784?

Baltimore. Messengers were sent out to summon the scattered preachers, and nearly sixty reached Lovely Lane Chapel, where in ten days they organised a church independent of England.

Which chosen successor of Wesley is remembered as Methodism's systematic theologian?

John William Fletcher. The Swiss-born vicar defended Wesley's teaching in a series of books, but the plan to hand him the movement failed: he died in 1785, six years before Wesley.

What did Wesley call 'the grand depositum' of the Methodist faith?

Entire sanctification. Wesley meant the belief that a Christian's heart can be made perfect in love in this life, and he said God had raised up the Methodists chiefly to spread it.

Which motto have Methodists traditionally promoted?

Holiness unto the Lord. It sums up what set Methodists apart: Wesley taught that being forgiven was only the beginning, and that a believer should go on to live a holy life.

How did John Wesley define sin 'properly so called'?

A voluntary breach of a known law of God. By that test a mistake made in ignorance is not strictly a sin, which is how Wesley could teach that a believer might be freed from sin in this life.

Which theologian proposed the 'Wesleyan Quadrilateral'?

Albert Outler. He gave the name to the four tests he saw Wesley apply to any belief (Scripture, tradition, reason and experience), and the idea was written into Methodist teaching as 'our theological guidelines'.

What did Wesley abridge to create Methodism's doctrinal standard?

The Thirty-nine Articles. Wesley cut them to twenty-four for his American followers, dropping or trimming whatever leaned towards Calvinism, and with one more added they were adopted in 1784.

Methodists recognise two sacraments as instituted by Christ: Holy Communion and which other?

Baptism. Most Methodist churches baptise infants, so confirmation follows years later, when the child can answer for themselves the promises others made on their behalf.

Early Methodists shared testimonies over which simple meal?

Lovefeast. Wesley took the custom from German settlers he had met on his American mission, and Methodists kept it about four times a year as a revival of the shared meals of the apostles' day.

On which night do Methodists traditionally hold the watchnight Covenant Renewal service?

New Year's Eve. Wesley's first Covenant service was actually held in August, in 1755, and British Methodists today usually keep it on the first Sunday of the year rather than at midnight.

John Wesley's 1784 order of worship for American Methodists was his own shortened version of which older text?

The Book of Common Prayer. Wesley called his revision The Sunday Service of the Methodists and sent it across the Atlantic with Thomas Coke, the man he had chosen to lead the American work.

Which weekly observance was part of traditional Methodist discipline?

The Friday fast. Wesley's rules of 1744 told members to go without meat every Friday in memory of the Crucifixion, a habit he had kept himself since his student days.

Which new 18th-century technology did John Wesley try out on patients at his public clinics?

Electric shocks. Wesley treated the sick with 'electrifying machines' and published a book, Electricity Made Plain and Useful, collecting reports of cures that other writers treated with scorn.

Which 19th-century New York evangelist revived Wesley's teaching on Christian perfection through meetings held in her own home?

Phoebe Palmer. Her Tuesday Meeting began as a women's prayer group, but once men were admitted in 1839, Methodist bishops and theologians crowded into her house to hear her.

What name was given to the travelling Methodist preachers who served scattered settlements in the early United States?

Circuit riders. Each was given a round of settlements too thinly peopled to keep a minister of their own; many were laymen, and they founded new congregations as they went.

Which Staffordshire hill hosted the revival that produced the Primitive Methodists?

Mow Cop. A fourteen-hour open-air prayer meeting on the hilltop in May 1807 began it; its leaders, Hugh Bourne and William Clowes, were expelled by the Wesleyans soon afterwards and founded their own church.

Which newly founded world body held its first full meeting in Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, in January 1946?

The United Nations. To make room for the first General Assembly, the hall's own congregation moved out for the duration and worshipped in borrowed theatres instead, the Coliseum among them.

Which church of German-American origin merged with the Methodist Church in 1968 to create the main Methodist denomination in America?

Evangelical United Brethren. It had grown out of German-speaking groups of Methodist heritage, and once they no longer worshipped in German nothing kept the two apart; together they became the United Methodist Church.

Which former slave organised the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia in 1816 and led it until his death?

Richard Allen. He had bought his own freedom and preached at a Philadelphia Methodist church, but led its Black members out when they were ordered up into the gallery.

Which denomination was launched on 1 May 2022 by congregations leaving the United Methodist Church?

Global Methodist Church. Traditionalists founded it after years of dispute over same-sex marriage and the ordination of gay clergy, and it has since reported more than 7,000 member congregations.

Which of these movements was founded by a Methodist preacher and still teaches Wesleyan theology?

The Salvation Army. William Booth and his wife Catherine began it in 1865 as a mission to the poor, and under its uniforms and military ranks it kept the doctrines Booth had preached as a Methodist.

In which city does the World Methodist Council keep its Ecumenical Office?

Rome. The office, run jointly with British Methodists, was placed in the Pope's own city to help Methodists build relationships with other churches, the Roman Catholic Church above all.

Which Asian country has a Methodist church of about 1.5 million members that became fully autonomous in 1930?

South Korea. The church grew out of foreign missions begun in the late 19th century and expanded rapidly for decades, but its membership levelled off in the 1990s.

Most natives of which Pacific island group converted to Methodism in the 1840s and 1850s?

Fiji. When the leading chief Cakobau became a Christian in 1854, much of the population followed him, and the Methodist church is still the country's largest, with about a third of its people.

The Free Wesleyan Church is the largest religious body in which Pacific nation?

Tonga. Missionaries converted the paramount chief Taufa'ahau in the 1830s; he went on to rule as King George Tupou I, and the church has been bound up with the monarchy ever since.

Thomas Coke's 1786 voyage to Nova Scotia was blown off course to which island?

Antigua. Coke found Methodism already there: a planter, Nathaniel Gilbert, had begun preaching to his slaves a generation earlier, and two women, Sophia Campbell and Mary Alley, had kept the congregation alive.

Which South African president was baptised a Methodist and educated at Methodist mission schools?

Nelson Mandela. It was a teacher at his Methodist primary school who gave him the English name Nelson, and the World Methodist Council later honoured him with its Peace Award.

Which church, created in 1925, took in most of Canada's Methodists?

United Church of Canada. The Methodists joined as a body, together with the Congregationalists and about two-thirds of the Presbyterians; the remaining third chose to carry on alone.

Which British prime minister was brought up a strict Methodist by a father who was a lay preacher?

Margaret Thatcher. Her father, a town alderman, preached in local Methodist chapels, and as a university student she became a lay preacher herself.

In 1847 two Methodist Episcopal Church missionaries sailed from Boston for which Asian country?

China. The pair settled in the port of Fuzhou, where the mission had to work for ten years before it won its first convert.

Which Christmas carol began as a 1739 hymn by one of the Wesley brothers?

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. Its first line was originally 'Hark how all the welkin rings' until a fellow preacher rewrote it, and Mendelssohn's tune was fitted to it a century later.

Which member of the Wesley family is credited with writing much of Methodism's hymnody?

Charles Wesley. His hymns, among them 'Love Divine, All Loves Excelling' and 'O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing', did as much as any sermon to spread Methodist belief, because congregations sang their theology.