Methodism

Methodism began inside the Church of England, led by the Oxford priest John Wesley and his brother Charles. It takes its name from the disciplined 'method' of prayer, Bible study and charity that Wesley and fellow students practised at Oxford from 1729. Wesley preached that God's grace is free to all, not reserved for the predestined, and that believers could grow toward 'Christian perfection,' a life of love for God and neighbour. He organised converts into small societies and classes, led largely by lay preachers who rode circuits rather than settling in one parish. Wesley never meant to leave the Church of England, but his American followers organised an independent church in his own lifetime, and British Methodism separated after his death. It is now a global family of churches, strong in the United States, Africa and Korea, and significant to Black Christianity in America.^{[1–2, 5–7, 10–14]}

History

A small plain London room in Aldersgate Street, 24 May 1738, men in 18th-century dress listening as one reads aloud by candlelight,…Illustration · AI-generated

The Holy Club and Aldersgate 1729–1739

At Oxford from 1729, John and Charles Wesley and a few other students met for disciplined prayer, Bible study, fasting and visits to the sick and imprisoned; fellow students mocked them as 'Methodists' for their method. On 24 May 1738, at a meeting in London's Aldersgate Street, John Wesley felt his 'heart strangely warmed' while hearing Luther's preface to Romans read aloud, an experience he took as assurance of his own salvation. From 1739 he and others began preaching in the open air to crowds shut out of parish churches, and organised converts into societies and, later, small weekly 'classes' of about a dozen members each.^{[3, 10, 15–17]}

An independent church in America 1769–1816

Wesley sent preachers to the American colonies from 1769, including Francis Asbury in 1771. Cut off from Church of England clergy after independence, American Methodists met at Baltimore's Christmas Conference in December 1784, where Thomas Coke ordained Asbury and the roughly eighty assembled preachers organised the separate Methodist Episcopal Church. Black members faced segregated seating and service even within Methodist congregations; after years of such treatment, Richard Allen and other Black Methodists in Philadelphia founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816, with Allen as its first bishop.^[18–22]

Union, growth and division 1795–today

British Methodism, which had stayed loosely tied to the Church of England in Wesley's lifetime, organised as fully independent churches in 1795, four years after his death. In America, three Methodist Episcopal bodies divided since the Civil War era reunited in 1939, and in 1968 that reunited church merged with the Evangelical United Brethren Church to form the United Methodist Church. The Communion is now centred as much on Africa and Asia as on its old heartlands; in 2022, after decades of dispute over ordaining and marrying gay and lesbian members, theological conservatives left the United Methodist Church to launch the rival Global Methodist Church.^{[13, 23–26]}

Key moments

1738 CEWesley's heart 'strangely warmed' · Aldersgate Street, London

Beliefs

Free grace

Against the Calvinist teaching that God predestines only some to salvation, Wesley held, in the Arminian tradition, that Christ's grace is offered freely to everyone and can be accepted or refused.^[5]

Christian perfection

Wesley taught that believers could receive, as a further work of grace after conversion, a heart cleansed of deliberate sin and filled with love for God and others; this 'entire sanctification' became a hallmark of Methodist and later Holiness teaching.^[6]

Assurance

Methodists hold that believers may know, through an inward witness of the Holy Spirit, that they are indeed forgiven and loved by God, the experience Wesley described at Aldersgate.^[3]

Practice

A weekly Methodist class of about a dozen people of all ages in present-day dress, seated in a circle with Bibles and hymnbooks in a…Illustration · AI-generated

Societies and classes

Wesley organised converts into societies, and these into classes of roughly a dozen members who met weekly to pray, sing and hold one another accountable to a disciplined Christian life, a structure often called 'connexionalism' today.^{[7, 17]}

Itinerant preaching

Rather than serve a single congregation, early Methodist preachers rode fixed circuits of towns and villages, a pattern Francis Asbury adapted to the much larger distances of the American frontier.^[27–28]

Hymn-singing

Charles Wesley wrote several thousand hymns, among them 'Hark! The Herald Angels Sing' and 'Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,' putting Methodist doctrine to music that congregations still sing well beyond Methodism itself.^[29]

People

John Wesley

founder · 1703–1791

An Anglican priest and Oxford fellow, Wesley began the Holy Club in 1729 and, after his 1738 Aldersgate experience, spent decades preaching in the open air and organising societies across Britain without ever leaving the Church of England's own ministry.^{[2–3, 10–11]}

Charles Wesley

founder · 1707–1788

John's younger brother and a fellow Holy Club member, Charles gave Methodism its hymnody, writing roughly 6,500 hymns over his ministry, many still sung across many denominations.^{[10, 29]}

Francis Asbury

other · 1745–1816

An English preacher sent to America in 1771 who stayed through the Revolution, Asbury was consecrated the Methodist Episcopal Church's first American-ordained bishop at the 1784 Christmas Conference and shaped its circuit system across the growing United States.^{[18, 20, 28]}

George Whitefield

other · 1714–1770

An Oxford-trained preacher and early Holy Club member whose open-air sermons drew huge crowds in Britain and the American colonies, Whitefield split with the Wesleys in 1741 over predestination; he kept the Calvinist side, organising Calvinistic Methodism, while Wesley and most Methodists held to free grace. The two remained personal friends, and Wesley preached at Whitefield's funeral.^[30–31]

Richard Allen

founder · 1760–1831

Born enslaved in Philadelphia and later freed, Allen left a segregated Methodist congregation and in 1816 became the founding bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the first major independent Black denominations in the United States.^[21–22]

Scripture

Twenty-Five Articles of Religion

1784

Wesley's own abridgment of the Church of England's Thirty-Nine Articles, trimmed and sent to America for the new Methodist Episcopal Church. It remains a doctrinal standard for many Methodist churches today.^{[4, 32]}

Wesley's hymn collections

Charles Wesley's thousands of hymns were gathered into collections used in Methodist worship from the 18th century onward. They carried the movement's teaching on grace and assurance to congregations who might never read Wesley's sermons.^{[29, 33]}

Places

Wesley's Chapel on City Road, London, its Georgian brick front and white portico, plane trees and wet pavement, pale drizzly morning lightIllustration · AI-generated

Wesley's Chapel, London

GBR

Built for John Wesley, it opened in 1778 on City Road, London, and is still known as the Mother Church of World Methodism. Wesley was buried in its grounds on 9 March 1791.^[34–35]

Lovely Lane, Baltimore

USA

The site, in a chapel since replaced, of the December 1784 Christmas Conference where American preachers organised the Methodist Episcopal Church and consecrated Francis Asbury as its first bishop.^[19–20]

Art & objects

Public-domain objects from museum collections. Select one to see it at the museum.

The John Wesley Missionary ShipEngland, 1838/41

Rev. John WesleyEngland, c. 1858

Cameo with Portrait of John WesleyBurslem, Late 18th century

Sailors at a Methodist SermonEngland, 1819

Bust of John WesleyAmerican, 1830–70

Methodist PreacherApril 1808

Numbers

Methodists and Wesleyans worldwide: c. 40–80 million, across some 138 countries^[9]
Britannica: 40.5 million confirmed members in 138 countries. Gale/Worldmark: roughly 75 million across 132 countries. The World Methodist Council's own, broader figure of 80 million counts affiliated communities beyond confirmed membership.

National censuses

Country	Year	Count	Share
Canada Methodist and Wesleyan (Holiness)	2021	100,655	0.3%
New Zealand Methodist nfd + Tongan Methodist + Wesleyan Methodist + Methodist nec	2018	72,183	1.5%
Australia Wesleyan Methodist Church + Methodist, so described + United Methodist Church	2021	36,857	0.1%

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census of Population and Housing 2021, 'Religious affiliation in Australia' (Table 4), CC BY 4.0. Adapted from Statistics Canada, Table 98-10-0342-01 Religion by visible minority and generation status: Canada, provinces and territories, census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations with parts, released 2022-10-26. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product. Source: Stats NZ, 2018 Census, licensed by Stats NZ for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.

Common misconceptions

Myth Wesley set out to found a new church separate from the Church of England.

Fact Wesley remained an ordained Church of England priest his whole life and saw Methodist societies as a renewal movement inside it, not a rival church. Separation came from his American followers, who organised their own church in 1784, and from British Methodists only in 1795, four years after his death.^[11–13]

Myth Methodism is a single worldwide church.

Fact It is a family of related but independent denominations, from the United Methodist Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church to national Methodist churches across Africa and Asia and, since 2022, the separate Global Methodist Church.^{[8, 26]}

Myth Methodists have always agreed on predestination and free will.

Fact John Wesley and George Whitefield, co-leaders of the movement's first decade, split publicly in 1741 over exactly this question, and Calvinistic Methodism has existed as a separate, smaller branch ever since.^[30–31]

Glossary

Methodist: A nickname given at Oxford to John and Charles Wesley's disciplined devotional group, later adopted by their followers.^[15]
Calvinistic Methodism: The branch, led by George Whitefield after his 1741 break with the Wesleys, that kept Calvinist teaching on predestination rather than Wesley's free grace.^[30]
Class meeting: A small weekly group, usually about a dozen members, for prayer, song and mutual accountability within a Methodist society.^[17]
Connexion: The traditional British term for the interlinked network of Methodist societies and conferences, governed collectively rather than by a single bishop or pope.^[7]
Itinerancy: The practice of moving preachers between congregations on a fixed circuit or schedule, rather than settling them permanently in one church.^[27]
Arminianism: The theological view, taken up by Wesley, that Christ's grace is offered to all people rather than only to those predestined for salvation.^[5]
Christian perfection: Wesley's teaching that believers may, by grace, reach a state of love for God and neighbour free of deliberate sin, also called entire sanctification.^[6]
Twenty-Five Articles: John Wesley's 1784 abridgment of the Church of England's Thirty-Nine Articles for use in American Methodism.^[4]

Sources

Each statement above was checked against published sources; the verdict says whether it stood as written, was corrected or was hedged.

Last fact-checked 3 October 2026.