Methodism

This source names Methodism directly: "scholarly history of African American Methodism is the stronger source for anything beyond these basic facts."

The Methodist Episcopal Church divided north and south in 1844 over a slaveholding bishop, the first of the great sectional church schisms.

This source names Methodism directly: "Dutch Reformed settlers followed along the Delaware River. Methodism took hold strongly in the eighteenth century under circuit riders trained in the Wesleyan tradition, and the peninsula shared by..."

This source names Methodism directly: "unrest, and his founding of Korean Methodism and the Pai Chai school."

This source names Methodism directly: "the specialist literature on American Methodism."

This source names Methodism directly: "before returning to England to found Methodism, and Lutheran Salzburgers persecuted in Europe settled at Ebenezer the following year."

This source names Methodism directly: "It portrays the Anglican priest and organising founder of Methodism."

This source names Methodism directly: "diocese in the United States in 1789. Methodism also grew rapidly on the Eastern Shore in the same period, and the state's religious character has long balanced its founding Catholic identity..."

This source names Methodism directly: "Britannica's reference entry on Methodism, its Wesleyan origins, connexional polity and the schisms that structure produced."

This source names Methodism directly: "The Dictionary of Methodism in Britain and Ireland publishes this entry on Methodist Union, an expanded online edition of the printed dictionary originally edited by John A."

This source names Methodism directly: "of nineteenth century African American Methodism, or a critical treatment of any contested point, should look beyond it to independent historical scholarship."

This source names Methodism directly: "Rack's Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism, 3rd edition, Epworth Press, 2002, widely regarded as the finest modern biography of Wesley, sets the movement's rise against its..."

This source names Methodism directly: "his own freedom after converting to Methodism as a young man, drawn by its message of spiritual equality and its opposition to slavery among many of its early American preachers."

This source names Methodism directly: "Rural camp meeting Methodism spread inland from the coast in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and still shapes the state's dominant Protestant culture."

This source names Methodism directly: "Wikipedia's article on Methodism, a continuously edited tertiary source with no fixed publication year, accessed 2026-08-20."

An association of Methodist and Wesleyan denominations dating itself from the 1881 Ecumenical Methodist Conference.

A Protestant family.

Methodism, as a Protestant tradition descended from the Church of England, does not recognize papal primacy or infallibility as a matter of ecclesiology.

The Articles of Religion hold that there are two sacraments ordained of Christ, and that the other five are not to be counted for sacraments of the Gospel.

The Articles name the worshipping and adoration of images and of relics as a fond thing vainly invented.

The Articles name the invocation of saints in the same place, and Methodist prayer is addressed to God alone.

Methodist in doctrine and polity, separated over the treatment of Black worshippers rather than over doctrine.

Methodist in doctrine and polity, separated over the treatment of Black worshippers rather than over doctrine.

Methodist in doctrine and polity.

A Holiness body of Methodist descent that declined to organise as a denomination.

A Holiness body, formed out of the Methodist revival of entire sanctification.

A Holiness body of Methodist descent.

A Holiness body of Methodist descent.

Methodism affirms the plain Protestant sixty-six-book canon and does not include the collected Apocrypha as canonical scripture; treating this text as belonging to the tradition would misstate exclusion as affirmation.

The societies, classes, lay preachers and Conference are his, and the 1784 deed made the Conference his legal successor, though he intended no separation from the Church of England.

Wesley made the book for the Methodist societies, and it is the movement's own hymnal rather than one it adopted.

The alb has become common in Methodist churches over the last half century, worn with the stole in place of the older gown.

Carried into the American camp meetings and matched there to the tune New Britain, which is how the world now hears it.

Ordinary dress for Methodist clergy in most connexions, retained from the Anglican inheritance.

The deaconess office was revived in the Methodist churches in the nineteenth century as a full time ministry of service by women, and predates the ordination of women in them by decades.

The black gown of the preacher is used in some Methodist churches and traditions and is one of the two patterns the connexion recognises, the other being alb and stole.

The ordinary Methodist title for ordained clergy, alongside elder in the American churches.

The stole in the colour of the season marks the ordained, and a deacon wears it across one shoulder as elsewhere in the western church.

Wesley created the office in 1784 when he set apart Thomas Coke as general superintendent for America, and it is the root from which the Methodist episcopacy grew.

Methodist churches were among the founding members, and the ecumenical movement has been a settled Methodist commitment since.

A Methodist bishop is an elder elected and consecrated to superintend, not a member of a third order. Wesley acted on the conviction that bishop and presbyter are the same order, which is why he could ordain at all.

Methodism has bishops but not dioceses. Its territorial unit is the annual conference, and its bishops appoint ministers to circuits rather than governing a see.

Methodism came to read temperance as total abstinence from alcohol rather than as moderate use, and carried that reading into the temperance societies that shaped nineteenth century public life on both sides of the Atlantic.

Atonement for sin through Christ is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

Methodism keeps a characteristically open table: the United Methodist Book of Discipline invites all who respond in faith to Christ to receive Holy Communion, without requiring prior church membership.

Methodism rejects unconditional election and irresistible grace. John Wesley's sermon Free Grace argued directly against the Calvinist account of predestination he had encountered through George Whitefield, holding instead that grace is offered to all and can be resisted.

The governmental account, in which the cross upholds the moral government of God without requiring an exact equivalence of penalty.

Open communion. The table is the Lord's and not the church's, which is the stated Methodist ground for inviting all who seek him.

The Arminian position: election is conditional on foreseen faith, and grace may be resisted.

Wesleyan teaching refuses the unconditional election the Institutes argues for, and the movement named its own magazine for the position it took against it.

Methodism is Arminian, and Wesley preached directly against the doctrine of unconditional election that Dort defined, holding that it makes God the author of the destruction of the reprobate.

Works of mercy stand beside works of piety in the Methodist account of the Christian life, and neither is optional.

Apocalyptic and eschatological revelation is received as canonical and doctrinally significant across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

Assurance through the direct witness of the Holy Spirit is a normal, expected part of Christian experience in Wesleyan theology, grounded in Wesley's own Aldersgate experience and expounded in his two sermons on The Witness of the Spirit.

Baptism is administered by sprinkling, pouring or immersion, the mode being left to the person receiving it, which is unusual among the churches that baptise infants.

Baptism is understood as the sign of the new covenant and the beginning of a life of grace to be grown into, not a moment complete in itself.

In the United Methodist Church and related episcopal Methodist bodies, bishop is the title for the general superintendency, an administrative and appointive office rather than a claim to the historic apostolic succession Roman Catholic, Orthodox or Anglican polity asserts for the office.

Christian eschatology, the doctrine of last things, is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism, though particulars vary.

The Collect for Purity opens the Service of Word and Table, as it opens the Anglican communion service from which it was taken.

Confirmation is the profession of faith by which a baptised person is received into full membership, and it is not held to be a sacrament.

The biblical covenant tradition, old and new, is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

Creation ex nihilo is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

The United Methodist Church ordains deacons to a distinct, permanent ministry of word, service, compassion and justice, per the Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church.

Entire sanctification, or Christian perfection, is the doctrine most closely identified with Methodism among the Christian traditions, taught in Wesley's sermon of that name and carried forward, with varying emphasis, across the Wesleyan holiness bodies and the mainline Methodist churches alike.

Fasting is one of the means of grace, and Wesley kept the Friday fast himself and pressed it on the societies.

The Service of Death and Resurrection is the modern form of the burial office and takes its name from what it is meant to proclaim.

The Gloria Patri follows the psalm in the modern service books.

The governmental theory of the atonement, framing divine justice as the maintenance of moral order rather than a private ledger or a criminal sentence, became the standard account of the atonement in nineteenth century Wesleyan-Arminian systematic theology.

Methodism holds a distinctively Wesleyan account of grace: prevenient grace goes before conversion and enables a person to respond, grace remains resistible rather than irresistible, and the ordinary means of grace, prayer, scripture reading, the Lord's Supper, fasting and Christian conference, are the channels through which it works.

Ordination is to the orders of deacon and elder. The episcopacy is an office to which an elder is elected and consecrated, not a third order, which is the settled Methodist difference from Anglican practice.

The Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

The hypostatic union of two natures in one person of Christ is affirmed per the Chalcedonian Definition, inherited by Methodism through its Anglican and Nicene roots.

The Incarnation, God the Son taking human nature, is affirmed per the Chalcedonian Definition, inherited by Methodism through its Anglican and Nicene roots.

Infants are baptised, and the service places the congregation under a vow to nurture the child.

Intinction is the ordinary manner of receiving in many congregations, and it follows from the use of unfermented grape juice in a common cup.

Justification by faith is affirmed in Wesley's sermon of that name as the founding Reformation doctrine Methodism holds in common with the wider Protestant tradition.

The King James Version was the English text in liturgical and devotional use across early Methodism, and the base text of John Wesley's Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament, one of the church's historic doctrinal standards.

The liturgical colours were retained from the Anglican inheritance and are set out in the modern service books.

The Logos Christology of John's Gospel prologue is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

The marriage service descends from the Prayer Book by way of Wesley's abridgement of it for the American societies.

Twenty-seven-book New Testament canon, shared across the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican and Methodist traditions.

Sunday is kept for public worship, and the General Rules bind members to attend upon the ordinances of God.

God's omnipotence is affirmed as classical theism common ground across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

God's omnipresence is affirmed as classical theism common ground across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

God's omniscience is affirmed as classical theism common ground across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

Original sin, inherited guilt and corruption from Adam, is retained doctrine in the Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church, John Wesley's abridgment of the Thirty-Nine Articles for the American societies.

Prayer stands among the means of grace Wesley called the works of piety, alongside searching the scriptures, the Lord's Supper and fasting.

The Prayer of Humble Access came into Methodist worship from the Prayer Book by way of Wesley and stands in the modern service as an optional prayer before communion.

Old and New Testament prophecy is affirmed as a mode of divine revelation across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

Redemption through Christ's sacrifice is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

The bodily resurrection of the dead is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

Salvation through Christ is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

Sanctification is taught as a process of growth in holy love, expounded in Wesley's sermon The Scripture Way of Salvation, and Methodism carries it further than most Protestant traditions toward the possibility of entire sanctification in this life.

Wesley kept the article on justification by faith only from the Thirty-Nine Articles when he abridged them for the American Methodists in 1784, and his own preaching of 1738 onward turned on it.

Christ as the Son of God is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

John Wesley ordained Thomas Coke general superintendent for American Methodism in 1784, an oversight office rather than a separate holy order; the Free Methodist Church and the Wesleyan Church still use the original title rather than bishop.

The Great Thanksgiving is a full anaphora, restored to Methodist worship in the twentieth century after two hundred years in which the Supper was celebrated from a much shorter form.

The whole Bible, Old and New Testaments, is affirmed as containing all things necessary to salvation in the Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church, and functions as the primary and sufficient source of doctrine in Wesleyan theological method.

The Great Thanksgiving carries an explicit invocation of the Holy Spirit on the gifts and on the people, which the sixteenth-century English rite did not.

Wesley kept the article on the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, when he abridged the Thirty-Nine Articles for the American Methodists in 1784.

The breaking of the bread is a distinct action with its own words.

The Grace is in common use to close worship and meetings.

The Kingdom of God, present and coming, is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

A final judgment is held, and in this tradition it is read alongside the doctrine that grace was genuinely offered to all and could be genuinely refused.

The Lord's Prayer is said at every service of Word and Table and at baptism.

The Lord's Supper is celebrated as a means of grace and Wesley pressed constant communion on the societies, though quarterly celebration became the practice for most of Methodist history for want of ordained ministers.

Lay preaching was built into this movement from the start, and the class leaders and local preachers who carried it were not ordained.

The virgin birth of Christ is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

Methodist theological method reads scripture as the primary and sufficient source of doctrine, tested through tradition, reason and experience, a pattern named the Wesleyan Quadrilateral and still stated as the church's theological task in the Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church.

The words of institution stand within the Great Thanksgiving.

The problem of evil is a live theological question Methodism addresses within classical theism.

God's transcendence and immanence are affirmed as classical theism common ground across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

The doctrine of the Trinity, one God in three persons, is affirmed across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

The Council is the world association of the Methodist family of churches.

Prevenient grace, given to all, restoring the capacity to respond without compelling the response.

Adds a milestone in Methodist history between the Ecumenical Methodist Conference uniting world Methodism in 1881 and three British Methodist churches uniting in 1932, both already recorded here: Henry Appenzeller's 1885 arrival in Korea and his founding of the first Korean Methodist congregation and the Pai Chai school.

The founding episode of Methodism's own spread history.

Adds a milestone in Methodism's spread to the American colonies between Methodism arising within the Church of England in 1738 and the Christmas Conference establishing Methodism in America in 1784, both already recorded here: Philip Embury founding the first American Methodist society in New York City in October 1766, urged on by his cousin Barbara Heck.

Adds a specific, dated milestone in American Methodism's institutional history between the Christmas Conference organizing the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1784 and its own 1844 split over slavery, both already recorded here: Richard Allen and sixteen delegates organizing the African Methodist Episcopal Church at Philadelphia in 1816, the first fully independent Black denomination in the United States.

Adds a fact not yet on the map: one of the denomination's largest single annual conferences, encompassing roughly 700,000 members in Ivory Coast, voting to leave the United Methodist Church over the same 2024 General Conference changes already reflected in this timeline's other citations, a scale of departure the existing record had not yet captured.

Methodism's second recorded schism, matching the 1844 split over slavery already on the map, and its first twenty-first-century event.

Adds a milestone in Methodist history between Henry Appenzeller founding the first Methodist mission in Korea in 1885 and three British Methodist churches uniting at the Royal Albert Hall in 1932, both already recorded here: the Methodist Episcopal Church's General Conference adopting the Social Creed at Baltimore in May 1908, committing American Methodism institutionally to social reform.

Closes a one year gap since 2024's citation of the United Methodist Church's repeal of its ban on LGBTQ clergy, moving the map from one denomination's internal legislative action to world Methodism's own standing ecumenical dialogue with the Catholic Church.

Adds a specific, dated milestone in Methodist history between the Uniting Conference forming the United Methodist Church in 1968 and the Global Methodist Church splitting from it in 2019, both already recorded here: the chartering of Africa University in Zimbabwe on 21 January 1992, the first pan African university founded by a Christian church.

Closes a gap of a little over a month since 2025's own citation of the Methodist Roman Catholic International Commission's plenary at San Salvador, moving the map from an ecumenical dialogue between two church families to the United Methodist Church's own restructuring of its worldwide governance.

Closes a 7-year gap since 2019's The Global Methodist Church Forms In A Split Over Same-Sex Marriage, the most recent event already on Methodism's map, with the United Methodist Church's own General Conference reversing the restriction at the center of that split.

Adds a specific, dated institutional milestone between the 1939 reunification of the Methodist Episcopal Church's three branches and the 2019 Global Methodist Church split already recorded here: the 1968 Uniting Conference at Dallas, Texas, merging The Methodist Church with The Evangelical United Brethren Church into The United Methodist Church and dissolving the denomination's segregated Central Jurisdiction.

Directly reunites the 1844 slavery split already recorded on this tradition's own map, ninety five years later, and precedes the 1881 Ecumenical Methodist Conference already on the map, which united world Methodism internationally rather than reversing this specific American division.

Adds a specific, dated milestone in Methodism's history between the Ecumenical Methodist Conference uniting world Methodism in 1881 and the American churches divided by slavery in 1844 reuniting in 1939, both already recorded here: the Wesleyan Methodist Church, the Primitive Methodist Church and the United Methodist Church uniting at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 20 September 1932 under the Deed of Union, forming the Methodist Church of Great Britain.