1725–1791

John Wesley, George Whitefield, and the Birth of Methodism

At Oxford, brothers John and Charles Wesley formed a circle nicknamed the "Holy Club," later "Methodists." John became an Anglican deacon (1725) and priest (1728). In 1735 he went as an unsuccessful missionary to Georgia. There the calm of Moravian Brethren during a storm shook his confidence in his own faith.

Back in London, he attended a meeting on Aldersgate Street on 24 May 1738. While listening to Luther's preface to Romans, he felt his "heart strangely warmed" and found assurance of the forgiveness of sins. He soon after visited Zinzendorf at Herrnhut. Later, however, he broke with the Moravians over their quietism.

Whitefield was Wesley's friend from the Holy Club and, unlike him, a firm Calvinist. He was the first to preach in the open air at Bristol. Wesley followed, riding up to 7,500 km a year ("the world is my parish"). He organized societies, classes and annual conferences. His disagreement with Whitefield over predestination led to the separate Calvinistic Methodist Church of the Countess of Huntingdon.

Wesley always considered himself a member of the Church of England. Yet the need to ordain ministers for America (1784, Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke) eventually made Methodism a separate denomination.