The Methodist Movement in America

From the time it was introduced to America in 1766, by Phillip Embury in New York and Robert Strawbridge in Maryland (Methodism 2) until the middle of the 19th century, Methodism enjoyed a meteoric rise. At the time of the American Revolution Methodists comprised a very small percentage of the American religious population, and yet by the mid 1800s Methodism was a dominant religious movement. In fact, historian William Warren Sweet claims that while “of all the religious bodies in America at the close of the American Revolution, the Methodists were the most insignificant,” it can now safely be said that “Methodism was to the West what Puritanism was to New England,” (3) that is, the dominant cultural and religious force. In fact, he claims, “no single force had more to do with bringing order out of frontier chaos than the Methodist circuit-rider,” (3). So, how was it that Methodism, so insignificant at the founding of our country, became, within a generation, a dominant cultural and religious force? Before we can answer this question; before we can speak to this meteoric rise of Methodism in America, we first have to understand the origins of Methodism in England.

Methodism began as a sect of the Anglican Church founded by John Wesley, an educated, articulate theologian and pastor who focused at least as much on the heart as on the head. Born in 1703, John Wesley was the “fifteenth of nineteen children born to Samuel and Susanah Wesley,” (Cairns 382). His father was the pastor of a small church called Epworth. His parishioners, to say the least, did not care for him. Bruce Heydt says that “their worldly ways and fierce independence left little room in their hearts for a curate who took his work too seriously,” (Heyd...

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