|
|
|
|
|
« Return
|
|
Methodists to mark 300 years since their founder was born
2003-139G
6/13/2003
|
[Episcopal News Service]
For some 70 million Methodists around the world, June 17 is a special date: it marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of their founder, John Wesley. In Britain, where Wesley was born, the celebrations will include an ecumenical service at Lincoln Cathedral in central England on that day.
Wesley was born at Epworth, in north Lincolnshire, and among other events to mark the anniversary is an exhibition at Epworth Old Rectory, with some of his personal letters on show until July 31.
As an itinerant preacher, Wesley is estimated to have traveled 200,000 miles in his lifetime, much of it on horseback. He often preached several times a day.
'John Wesley gave ordinary people a sense of counting. His faith was not simple pietism but the means of producing social outcomes,' Leslie Griffiths, minister in charge of Wesley's Chapel in London, told ENI. The chapel, which draws up to 20,000 visitors a year, was Wesley's London base and is where he is buried.
Wesley and his younger brother Charles, one of the world's most celebrated hymn writers, were Anglican priests. With colleagues like George Whitefield and Thomas Coke, they produced the 'Methodist Revival' in England and spread the evangelistic faith to the American colonies, subsequently the United States.
In the areas Wesley visited, he left people to organize congregations, known as societies, so that at his death in 1791 at the age of 87, Methodism was a flourishing community of 72,000 people. 'Wesley's achievement was the energy he released in others,' said Griffiths.
Although Wesley is said to have declared, 'I live and die a member of the Church of England,' an independent Methodist movement eventually grew up as a result of Wesley's preaching. He emphasized the pursuit of holiness and the role of the church in social care.
'He was not just an evangelist but also a theologian,' said Neil Richardson, president-designate of Britain's Methodist Conference. 'He believed in liturgy and freer forms of worship. Methodism at its best to this day combines the two styles.'
In the 19th century, the movement became immensely influential among the working class. Its belief in abstention from alcohol helped many to lead dignified lives in degraded conditions. Some commentators said social reform in Britain owed 'more to Methodism than to [Karl] Marx.'
Methodism in Britain now has more than 300,000 members, making it one of the biggest denominations after the (Anglican) Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church. In the United States, Methodism quickly took root, and the World Methodist Council has its headquarters at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina. Over the last 40 years, Methodism has seen spectacular growth in Latin America (780 per cent), Asia (690 per cent) and Africa (450 per cent), according to Britain's Methodist Church.
In Wesley's tercentenary year, British Methodists are poised for a step that may eventually see Methodism reunited with the Church of England. At the governing Methodist Conference in July, delegates will vote on an Anglican-Methodist covenant intended to bring the two denominations closer together.
The ecumenical service is to be broadcast by the BBC on the World Wide Web at www.bbc.co.uk/lincolnshire/.
|
|
|
|
|
|
