John Wesley started Methodism in the early 1700s. He came from a family with a combination of Anglican and Nonconformist piety.
In college, Wesley studied such works as Thomas a Kempis’
Imitation of Christ and William Law’s
Serious Call to a Holy Life, and came to the conclusion that the Christian life is the consecration of the whole man in love to God and neighbor.
Wesley didn’t start a church. He drew up a plan of study and rule of life that stressed prayer, Bible reading, and frequent attendance at Holy Communion.
They were called Methodists, a term of derision, because his “plan” was a “method” for becoming holy.
After a horrible romance that went all wrong, Wesley went to America and tried various Christian fellowships, then moved back to England and got caught up in the “Great Awakening,” which was a huge revival that swept the world and caused many millions to become Christians. I’m not sure how this revival affected the Catholic Church, but several new Protestant denominations formed, including Methodism.
For many years, the Methodist Church was the largest Protestant Denomination in the U.S. I don’t think it is anymore.
Today, the Methodist Church is a
church divided. The motto is “Open Doors, Open Minds, Open Hearts.” This is basically a code for “Practicing Homosexuals are welcome here.” Methodist churches not only welcome homosexuals, but encourage them in the practice of homosexuality. Homosexuality is NOT a sin in the Methodist Church today, which tells you that the Bible is not necessarily the main authority in modern Methodism.
The Statement of Faith of the Methodist church should be studied. You will see that it staunchly condemns sexual harassment as evil, but allows for abortion. It’s very mixed up.
Many Methodist pastors seem to be women. There don’t seem to be a lot of male seminarians. But that’s just based on my city.
A movement, called “the Confessing Movement,” has arisen in the Methodist Church to try to return the church to its orginal pietist/evangelical roots. This movement is very small, only a few thousand people, but they claim to represent the TRUE teachings of the Methodist church. I happent to agree–this movement is prolife and against the practice of homosexual sex. The movement also wants the Bible restored as the teaching authority for Methodists.
You can Google and find out more about this split. Here is one link that I found:
adherents.com/largecom/methodist_split.html
A few years ago, there was a vote, and the Confessing Movement decided to stay in the Methodist Church for a few more years and try to work things out rather than breaking away and starting a new Methodist denomination. But in a few years, when the next convention is held, there will be another vote. The question is, will the Confessing Movement continue to stay in a church that is becoming increasingly liberal theologically and politically, or will they break away? And if they do break away, how many Methodists will follow them?
My parents in law attend a Methodist church, even though they were born and raised Pentecostal (Assemblies of God). They have no idea what the church teaches; they go mainly because it’s close to their house and all the old people in their small town go there, so there are lot of friendships. All of the pastors have been women, except for a short time when they had a man as an interim pastor.
My parents in law do not like a lot of the liberal teachings of the church, but they stay because of convenience. I wonder how many other Methodists remain Methodist out of tradition (the bane of the Catholic Church) or loyalty to family and friends? I personally am hoping that the Confessing Movement will succeed in turning the Methodist Church around back to its pietist roots and chase out the liberal false teachers. But I doubt this will happen.
If you are interested in a good, reasonably unbiased history of the Christian church, with good basic descriptions of the formation of the various Protestant denominations, I recommend
Church History in Plain Language by Bruce Shelley. The author is Protestant, but gives a very fair and flattering picture of the early Church as CATHOLIC. This book helped me to make the decision to become Catholic. It’s an easy-to-read history, not dull or wordy or hard-to-understand. It does tend to glow a little about Martin Luther, but not overly so, and like I said, it is very fair to the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. I have also studied some church histories written by Catholics, and I’ve seen nothing in Shelley’s book that contradicts what Catholic historians teach.
Any help would be much appreciated.
don’t get along…