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Religions/Belief Systems - Methodism
Methodism was a religious movement, led by Charles and John Wesley and by George Whitefield, which originated as a reaction against the apathy and the emphasis on logic and reason that characterized the Anglican Church in the early eighteenth century. The term was originally applied to a religious society which was established at Oxford University in 1729 by Whitefield and the Wesley brothers, nicknamed the "Holy Club." Its members were pious young men who observed strict rules of fasting and prayer.
Subsequently, the term applied to a variety of evangelical religious groups who took their original inspiration from the movement`s founders, even though some of their views were very different. Whitefield, for example, accepted many traditional Calvinistic views, while the Wesleys tended toward Arminianism and rejected the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, insisting that if a man could acquire through the intercession of the Holy Ghost the conviction that Christ loved him and had sacrificed himself for him, his sins would be forgiven. Conservative members of the Church of England in the mid-eighteenth century found the Methodist emphasis on private revelation and religious enthusiasm repugnant, but that same enthusiasm would become a central aspect of nineteenth-century evangelicalism.
John Wesley, the central figure in the Methodist movement, was an intellectual and a man of enormous energy. He travelled widely and preached over forty thousand sermons, many in the open air, before hostile audiences. He built up a large following, however, among the laboring poor of the new industrial areas, whom the established Church of England had tended to neglect, and by the late eighteenth century there were hundreds of Methodist chapels, presided over by itinerant lay preachers. Methodism was very much a religion of the poor, and was part of a religious revolution that paralleled the Industrial Revolution.
Wesley advocated a strict, even brutal, approach to raising children and was politically and socially conservative. Many Wesleyan leaders supported child labor and opposed the teaching of writing in Sunday Schools. Other Methodists, however, were much more openly democratic and concerned with working-class issues, and took an active role in the development of trade unions and in radical political activities. The movement remained officially within the Church of England until after John Wesley`s death in 1791, at which time it splintered into a number of factions. The Methodist Church was reintegrated as The United Methodist Church of Great Britain in 1932.
The Methodists have been active missionaries and Methodism spread with the British Empire. The United Methodist Church’s missionaries in Jerusalem and the West Bank tend to be pro-Palestinian political advocates. They have a history of adopting political positions that are expedient for the continuation of their missionary work. Although they oppose Palestinian terrorism, they generally refrain from criticism of the Palestinian leadership.