Wesley and the Wesleyans Religion in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Wesley and the Wesleyans challenges the cherished myth that at the moment when the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution were threatening the soul of eighteenth-century England, an evangelical revival - led by the Wesleys - saved it. It will interest anyone concerned with the history of Methodism and the Church of England, the Evangelical tradition, and eighteenth-century religious thought and experience. The book starts from the assumption that there was no large-scale religious revival during the eighteenth century. Instead, the role of what is called 'primary religion' - the normal human search for ways of drawing supernatural power into the private life of the individual - is analysed in terms of the emergence of the Wesleyan societies from the Church of England. The Wesleys' achievements are reassessed; there is fresh, unsentimental description of the role of women in the movement, and an unexpectedly sympathetic picture emerges of Hanoverian Anglicanism.

1. The Protestant recovery; 2. Early Wesleyanism, 1740–70; 3. Later Wesleyanism, 1770–1800; 4. Women in Wesleyanism; 5. Anglican responses; 6. Conclusions.

This book shows how the search for personal supernatural power lay at the heart of the so-called eighteenth-century English evangelical revival, and rejects the view that the Wesleys rescued the British from moral and spiritual decay by reviving primitive Christianity.

John Kent is Emeritus Professor of Theology, University of Bristol. His many publications include Holding the Fort: Studies in Victorian Revivalism (1978), The End of the Line?: The Development of Theology since 1700 (1982), The Unacceptable Face: The Modern Historian and the Church (1987) and William Temple: Church, State and Society in Britain, 1880–1950 (1993).