Christian History

Rise of Wesleyanism

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Along with his brother Charles, the great hymnist whose music was a key attraction for many to the movement, Wesley did much to save England from the social convulsions that came later in France. Tens of thousands of persons became connected with the Methodist societies before John Wesley died. In America, they began to grow rapidly from the time Methodism started. Methodism was revolutionary in its conception of religious principles. In the Church of England, salvation was theoretically a spiritual process to be secured through worship and the sacraments of the Church. The evangelical preaching of Wesley called for definite repentance of sin, wrestling with God for forgiveness, and an experience of peace and assurance. Feeling and volition were stressed more than intellectual assent and conformity to ecclesiastical custom. Directly and indirectly, the Methodists contributed to the missionary and humanitarian enterprises of the nineteenth century.

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Moravian Brethren

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The Moravians were never ambitious to become a great church, but in proportion to their numbers they surpassed all other Protestant bodies in foreign missions. At a time when missionary work was scarcely conceived by other Christian denominations, they were undertaking the most heroic tasks in such difficult countries as Greenland, Lapland, and the West Indies, though they had small resources and their missionaries were mostly untrained. The time came when they had more than twice as many members on their foreign mission fields as in their home churches. America proved an asylum for the Moravians, as it did for so many other religious refugees. They mostly settled in Pennsylvania, where Zinzendorf visited and organized them with churches, schools, and industries.

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Pietism

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Pietism did not create a new ecclesiastical organization, but remained as a force inside Lutheranism. It owed most of its impetus to Spener and Francke, but it was not confined to them alone. Nor was its force spent in Germany, for it made its way into Scandinavia and was welcomed in the cities of Switzerland. There it proved dynamic in awakening an interest in religion among university students and among the people of some of the larger cities. It lost ground because of the lack of leaders to follow Francke, and because of a growing wave of skepticism in Germany.

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Enlightenment, The

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With philosophy and science both stressing humanity’s power to discover the truth by reason alone, it was easy to think of God as expressed in nature rather than in revelation. At best He was a creator with no active interest in His creation. Deism came to dominate the religious landscape in many affluent, intellectual, and legislative circles.

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Quakers in the New World

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Within ten years about sixty preachers were imitating Fox. Few leaders of high standing joined them, except for William Penn, an admiral’s son, who was able to plant a Quaker colony in America in 1681. From here the Quakers carried their message through the colonies. In parts of the South, they were the most popular of the religious sects. Their idiosyncrasies, however, annoyed the Puritans of Boston so much that several persons were hung after a sentence of banishment had failed to dispose of them. In the Middle colonies, they became one of the most respectable and prosperous elements in society.

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Baptists in the New World

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In 1707 American Baptists in Philadelphia organized their first association of churches, and other groups of Baptist churches followed their example. They were active in evangelism wherever they went. Through the Philadelphia Association, the South was indoctrinated with Baptist ideas, though the Southern colonies were officially Anglican in religion.

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