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John Wesley was a presbyter in the Church of England. He was ordained as a priest in 1728. After traveling to the British Colonies and conducting a ministry at Savannah, Georgia he returned to London and joined a group of Moravian Christians. Wesley experienced an 'evangelical conversion' on 24 May 1738 and began his own ministry. It would come to be called the Methodist Episcopal Church. John Wesley's ministry of Methodism was based on the concept that mankind should seek "the power of godliness, united, in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help each other to work out their salvation."
New York City was where the first Methodist society was established in the New World. 1766 was the year. The event was not planned; it just happened that a small number of immigrants from Ireland had become Methodists before leaving for America. Philip Embury, one of those immigrants, was a preacher. Arriving in a new land without an established church to embrace, the group initially attended services held by other denominations. In the following year, another family arrived. This newly arrived family was appalled that their predecessors had given up the Methodist teachings simply because no church edifice existed in which they could worship. The mother of the family berated Embury for his failure to keep the flock together. He insisted that it had been beyond his control, but the new arrival replied that Embury should open his own dwelling to the rest of the people as a house of worship. The first Methodist service was held in Philip Embury's house with five members forming the congregation. One of those members was Betty, a black 'servant.' Betty would soon be joined by two other African-American women as congregants. As time passed, the congregation found it necessary to locate another place in which to hold their meetings. After moving from one borrowed space to another, the congregation resolved to build a permanent church edifice. Securing the money, by publishing a subscription paper and soliciting donations throughout the city, a structure measuring sixty by forty-two feet was built along John Street. On 30 October 1768, the first sermon was preached in the new church edifice known variously as Wesley Chapel or John Street Church. In the meantime some individual members took it upon themselves to become missionaries. Soon Methodist congregations were formed in Philadelphia, Baltimore and elsewhere. Of these scattered congregations, it is estimated that nearly seven hundred members were African-American.
Of all the Protestant denominations to gain congregations in Bedford County, the Methodists were the only ones for which circuit, or traveling, ministers are known.
The American Revolutionary War put a strain on the emerging denomination. With its ties to the Church of England, the War prevented those links from being maintained with any type of order. According to the tenets of the faith, the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion could only be administered by Anglican ministers. But the Methodists in the Colonies held to the faith and on 25 December 1784, Wesley ordained a number of men as preachers, deacons and elders in Great Britain and sent them over to the newly liberated United States of America. The first General Conference of the congregations in America was held in 1792.
Methodism went through some divisions and mergers, resulting in a variety of small sects and two General Conferences: the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. In 1793 one congregation under the leadership of James O'Kelly broke from the church to form the Christian Connection. In 1813, the Reformed Methodist Church was organized in Massachusetts and Vermont.
Also of importance for a large portion of the population was the emergence of wholly African-American branches. Despite the fact that in its formative years, the church readily accepted blacks into its congregations, as early as 1796 a group of black members had left the John Street Church to begin worshipping by themselves in a converted stable on New York's Cross Street. The white congregants did not necessarily persecute the black members, but they did deny them certain rights within the church. Racial tensions that began to build decades prior to the American Civil War resulted in a group of African-Americans leaving to form the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in 1816 and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in 1820. The Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church was the name chosen by another congregation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church which was led by Bishop Richard Allen in Philadelphia. The African Methodist Episcopal Church was incorporated in 1883.
In 1828, congregants led by Nicholas Snethen left to form their own Methodist Protestant Church. They wished to believe in the doctrines of Wesley, but be congregational in governance. The Methodist Protestant Church would, one hundred years later, (1939) reunite with the Methodist Episcopal Church from which it split. In 1843 the Wesleyan Methodist Church left the fold. It would, in 1968 join with the Pilgrim Holiness denomination to form the Wesleyan Church. 1844 saw the formation of the second largest General Conference when the Methodist Episcopal Church, South was organized among the southern states that would become the Confederacy. During the years that the Civil War was tearing the country apart, the MEC, South became known as the Methodist Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America. The Free Methodist Church was formed in 1860 by B. T. Roberts. Ten years later, in 1870, the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church was formed; it would later be renamed as the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. Phineas F. Bresee established the Church of the Nazarene in 1895. During that same year, the Fire Baptised Holiness Church was formed. It was a radical offshoot of the MEC that had more links to Pentecostalism (which is identified by speaking in tongues and faith healing) than to Methodism. The Pilgrim Holiness Church was formed in 1897; it would later join with the Wesleyan Methodist Church to form the Wesleyan Church.
On 10 May 1939 a key merger would occur between three of the largest Methodist bodies. The two General Conferences (the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South) merged with the Methodist Protestant Church in 1939 to form The Methodist Church. At about the same time, the Evangelical Church (which was variously known as the Evangelical Association) merged with the Church of the United Brethren in Christ in 1946 to form the Evangelical United Brethren Church. Then, on 23 April 1968, The Methodist Church merged with the Evangelical United Brethren Church to form The United Methodist Church.
The doctrine claimed by the Methodists were named the Articles of Religion. Wesley produced them based on the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. The leadership of the congregations was hierarchical, following the example of the Church of England. A member- increasing activity that was started in the Methodist Episcopal Church was the 'revival' camp meeting. The first revival was held between 06 August to 12 August 1801 at Cane Ridge, Kentucky. Attendance at the meetings ranged between 10,000 and 20,000 people.
A branch of the Methodist Episcopal Church took the name of Francis Asbury, one of the first two bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America. Known as the Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church, it was not necessarily different than the Methodist Episcopal Church except in its name.
