Pietism and the Methodist revival
German Pietists and then John and Charles Wesley in England call Protestants to a warm, personal "heart religion", launching Methodism and the modern evangelical movement.
- Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism — Henry D. Rack, Epworth Press (1989)
- The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys — Mark A. Noll, InterVarsity Press (2003)
- Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s — David W. Bebbington, Unwin Hyman (1989)
- Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World — Alec Ryrie, Viking (2017)
By the late seventeenth century many Lutherans felt their church had become dry and formal. In 1675 Philipp Jakob Spener’s Pia Desideria called for small groups to study the Bible, a lived faith and a reformed clergy. This “Pietism” spread through Halle and to the Moravian Brethren of Count Zinzendorf, whose missionaries went to the Caribbean, Greenland and America from the 1730s.
- The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys — Mark A. Noll, InterVarsity Press (2003)
- Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World — Alec Ryrie, Viking (2017)
It was at a Moravian-influenced meeting in Aldersgate Street, London, on 24 May 1738, that the Anglican priest John Wesley felt his “heart strangely warmed” and his trust in Christ alone for salvation. From 1739 he preached in the open air to miners and labourers whom the churches rarely reached, organising converts into societies and “classes” with lay preachers, while his brother Charles wrote thousands of hymns, among them “And Can It Be” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”. Wesley died an Anglican in 1791, but Methodism soon became a separate church, and spread rapidly in Britain, America and beyond.
- Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism — Henry D. Rack, Epworth Press (1989)
- The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley (entry for 24 May 1738) — John Wesley
- Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s — David W. Bebbington, Unwin Hyman (1989)
Why it matters today
The idea that faith means a personal relationship with Christ, a "born again" experience, small groups for Bible study and prayer, and hymns sung with feeling, all go back to this revival. Methodist churches count tens of millions of members worldwide, and the evangelical style it created shapes most Protestant churches today, including Pentecostal ones.