An Anglican priest, Wesley adopted unconventional and controversial practices, such as open-air preaching, to reach factory labourers and newly urbanised masses uprooted from their traditional village culture at the start of the Industrial Revolution.

A small group of students at Oxford University, including John Wesley (1703–1791) and his younger brother Charles (1707–1788), met together for the purpose of mutual improvement; they focused on studying the Bible and living a holy life.

[23] During Wesley's lifetime, many members of England's established church feared that new doctrines promulgated by the Methodists, such as the necessity of a new birth for salvation, and of the constant and sustained action of the Holy Spirit upon the believer's soul, would produce ill effects upon weak minds.

Theophilus Evans, an early critic of the movement, even wrote that it was "the natural Tendency of their Behaviour, in Voice and Gesture and horrid Expressions, to make People mad.

[35]) This permission was later extended to the administration of baptism, burial and timing of services, bringing Methodist chapels into direct competition with the local parish church.

Historians such as Élie Halévy, Eric J. Hobsbawm, E. P. Thompson, and Alan Gilbert have explored the role of Methodism in the early decades of the making of the British working class (1760–1820).

On the one hand it provided a model of how to efficiently organise large numbers of people and sustain their connection over a long period of time, and on the other it diverted and discouraged political radicalism.

Historians Patrick K. O'Brien and Roland Quinault argue: John Wesley's own Tory sympathies and autocratic instincts had been strong and genuine, and as far as possible he had instilled into his followers deference toward established social and religious authorities.

His mission he saw as strictly spiritual, and his own inherently conservative political instincts and social values reinforced a pragmatic concern to give as little offense as possible to a suspicious wider society.

[53][54] William Bramwell (1759–1818) was a preacher who engendered controversy due to his intense revivalist preaching style, which spurred awakenings throughout the north of England—including the 1793–97 Yorkshire Revival—and his association with Alexander Kilham (1762–1798).

[63][64] Methodists placed a high priority on close guidance of their youth, as seen in the activities of Sunday schools and the Band of Hope (whose members signed a pledge to "abstain from all intoxicating liquors").

The theological change that emphasised the conversion experience as being a one-time lifetime event rather than as a step on the road to perfection lessened the importance of class-meeting attendance and made revivals less meaningful.

The hoped-for financial gains proved to be illusory, and Methodist leaders spent the early post-war era vainly trying to achieve union with the Church of England.

[102] Methodist historian Martin Wellings says of Soper: His combination of modernist theology, high sacramentalism, and Socialist politics, expressed with insouciant wit and unapologetic élan, thrilled audiences, delighted admirers, and reduced opponents to apoplectic fury.

The breakdown or disruption of traditional communities and norms of behavior; the spread of a scientific world-view diminishing the scope of the supernatural and the role of God; increasing material affluence promoting self-reliance and this-worldly optimism; and greater awareness and toleration of different creeds and ideas, encouraging religious pluralism and eviscerating commitment to a particular faith, all form components of the case for secularization.

Applied to the British churches in general by Steve Bruce and to Methodism in particular by Robert Currie, this model traces decline back to the Victorian era and charts in the twentieth century a steady ebbing of the sea of faith.

Although the phrasing and exact requirements in a particular local church may vary, generally "all those who love the Lord Jesus Christ"[123]: 7  are invited to receive bread and wine, irrespective of age or denominational identity.

[127] Some core beliefs that are affirmed by most Methodists include: Wesleyan tradition stands at a unique cross-roads between evangelical and sacramental, between liturgical and charismatic, and between Anglo-Catholic and Reformed theology and practice.

It ever remembers that in the providence of God Methodism was raised up to spread scriptural holiness through the land by the proclamation of the evangelical faith and declares its unfaltering resolve to be true to its divinely appointed mission.

[155] The church has also stated that the "unborn human" should be accorded rights progressively as it develops through the stages of gestation, from embryo to fetus, culminating with full respect as an individual at birth.

The conference statement of 1974 states: "The final stage of an illness is not one which need represent the ultimate defeat for the doctor or nurse, but a supreme opportunity to help the patient at many levels, including those relating to emotional and spiritual well-being ...

Dedicated workers in this field of care, including specialised hospices, demonstrate that it is possible to deal with all the symptoms which cause problems to the patient ... Euthanasia, assisted dying – both are artificial precipitation of death.

[note 6] The choice to consume alcohol outside of church is now a personal decision for any member: the 1974 conference recognised the "sincerity and integrity of those who take differing views on whether they should drink or abstain".

[185] In 1869, a Methodist dentist named Thomas Welch developed a method of pasteurising grape juice in order to produce an unfermented communion wine for his church.

[190] Daleep Mukarji, the former director of the charity Christian Aid,[191] who was vice-president of the Methodist Conference in 2013, stated economic inequality was more prevalent in 21st-century Britain than at any time since World War II.

Presbyters have a principal and directing part in these great duties but they hold no priesthood differing in kind from that which is common to all the Lord's people and they have no exclusive title to the preaching of the gospel or the care of souls.

[231] They were designated as multi-purpose venues; in their heyday they presented low-cost concerts and shows to entertain the working classes on Saturdays—encouraging them to avoid drinking establishments and thereby abstain from alcohol—as well as hosting church congregations on Sundays.

Volume 1 contains a set of fixed texts, including acts of Parliament,[note 8] other legislation and historic documents; the 1988 preface has been retained in later revisions because, along with abridged versions of earlier forewords, its "value as a general introduction to Methodist constitutional practice and discipline remains unsurpassed".

[275] Christian Zionism was broadly characterised as believing that Israel "must be held above criticism whatever policy is enacted", and Conference called for a boycott of selected goods from Israeli settlements.

[276] The Chief Rabbi of Britain's Orthodox Jewish community described the report as "unbalanced, factually and historically flawed" and charged that it offered "no genuine understanding of one of the most complex conflicts in the world today.