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1. Term The terms “Puritan” and “Puritanism” were originally terms of abuse but were defined in 1646 by the Presbyterian John Geree (1601–49) as a moderate and middle way in religion: “The Old English Puritan was such an one that honoured God above all, and under God gave everyone his due. His first care was to serve God … making the word of God his rule in worship. He highly esteemed order in the house of God: but would not under colour of that submit to superstitious rites.… He reverenced author…

1. British Protestant Christians who worship outside the Church of England (Anglican Communion) have been designated at different times as Anabaptists, Brownists, Separatists, Dissenters, Nonconformists, and Free Churchmen. Those in the 16th century who inherited Lollard attitudes and heterodox opinions from the Netherlands were called Anabaptists. The Brownists and Separatists, losing hope of Puritan reform in the church, met in secret conventicles in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. ¶ Dissenters were those who would not accept the Act of Uniformity of 1662…

[German Version] The Primitive Methodist Church arose as an independent revival movement in the first decade of the 19th century out of the British Methodist Church formed by J. Wesley (Methodists: II, 2). The intensification of priestly authority and the placating of the government, to the effect that there was no danger to public order, made it hard for the old Wesleyan Connexion to maintain its original line. The beginnings of the Primitive Methodist Church go back to Hugh Bourne (1772–1852), a Methodist lay preacher and timber merchant who held revival meeti…

[German Version] 1. John (Jun 17, 1703, Epworth, Lincolnshire – Mar 2, 1791, London), the founder of Methodism (Methodists). Wesley attended Charterhouse School and Christ Church in Oxford; he received his B.A. in 1724, was ordained dean and priest in 1725 and was elected Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1726. Originally Dissenters, Wesley’s parents now held strong high-church, ¶ even Jacobite views (James I); his own early impressions were strengthened by his Oxford education. Parental influence also marked his personality. His mother’s dominance c…

[German Version] I. Confession – II. Church History – III. Methodist World Mission I. Confession Methodism arose as a movement of spiritual renewal in the established Anglican Church of England and Wales in the 1730s and 1740s. Its earliest, least organized phase reflected the influence of three important antecedents – the evangelical Calvinist Puritans, the Pietists of Halle (Pietism), and the Moravians, and a high-church Anglican tradition (High church movement) that had promoted an ideal of the primitive…