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The Mid-Victorian Revolution in Wesleyan Methodist Home Mission

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2018

DAVID W. BEBBINGTON
DAVID W. BEBBINGTON*
Affiliation:
Department of History and Politics, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 LA; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Wesleyan Methodists in Victorian Britain are supposed to have been hampered by traditional methods of mission. From the 1850s onwards, however, they launched a strategy of appointing home missionary ministers. Although Wesleyans adopted no new theology, left structures unchanged and still relied on wealthy laymen, they developed fresh work in cities, employed paid lay agents, used women more and recruited children as fundraisers. Organised missions, temperance activity and military chaplaincies bolstered their impact. District Missionaries and Connexional Evangelists were appointed and, in opposition to ritualist clergy, Wesleyans increasingly saw themselves as Nonconformists. They experienced a quiet revolution in home mission.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , January 2019 , pp. 77 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

I should like to express my gratitude to the members of staff at the John Rylands Library, Manchester, for help with sources for this paper and to the staff of the Nazarene College, Didsbury, Manchester, for the invitation to deliver it to a seminar at the college while holding a Visiting Fellowship at the John Rylands Institute/Manchester Wesley Research Centre.

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