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N0KFQ > TODAY 28.02.16 17:22l 53 Lines 2432 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 86030_N0KFQ
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Subj: Today in History - Feb 28
Path: IW8PGT<CX2SA<N9PMO<NS2B<N0KFQ
Sent: 160228/1520Z 86030@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.65
1784
John Wesley charters first Methodist Church in U.S.
On this day in 1784, John Wesley charters the first Methodist
Church in the United States. Despite the fact that he was an
Anglican, Wesley saw the need to provide church structure for his
followers after the Anglican Church abandoned its American
believers during the American Revolution.
Wesley first brought his evangelical brand of methodical
Anglicanism to colonial Georgia from 1735 to 1737 in the company
of his brother Charles, with whom he had founded the ascetic Holy
Club at Oxford University. This first venture onto American soil
was not a great success. Wesley became embittered from a failed
love affair and was unable to win adherents to his studious
practices. However, while in Georgia, he became acquainted with
the German Moravians, who hoped to establish a settlement in the
colony. The meeting proved momentous, as it was at a Moravian
meeting upon his return to London that Wesley felt he had a true
experience of God's grace.
While closely allied to the Moravians, Wesley began taking the
advice of fellow Oxford graduate George Whitfield and preaching
in the open air when banned from Anglican churches for his
unorthodox evangelical methods. By 1739, Wesley had separated
himself from the Moravians and attracted his own group of
adherents, known as Methodists, who were held in disdain by the
orthodox Anglican clerical and civic hierarchy. By 1744, the
Methodists had become a large enough group to require their own
conference of ministers, which expanded to create an internal
hierarchy, replicating some of the Anglican Church's
ecclesiastical order.
Wesley, however, remained within the Anglican fold and insisted
that only ministers who had received the apostolic succession-the
laying on of hands by an Anglican bishop to consecrate a new
priest-could administer the sacraments. The refusal of the
Anglican church to ordain Dr. Thomas Coke to preach to Americans
newly independent from the British State Church, finally forced
Wesley to ordain within his own Methodist conference in the
absence of a proper Anglican bishop. He performed the laying on
of hands and not only ordained Coke as the superintendent of the
Methodist Episcopal Church in America but also commissioned him
to ordain Francis Asbury as his co-superintendent.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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