Bicentennial Notes #1
Methodism, as a denominational entity, can be said to have been born at around 8:45 PM on May 24, 1738, at a meeting of a religious society formed by printer-bookseller James Hutton, in a building on Aldersgate Street, London, England. John Wesley, then 35, an Anglican priest and close associate of Hutton, attended that meeting, and listened to a reading of Martin Luther’s “Preface” to Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, Book No. 6 of the New Testament.
Wesley, the son of an Anglican pastor and a pastoral-minded mother, and his younger brother Charles had begun their spiritual explorations earlier, forming (among other activities) a religious prayer-discussion group at Oxford. The group came to be known as the Oxford Methodists because of their careful attention to planning each day’s activities.
Later, John Wesley traveled to North America to undertake missionary work in the James Oglethorpe colony in Georgia. Once back in London, he and his brother, Charles, became involved with the Moravians and other religious groups in England preaching piety and perfection through faith in Jesus Christ.
On May 24, 1738, in London, John Wesley spent the day in reading the Bible and participating in a musical service at St. Paul’s Cathedral. In the evening he went to a meeting on Aldersgate Street (“very unwillingly” he claims in his journal) to hear readings from the works of Martin Luther, including Luther’s prefatory comments on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, where Luther described the changes God works in human hearts through Christ’s act of redemption on the Cross.
In his journal Wesley wrote:
“About a quarter before nine, while he [the reader] was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death…
“I then testified openly to all there what I now first felt in my heart.”
Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Luther’s commentary on it, and John Wesley’s reaction to both as recorded on May 24, 1738, are regarded as theological keystones of the Methodist Church, which achieved its denominational organization in the United States in 1784 at the Christmas Conference in Baltimore.
Shiloh Methodist Episcopal Church, now the United Methodist Church at New Brunswick, was organized May 24, 1811, 200 years ago. This was the Monday following Aldersgate Sunday on the Methodist Calendar, the Sunday closest to the meeting date of the James Hutton Society on Aldersgate Street, London. The date designated as the birthday of Methodism may also have had something to do with the date chosen for the organization of our church.