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The Growth of Wesleyan Methodism in Victorian England and Wales

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

R. B. Walker
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History, Macquarie University, N.S.W.

Extract

Between the accession of queen Victoria and her death sixty-three years later the Wesleyan Methodist Church increased its membership from 292,000 to 454,000 persons. Recently, however, Dr. Currie has put this seemingly impressive growth in better perspective by indicating that in no censal decade after 1841 did the Connexion keep pace with the increase of population. In this paper that increase will be examined under two categories. First, those sudden spurts of growth which the Church then and later, related to that intensification of devotional practice and religious fervour which it called ‘revivals’; secondly, the regular work and growth of the Church in the years when there were no remarkable increases of members. The third and concluding section will consider the interplay of these factors and the character of Wesleyanism at the end of the century.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

page 267 note 1 The figures cited are for Great Britain, that is England, Scotland and Wales. The inclusion of the Scottish Methodists, who numbered only 3,803 in 1851 and 8,377 in 1901, makes little difference to the totals. The figures are available in the Minutes of the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion (hereafter cited as Minutes) which I was able to consult, along with other printed and MS. sources, in the Methodist Archives and Research Centre, London. I wish to thank Dr. J. C. Bowmer and Miss D. Baslington for their expert assistance to me at the Archives.

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page 268 note 1 Methodist Recorder, 22 May 1862, 163.

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page 282 note 2 Calculated from Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 26 November 1881.Google Scholar

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