(Writer's Almanac: Garrison Keillor for American Public Media):
Today is the birthday of the founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley (1703). He was born in Epworth, Lincolnshire, England, and his father was a Nonconformist — a dissenter from the Church of England. Wesley studied at Oxford, where he decided to become a priest. He and his brother joined a religious study group that was given the nickname “the Methodists” for their rigorous and methodical study habits; the name wasn’t meant as a compliment, but Wesley hung onto it anyway and managed to attract several new members to the group, which fasted two days a week and spent time in social service.
By 1739, he felt he wasn’t really reaching people from the pulpit, so he took to the fields, traveling on horseback, preaching two or three times a day. He began recruiting local laypeople to preach as well, and ran afoul of the Church of England for doing so. He believed that Christians could be made “perfect in love” when their actions arose out of a desire to please God and to promote the welfare of the less fortunate.
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