page_title: Wesleyan theology
section_title: Churches upholding Wesleyan theology
hierarchical_section_title: Wesleyan theology / Churches upholding Wesleyan theology
caption_attribution_description: The image depicts Grace Wesleyan Methodist Church (Akron, Ohio, United States). This picture was clicked on June 5, 2018.
context_page_description: Wesleyan theology, otherwise known as Wesleyan–Arminian theology, or Methodist theology, is a theological tradition in Protestant Christianity that emphasizes the "methods" of the eighteenth-century evangelical reformer brothers John Wesley and Charles Wesley. More broadly it refers to the theological system inferred from the various sermons, theological treatises, letters, journals, diaries, hymns, and other spiritual writings of the Wesleys and their contemporary coadjutors such as John William Fletcher.
  Wesleyan–Arminian theology, manifest today in Methodism, is named for its founders, the Wesleys, as well as for Jacob Arminius, since it is a subset of Arminian theology. In 1736, these two brothers traveled to the Georgia colony in America as missionaries for the Church of England; they left rather disheartened at what they saw. Both of them subsequently had "religious experiences," especially John in 1738, being greatly influenced by the Moravian Christians. They began to organize a renewal movement within the Church of England to focus on personal faith and holiness.
context_section_description: The Methodist movement began as a reform within the Church of England, and, for a while, it remained as such. The movement separated itself from its "mother church" and became known as the Methodist Episcopal Church in America and the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Britain. Many divisions occurred within the Methodist Episcopal Church in the nineteenth century, mostly over, first, the slavery question and later, over the inclusion of African-Americans. Some of these schisms healed in the early twentieth century, and many of the splinter Methodist groups came together by 1939 to form The Methodist Church. In 1968, the Methodist Church joined with the Pietist Evangelical United Brethren Church to form The United Methodist Church, the largest Methodist church in America. Other groups include the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, the Congregational Methodist Church, the Evangelical Church of North America, the Evangelical Congregational Church, the Evangelical Methodist Church, the Free Methodist Church of North America, and the Southern Methodist Church.
  In nineteenth-century America, a dissension arose over the nature of sanctification. Those who emphasized the gradual nature sanctification remained within the mainline Methodist Churches; others, however, believed in instantaneous sanctification that could be perfected. Those who followed the latter line of thought began the various holiness churches, including the Church of God (Holiness), the Church of God (Anderson), the Churches of Christ in Christian Union, and the Wesleyan Methodist Church, which later merged with the Pilgrim Holiness Church to form the Wesleyan Church, which is present today. Other holiness groups, which also rejected the competing Pentecostal movement, merged to form the Church of the Nazarene. The Salvation Army is another Wesleyan-Holiness group which traces its roots to early Methodism. The Salvation Army's founders Catherine and William Booth founded the organization to stress evangelism and social action when William was a minister in the Methodist Reform Church.
  The conservative holiness movement, including denominations such as the Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist Connection, Bible Methodist Connection of Churches, Evangelical Wesleyan Church and Primitive Methodist Church, emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries to herald many of the strict standards of primitive Methodism, including outward holiness, plain dress, and temperance.
caption: Grace Wesleyan Methodist Church is a parish church of the Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist Connection and is located in Akron, Ohio.
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