Religious Societies and the Origins of Methodism

Abstract

Even the darkest accounts of the eighteenth-century Church of England have generally singled out the religious societies of (various sorts as a bright spark in the gathering Latitudinarian gloom. They included: private devotional groups (‘the religious societies’); the Societies for the Reformation of Manners (referred to here as ‘the SRMs’); the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG); and the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK), which also supported charity schools. Taken together, these activities seem to add up to a considerable movement of religious renewal. The devotional religious societies are of particular interest because of their problematical relationship to the origins of the evangelical revival and of Methodism in particular. The present paper is mainly concerned with this question.