Buy term paper The Invention of Christian Hymns

Today the U.S. has about 13 million Methodists. They are outnumbered by only Baptists and Catholics. 85% of practitioners included in the “Methodist Church” (founded in 1939 by the merger of the Methodist Episcopal Church and Methodist Protestant Church). 10% of Methodists have three great African-American churches. In its doctrine, the Methodists are based on the Bible, 39 religious articles; Anglicans, Sermons and remarks on the New Testament; John Wesley. However, Methodism, especially in its present form, does not make such a serious theological subtleties of meaning, such as private. This allows methodologists to extensive missionary work. A special feature of the Methodist Church is strict and rigid. Methodist Church is centralized and Methodist clergy has full authority in relation to the ordinary practitioner. The most important guide for practitioners is the disciplinary regulations (The Book of Discipline). Methodist communities are fully subject to the district organizations, which are headed by or superintendent, or the bishop (in the Episcopal Church).
John and Charles Wesley – two brothers, were students at Oxford University, where they formed a small circle of student’s pietistic character, whose goal was the achievement of true piety. That was in 1729. The circle in the study of the Bible, pray together and mutual edification. Enemies made fun of this circle and called it a joke “holy club”. Thanks to some methodical in achieving piety, members of the circle Wesley also received the nickname Methodists. And that name – at first like a joke – later became an honorary title for millions of Christians, now constituting the methodical church. In 1732 he joined the circle Wesley and George Whitefield. In 1735 John and Charles Wesley went to America to preach the gospel of pagan tribes of Indians. During the trip they took acquaintance with the missionaries, during a terrible storm broke out in the ocean, the brothers Wesley were impressed by their amazing serenity and trust in God at the time reigned among the passengers of confusion and despair. In America, the Wesley brothers had little success, and a great disappointment to return home. Here again they found a preacher named Peter Böhler, who said the two brothers the way to a decisive conversion to Christ, as was the case in brotherly community Herrnhuters. In the summer of the same in 1738, John Wesley made a trip to Germany and spent two weeks in a brotherly community. Days of stay there were very useful to Wesley: he got thoroughly acquainted with the life and work of brotherly community Herrnhuters and had the opportunity once again to make sure their living faith and the fiery love of Christ. John Wesley returned to England, having its own independent view on the future shape of the Methodist Church and its work. Both brothers and their friend Whitefield were made simultaneously with the surprising success of the preaching of the Gospel.

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Gifted with a rare talent for preaching, John Wesley and Whitefield attracted to the church an unprecedented number of listeners, and soon the English clergy began to look at their work with resentment and hostility. As a result, they were forbidden to preach in the Anglican Church buildings. This led to what Whitefield began to preach the gospel in the open air, thus getting an opportunity to preach the gospel even more people. His example was followed by John Wesley, though not without embarrassment. He says it this way: “I found it hard to get used to this method of preaching, and I had to overcome his embarrassment, to preach the good news of the gospel outside the church environment.” The activities of John and George Whitefield were extraordinarily successful. They fought with the new theology and error deist (modernists). They are painted in bright colors and called people to repentance and conversion to Christ as the Savior of sinners. And people listened to them with the greatest attention and, shaken by their preaching and fell to his knees, giving his life to serving God. And all this happened in the days when the cold winds blowing around the modernist theology and religious criticism. It happened more than once in the history of Christianity. When it seemed that the church of Christ near to death, and it disappeared all the signs of spiritual life, God raised up the prophets, and performing them by force of the Holy Spirit, sent by the powerful preaching of the Word of life, and the Word of a miracle: a spiritual winter retreat in human hearts, and they settled down gracious summer living faith and fervent love for Christ. Methodist movement, which began with a small circle of students in Oxford, has grown by leaps and bounds. Whitefield was a powerful preacher, but he did not have a shred of organizational skills. But John Wesley was a brilliantly gifted organizer, and he of the many converts through preaching the Gospel alive shower created Methodist local churches with a deeply thought-out order of their devices and activities. No member of the local church practitioners could not be idle is a member – all believers were to be selfless workers in the field of Christ. Brother John Wesley – Charles is known in Christian history not only as a preacher, but as a great poet of spiritual songs that are sung not only in the Methodist Church, but in all the so-called free churches in the world. The history of Christianity knows of two such prolific poets of the Gospel who wrote not only hundreds, but thousands of spiritual songs. It was Nicholas Tsintsendorf and Charles Wesley. Methodism was a remarkable phenomenon in the sense that in it, except the theologians, were allowed to preach and include ordinary members of the church. Surprisingly high was in the spirit of Methodism and tangible service. Methodist selflessly built a house of prayer for others and covered in the end all of England with their chapels. Methodism, unfortunately, not preserved unity in their ranks. At the very beginning of this amazing movement arose among themselves differences of its founders – in Wesley and Whitefield. Difference of opinions between John Wesley and Whitefield was generated by their different attitude to the teaching of Calvin on predestination. Whitefield was a staunch Calvinist on the doctrine of predestination. But this difference of opinions has never reflected on their long friendship and working together for Christ. But if dogmatic disagreement between Wesley and Whitefield had no effect on their friendship, yet it has led to the formation of two currents in English Methodism – Methodism Whitefield and Wesley. Whitefield found a patron saint of their movement in the person of a rich Countess Hentingdon. It introduced the higher Whitefield aristocratic circles of England, helped him open preaching College Trevecca and sacrificed a whole lot of material for the development of the Methodist movement. Unfortunately, she had a very tyrannical character, for which he received the nickname Queen of the Methodist. After the death of the Countess Whitefield Hentingdon, with part of Whitefield supporters, there was left the Anglican Church and organized an independent union of Methodists – the so-called Union Lady Hentingdon. Most supporters Whitefield left in the Anglican Church. The first time all the Methodists in general were members of the Anglican Church, they, like the Brotherly community Herrnhuters in Germany were like the church in the church. They separated themselves from the church and become an independent church only when they did not admit to communion, and the preachers they have closed access to the pulpit. For all divisions Methodism of the eighteenth century remained faithful to all the basic truths of Scripture and was a model of a burning love for Christ and serving Him in joy by all its members without exception. Relationship with Herrnhuters Methodism in the eighteenth century was very close, although they could not get united in one church.