An itinerant preacher (also known as an itinerant minister) is a Christian evangelist who preaches the basic Christian redemption message while traveling around to different groups of people within a relatively short period of time. [1] The usage of these travelling evangelists is known as itineracy or itinerancy. [2] [3]
Early first century New Testament figures such as John the Baptist, [4] Jesus Christ and Apostle Paul were known for extensively traveling and preaching to unreached people groups in the Middle East and Europe, although often staying for longer periods than modern itinerant evangelists.
Starting in the eighteenth century, the Methodists were known for sending out itinerant preachers known as circuit riders to share the message. [5] [6] The 'Itinerancy' is denoted as one of the "chief peculiar usages" of classic Methodism, along with practices such as class meetings and watchnight services. [7]
Mary Porteous was a Primitive Methodist itinereant preacher. She was given permission to ignore the rules that applied to women itinerant preachers. She wrote about her time on the North Shields circuit in 1836. She travelled 682 miles and over 200 of these she had walked, begging for food and lodging and carrying her own luggage. [8]
The Quakers referred to their itinerant preachers as "public friends". [9]
Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christian tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother Charles Wesley were also significant early leaders in the movement. They were named Methodists for "the methodical way in which they carried out their Christian faith". Methodism originated as a revival movement within Anglicanism originating out of the Church of England in the 18th century and became a separate denomination after Wesley's death. The movement spread throughout the British Empire, the United States and beyond because of vigorous missionary work, and today has about 80 million adherents worldwide.
John Wesley was an English cleric, theologian, and evangelist who was a leader of a revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism. The societies he founded became the dominant form of the independent Methodist movement that continues to this day.
The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival during the late 18th to early 19th century in the United States. It spread religion through revivals and emotional preaching and sparked a number of reform movements. Revivals were a key part of the movement and attracted hundreds of converts to new Protestant denominations. The Methodist Church used circuit riders to reach people in frontier locations.
Francis Asbury was a British-American Methodist minister who became one of the first two bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. During his 45 years in the colonies and the newly independent United States, he devoted his life to ministry, traveling on horseback and by carriage thousands of miles to those living on the frontier.
The Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) was the oldest and largest Methodist denomination in the United States from its founding in 1784 until 1939. It was also the first religious denomination in the US to organize itself nationally. In 1939, the MEC reunited with two breakaway Methodist denominations to form the Methodist Church. In 1968, the Methodist Church merged with the Evangelical United Brethren Church to form the United Methodist Church.
The Holiness movement is a Christian movement that emerged chiefly within 19th-century Methodism, and to a lesser extent influenced other traditions such as Quakerism, Anabaptism, and Restorationism. The movement is historically distinguished by its emphasis on the doctrine of a second work of grace, which is called entire sanctification or Christian perfection. Churches aligned with the holiness movement additionally teach that the Christian life should be free of sin. For the Holiness movement, "the term 'perfection' signifies completeness of Christian character; its freedom from all sin, and possession of all the graces of the Spirit, complete in kind." A number of evangelical Christian denominations, parachurch organizations, and movements emphasize those beliefs as central doctrine.
A Methodist local preacher is a layperson who has been accredited by the Methodist Church to lead worship and preach on a frequent basis. With separation from the Church of England by the end of the 18th century, a clear distinction was recognised between itinerant preachers and the local preachers who assisted them. Local preachers have played an important role in Methodism since the earliest days of the movement, and have also been important in English social history. These preachers continue to serve an indispensable role in the Methodist Church of Great Britain, in which the majority of church services are led by laypeople. In certain Methodist connexions, a person becomes a local preacher after obtaining a license to preach. In many parts of Methodism, such as the Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist Connection, there are thus two different tiers of ministers—licensed preachers and ordained elders.
The camp meeting is a form of Protestant Christian religious service originating in England and Scotland as an evangelical event in association with the communion season. It was held for worship, preaching and communion on the American frontier during the Second Great Awakening of the early 19th century. Revivals and camp meetings continued to be held by various denominations, and in some areas of the mid-Atlantic, led to the development of seasonal cottages for meetings.
The First Great Awakening or the Evangelical Revival was a series of Christian revivals that swept Britain and its thirteen North American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s. The revival movement permanently affected Protestantism as adherents strove to renew individual piety and religious devotion. The Great Awakening marked the emergence of Anglo-American evangelicalism as a trans-denominational movement within the Protestant churches. In the United States, the term Great Awakening is most often used, while in the United Kingdom, the movement is referred to as the Evangelical Revival.
The Primitive Methodist Church is a Methodist Christian denomination within the holiness movement. It began in England in the early 19th century, with the influence of American evangelist Lorenzo Dow (1777–1834).
Primitive Methodism was a major movement in English and Welsh Methodism from about 1810 until the Methodist Union in 1932. It emerged from a revival at Mow Cop in Staffordshire. Primitive meant "simple" or "relating to an original stage"; the Primitive Methodists saw themselves as practising a purer form of Christianity, closer to the earliest Methodists. Although the denomination did not bear the name "Wesleyan", Primitive Methodism was Wesleyan in theology, in contrast to the Calvinistic Methodists.
Circuit riders were clergy assigned to travel around specific geographic territories to minister to settlers and organize congregations. Circuit riders were clergy in the Methodist Episcopal Church and related denominations, although similar itinerant preachers could be found in other faiths as well, particularly among minority faith groups. They were most prominent during the early years of the United States, from 1784–1830, and were part of the Second Great Awakening revival movement.
The Methodist Church of Great Britain is a Protestant Christian denomination in Britain, and the mother church to Methodists worldwide. It participates in the World Methodist Council, and the World Council of Churches among other ecumenical associations.
Hugh Bourne along with William Clowes was the joint founder of Primitive Methodism, the largest offshoot of Wesleyan Methodism and, in the mid-19th century, an influential Protestant Christian movement in its own right.
Dorothy Ripley (1767–1831) was a British evangelist, who went to America in 1801 and died in 1831 in Virginia. She was a Quaker by confession, but had been raised a Methodist. She traveled thousands of miles in the United States and Britain as an effective evangelist on the camp meeting circuit. She ministered to many of the disenfranchised, including the Oneida people, men and women in prison, and African slaves in the Southern United States. She self-published six times; three of her books received a second printing. Ripley crossed the Atlantic Ocean at least nine times, mostly traveling alone. At her death a newspaper obituary termed her "perhaps the most extraordinary woman in the world."
The organisation of the Methodist Church of Great Britain is based on the principle of connexionalism. This means that British Methodism, from its inception under John Wesley (1703–1791), has always laid strong emphasis on mutual support, in terms of ministry, mission and finance, of one local congregation for another. No singular church community has ever been seen in isolation either from its immediately neighbouring church communities or from the centralised national organisation. Wesley himself journeyed around the country, preaching and establishing local worshipping communities, called "societies", often under lay leadership. Soon these local communities of worshipping Christians formalised their relationships with neighbouring Methodist communities to create "circuits", and the circuits and societies contained within them, were from the very beginning 'connected' to the centre and Methodism's governing body, the annual Conference. Today, societies are better known as local churches, although the concept of a community of worshipping Christians tied to a particular location, and subdivided into smaller cell groups called "classes", remains essentially based on Wesley's societies.
Freeborn Garrettson was an American clergyman, and one of the first American-born Methodist preachers. He entered the Methodist ministry in 1775 and travelled extensively to evangelize in several states. He was called Methodism's "Paul Revere". Garrettson was an outspoken abolitionist.
Methodist views on the ordination of women in the rite of holy orders are diverse.
The history of Methodism in the United States dates back to the mid-18th century with the ministries of early Methodist preachers such as Laurence Coughlan and Robert Strawbridge. Following the American Revolution most of the Anglican clergy who had been in America came back to England. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, sent Thomas Coke to America where he and Francis Asbury founded the Methodist Episcopal Church, which was to later establish itself as the largest denomination in America during the 19th century.
Mary Porteous born Mary Thompson was a British Primitive Methodist itinerant preacher.