Methodist Church in Canada

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Methodism was an outgrowth of 18th century Anglicanism. It grew from the teachings and activities of John and Charles Wesley and was a strongly evangelical movement at a time when the Church of England itself was in a somewhat moribund state. It was not the Wesleys’ original intention to form a new denomination but by the 1790s there was no doubt it was one. The Church of England’s attitude continued to be largely hostile to it throughout the nineteenth century, as can be witnessed by one Canadian immigrant’s story that their English landlord had insisted that the family’s children should attend the Church of England Sunday School, not the Methodist one. This was in the 1860s. The parents of the family were strongly Methodist and resisted, and the landlord’s reaction was a contributing factor to their emigration.

The opening of the new land provided the Methodists with opportunities for their evangelism which they grasped eagerly. In the 1830s and 1840s they consciously decided to send as many missionaries as possible to Canada, with the hope of converting the pioneers to their views, and establishing churches in advance of the Church of England. Having won the settlers’ allegiance, they foresaw considerable growth for their movement.

This foresight changed the face of Canadian religion, for there were many Methodist churches to choose from at a time when settlers had to make do with what was available. Many families who had been Church of England in the old country effortlessly changed to Methodist in Canada. The result was that the Methodist church was large and, when the various amalgamations of the 20th century occurred, became the largest Protestant denomination in the country.

In addition, evangelism in the form of camp meetings and revivals was both important and a staple of popular culture. The Methodists were very strong in this area and this also added to their numbers and influence. A useful glimpse of the nature of a camp meeting can be seen in Susanna Moodie’s Life in the Clearings and a scholarly account of evangelism in the chapter “Mass Evangelism before 1860,” in Neil Semple’s The Lord’s Dominion (1996). The nineteenth century was a time of religious controversy, however, and the Methodists suffered their own share of schisms. Various groups broke off from the central stem, which was eventually known as the Wesleyan Methodist Church.

The Bible Christians, Primitive Methodists, New Connexion Methodists and Methodist Episcopal Church all had their adherents, and at times a great many churches, often small and far from financially viable.

As with the Scottish churches, the differences in England were imported to Canada. As an example, the Bible Christians were founded by William O’Bryan, a Wesleyan minister expelled by the Methodists in 1810. His central area of power, in north Devon and Cornwall, provided a great many immigrants who settled in Huron and Durham counties in Ontario. In both these areas the Bible Christians had considerable influence until they began to dwindle after 1870. One difficulty with Bible Christians is that they often appear in the census as ‘Christian’, a term which might lead us to think they are Disciples.

Throughout the third quarter of the century, these various groups began to rejoin the Wesleyans until 1884, when there was once more only one group, the Methodist Church of Canada. A helpful flowchart showing this series of unions has been produced by the United Church and has been published in several places. The most accessible now is in the Guide to family history research in the archival repositories of the United Church of Canada where it forms the central page.

In 1925 the Methodists joined the Congregationalists and most of the Presbyterians to form the United Church of Canada. Later the Evangelical United Brethren would join them also.

The definitive history of Methodism in Canada is Neil Semple’s The Lord’s Dominion (1996), mentioned earlier.

A few Methodist churches did not join the United Church; they are known as The Free Methodist Church in Canada. Website