A Tale of Preachers and Beggars:Methodism and Money in the Great Age of Transatlantic Expansion, 1780-1830

• Main Author: Hempton, David
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University PressNew York, NY 2001
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195148008.003.0006; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52533621/isbn-9780195148008-book-part-6.pdf

Abstract Two very different kinds of facts and figures can be brought to bear on Methodism’s great era of expansion throughout the English-speaking world and beyond in the generation after the American and French Revolutions1. The first are membership statistics, which reveal spectacular gains across the North Atlantic world. In England members of Metl1odist societies expanded from 55,705 in 1790 to 285,530 in 1830. In the same period, Irish Metl1odist membership almost doubled and Scottish Methodist membership tripled. Even more dramatically, Methodist membership in Wales increased by a factor of twenty2. But the most dramatic growth of all occurred in America, which had fewer than 1,000 members in 1770 and over 250,000 just fifty years later.