Digging Out the Embedded Church - The Maranatha Community

CHAPTER 7 CHRISTIAN UNITY AND THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL IN
BRITAIN
Towards the end of the 17 th Century the phenomenon of Religious Societies appeared in
English religious life. These societies were to have an important role later in the spread of the
Evangelical Revival, and helped to create a bond between spiritually like-minded people.
They drew not only serious Anglicans together in worship and prayer and good works, but in
some cases brought Dissenters and Anglicans together.
Reacting against what many Christians saw as growing unbelief and immorality in society,
little cells of earnest Anglican men met to improve their spiritual lives, their fervour, their
faith and their piety. London had about a hundred of these groups by the end of the 17 th
Century. A contemporary account of their rise and growth in 1678 was written by Dr Josiah
Woodward in 1698.
Frank Baker writes, „These societies… were intended solely for spiritually minded
churchmen, though they did succeed in winning some Dissenters back to the Anglican
fold.‟ 67
In Germany similar groups, „collegia pietatis‟, had grown up in the late 17 th Century, inspired
by the Lutheran theologian Dr Philipp Jakob Spener (1635-1705). (Count Nicholas von
Zinzendorf was his godson.) A group began to meet twice a week in Spener‟s home to stir up
„heart religion‟ among clergy and laity. In 1675 he wrote Pia Desideria, from which the
Pietist movement took its ideals.
The principles of Christian living outlined in Pia Desideria, though not deliberately copied as
such, were similar to those of the English Evangelicals of the early 18 th Century Revival:
serious attention to Bible study; encouragement of the laity in stirring up faith; a renewal of
fervent preaching; and an involvement in the practical, social effects of the Gospel. There
was no desire to form a new church, but to revive believers‟ faith and encourage personal
conversion to Christ.
This was also true of the „methodists‟, as they were dubbed in 18 th Century England and
Wales. The term „methodist‟ (without a capital letter) was not used at that period to describe
a member of a denomination, but to label a very serious-minded „enthusiast‟ who believed
that each person needed to be converted to a faith in Christ alone for salvation, an experience
sometimes referred to as „receiving the new birth‟.
In the early days of the Revival, in the late 1730s, there was no thought of their dividing from
the Church of England. That separate churches did eventually emerge in distinct bodies, the
Methodists under Wesley and the Calvinistic Methodists in Wales under Howel Harris and
Daniel Rowland, was due to social, national and theological factors.
67 Baker, F, The People Called Methodists Ch 7, 3 Polity. A History of the Methodist Church in Great
Britain, Vol 1, ed Rupert Davies and Garson Rupp, Epworth Press, London, 1965, p 215.
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