We all know the promises government has made over the years about how certain programs and initiatives would eradicate poverty. But perhaps nothing rivals the Methodist movement in terms of effectively stamping out poverty in England. Charles Edward White and Bobby Butler’s essay “John Wesley’s Church Planting Movement: Discipleship that Transformed a Nation and Changed the World” is a splendid overview of Methodism’s impact on English society, especially as it relates to the middle class explosion.

People of faith understand best just how primary the change of heart is on all aspects of life. In the West, poverty is primarily attached to social ills. Bad lifestyle choices inherently have an economic trapping affect. The path of holiness, discipline, education, and accountability was so crucial to the early Methodists that the change in the life of the believer was momentous. John Wesley’s theology of holiness and grace would indeed have enormous social repercussions that John Newton and William Wilberforce both lauded his example.

White and Butler highlight just how substantial Methodism’s impact was on England and the world:

The Methodists made such an impact on their nation that in 1962 historian Élie Halévy theorized that the Wesleyan revival created England’s middle class and saved England from the kind of bloody revolution that crippled France. Other historians, building on his work, go further to suggest that God used Methodism to show all the oppressed peoples of the world that feeding their souls on the heavenly bread of the lordship of Christ is the path to providing the daily bread their bodies also need.

The entire essay is worth the read.