England before and after Wesley : the Evangelical Revival and Social Reform by J. Wesley Bready
Regent College Publishing, 2021 reprint (originally published 1938)
£24 463 pages ISBN 978 1 573 835 947
As an analysis of the impact of the 18th century Evangelical Revival and the part played by John Wesley especially, but by his brother Charles and George Whitfield and others as well, this is a superb read.
The author is a serious historian – the plethora of referenced sources bears ample witness to that.
Rev Dr. J Wesley Bready (1887 – 1953), not a Methodist despite the name, was a Canadian scholar and prolific author.
In this magnum opus, he depicts in graphic detail the state of of England before the Evangelical Revival and afterwards showing how dynamic and transformative was the
impact of the preaching and teaching of the Wesley brothers, Whitfield and others.
The power and extent of Christian evangelical influence on many aspects of English society – prisons, education, health care, cruelty to animals (RSPCA founded), orphans, the poor, democratic institutions – all are faithfully documented and recorded here and that in detail from contemporary sources.
The extent of the multifariuous transformations is hammered home with insistence from the literature of the time.
This was a seminal work when first published upon which many have since built. As has been commented, the author ‘demonstrates the inextricable link between a living Christian faith and the humanizing and ameliorative socal transforamtions of the period.’
A great pity that so many in the Church of England mocked the Methodism of the time.
In a time of general church decline in the west, this book will amply justify faith for today with abundant evidence from a time in our history not too far removed from our own.