John Wesley
Anglican priest and founder of the Methodist movement.
John Wesley was an Anglican priest and Oxford fellow who, with his brother Charles and the evangelist George Whitefield, founded the movement that became Methodism. He preached an estimated 40,000 sermons over his lifetime, often outdoors, and rode roughly 250,000 miles on horseback to reach the working-class communities the Church of England had neglected. Wesley's contribution to Christian prayer was both organizational and personal. He adapted the Puritan Richard Alleine's earlier covenant prayer in 1755 for use in Methodist Covenant Services, where it remains the central act of personal renewal. His prayers reflect the Methodist instinct for serious personal commitment combined with practical day-to-day spirituality. He died in 1791, six years before the Methodist Church formally separated from the Church of England.