Church Matters: Retrieving the Great Tradition

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Chur ch Mat ter s : Ret r i ev i ng the Great Trad i t i on

What You Should Know about Christian History: AD 1620-1814, continued

5. John Wesley (1703-1791): Founder of the Methodist movement. Emphasized the pursuit of holiness and the achievement of “Christian perfection.” 6. Francis Asbury (1745-1816): Methodist circuit-riding preacher. He and Thomas Coke were the first Methodist superintendents in America. Five Terms You Should Know 1. Separatists : English church members who separated from the Anglican Church over several issues, including the degree of adornment in the church’s worship. (Separatists preferred simple worship; Anglican worship tended to be ornate.) Most Separatists became Congregationalists. 2. Moravian Brethren : Pietist descendants of the Bohemian Protestants, who derived from Jan Hus’ followers. Today, they are known as the United Brethren. 3. Pietists . Eighteenth-century Christians who emphasized experiencing God’s presence through intense, personal prayer and Bible study. 4. The Enlightenment : An intellectual movement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that focused on human reason, words, science, natural law, and the created order. 5. Deism : From the Latin deus (“deity”). A movement that searched for a universal foundation on which all religions could agree. Most deists believed that a divine being had created the universe and natural laws. However, they also believed that this divine being was revealed to humanity primarily through the created order.