Introduction

This chapter introduces the history of division in British Methodism and notes that the revivalist groups that emerged from those divisions have received insufficient attention. There is a particular need to assess the role that revivalist theology played. The chapter argues that revivalist theology should be taken seriously, even if it was not written in a scholarly idiom, because it fits the broader Wesleyan conception of theology as ‘practical divinity’. The chapter then lays out the plan for the book and notes the five major figures who will be discussed: John Wesley, Hugh Bourne, James Caughey, William Booth, and Samuel Chadwick.