Serving the present age

Phyllis D. Airhart

"The personal conversion experience was essential to Methodist revivalism and constituted the basis of salvation and church membership. Phyllis Airhart maintains that revivalism was a distinctive form of piety and socialization that was critical in helping Methodists define who they were, colouring their understanding of how religion was to be experienced, practised, articulated, and cultivated. This revivalist piety, even more than doctrine or policy, was the identifying mark of Methodism in the nineteenth century. But during the late Victorian era, the Methodist presentation of the religious life underwent a transformation. By 1925, when the Methodist Church was incorporated into the United Church of Canada, its most prominent leaders were espousing an approach to piety that was essentially, and sometimes explicitly, non-revivalist." "The Methodist approach to personal religion...

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