‘A Glorious Work in the World’: Welsh Methodism and the International Evangelical Revival, 1735-1750

Despite the extensive historiography relating to Welsh Methodism, work on the Evangelical Revival has tended to focus on exclusively Welsh issues and has neglected the wider contexts of the evangelical movement. In this significant reinterpretation of the eighteenth-century Welsh Methodist revival, David Ceri Jones adopts a comparative approach in order to assess the role of Welsh Methodism in the wider evangelical movement in the period 1735-1770. ‘Welsh Methodism’ looks at the means by which Methodists in Wales communicated with their fellow Evangelicals, how the Welsh revival influenced the wider movement, and the ways in which the international movement affected the development of Welsh Methodism. Beginning with an outline of trans-national and trans-Atlantic dimensions of first generation Evangelism, it then examines how letters, diaries and printed literature contributed to generate a common understanding of the faith. Other issues considered include Howell Harris’s relationship with George Whitefield, the divisions that affected the evangelical community, later attempts to organize the movement more coherently and the Great Separation of 1750