Presbyterian Church of Wales
The Presbyterian Church of Wales, also known as the Calvinistic Methodist Church, is a denomination of Protestant Christianity based in Wales.
The Calvinistic Methodist movement has its origins in the 18th-century Welsh Methodist revival. The early movement was led principally by Welsh revivalist Daniel Rowland, who was influenced by the teachings of the Welsh Methodist leader Howell Harris and the theologian John Calvin. As such, Calvinistic Methodism places a strong emphasis on the sovereignty of God and the Calvinist doctrine of predestination.
The movement had a profound impact on Welsh society and culture, and it played a significant role in the Welsh revivals of the 19th century. Calvinistic Methodism formerly also had a significant presence in England, under the spiritual leadership of George Whitefield. Today, the large majority of the Presbyterian Church of Wales' congregations are in Wales, but it also has a few local churches in the west of England.
History
The church was born as the Calvinistic Methodists out of the Welsh Methodist revival and the preaching of Howell Harris and Daniel Rowland in the 18th century and seceded from the Church of England in 1811. Calvinistic Methodism became a major denomination in Wales, growing rapidly in the 19th century, and taking a leadership role in the Welsh Religious Revival of 1904–05. In 1823, a Confession of Faith was created and adopted, based on the standard Westminster Confession. Theological colleges for ministerial training were opened in Bala, then in Merionethshire, now Gwynedd, Trefeca, then in Brecknockshire, now Powys, and Aberystwyth, in Ceredigion. It produces a quarterly journal Y Traethodydd and a monthly periodical The Treasury. It is distinguished from other forms of Methodism by the Calvinistic nature of its theology. In 1840, the Foreign Missionary Society was formed in Liverpool to provide missionaries to India. It held its first general assembly in 1864.Calvinistic Methodism claims to be the only Christian denomination in Wales to be of purely Welsh origin, and is rare among Presbyterian churches, by originating in the Methodist revival rather than deriving from the Calvinist Reformation. In 18th-century England, Calvinistic Methodism was represented by the followers of George Whitefield as opposed to those of John and Charles Wesley, although all the early Methodists in England and Wales worked together, regardless of Calvinist or Arminian theology, for many years. With Calvinistic Methodists being absorbed into Presbyterianism, Methodism became defined by its adherence to Wesleyan-Arminian theology.
Beginnings
The movement's beginnings may be traced to the Rev. Griffith Jones, Church of England rector of Llanddowror, Carmarthenshire, whose sympathy for the poor led him to set on foot a system of circulating charity schools for the education of children. Griffith Jones's zeal, which contrasted strikingly with the general apathy of the clergy of the period, appealed to the public imagination, and his powerful preaching exercised a widespread influence. Many travelled long distances in order to attend his ministry. There was thus a considerable number of earnest people dispersed throughout the country waiting for the rousing of the parish clergy.Daniel Rowland and Howell Harris
Griffith Jones, preaching at Llanddewi Brefi, Cardiganshire, found Daniel Rowland, curate of Llangeitho, in his audience, and his patronising attitude in listening drew from the preacher a personal supplication on his behalf in the middle of the discourse. Rowland was deeply moved, and became an ardent apostle of the new movement. Naturally a fine orator, his new-born zeal gave an edge to his eloquence and his fame spread abroad.In May 1735, Howell Harris underwent a religious conversion after listening to a sermon at Talgarth on the necessity of partaking of Holy Communion. This led to several weeks of self-examination and reached a climax at Communion on Whitsunday, May 1735. He immediately began to hold meetings in his own home, encouraging others to seek the same assurance that he had of Christ's forgiveness, and was soon invited to do the same at the houses of others. He became a fiery itinerant preacher, stirring to the depths every neighbourhood he visited. Harris' eldest brother sent him to Oxford in the autumn of 1735 where his friends hoped he "should be effectually cured of 'enthusiasm', as they called it", but he left in the following February.
In 1736, on returning home, Harris opened a school, Griffith Jones supplying him with books from his charity. He also set up societies, in accordance with the recommendations in Josiah Wedgwood's little book on the subject; and these exercised a great influence on the religious life of the people. By far the most notable of Harris's converts was William Williams of Pantycelyn, the famous hymn-writer of Wales, who while listening to the revivalist preaching on a tombstone in the graveyard of Talgarth, felt he was "apprehended as by a warrant from on high". He was ordained deacon in the Church of England, 1740, but George Whitefield recommended him to leave his curacies in order to preach on highways and hedges.
Rowlands and Harris had been at work fully eighteen months before they met in 1737 at a service in Devynock church in the upper part of Breconshire. The acquaintance then formed lasted to the end of Harris's life.
In January 1743, Whitefield chaired a meeting at Plas Watford near Caerphilly, Glamorgan, attended by Rowland, Williams, Harris, John Humphreys, John Powell — afterwards of Llanmartin – and a layman called John Cennick. They met in order to organise their societies. Seven lay exhorters were also at the meetings; they were questioned as to their spiritual experience and allotted their several spheres; other matters pertaining to the new conditions created by the revival were arranged. This is known as the first Methodist Association, held eighteen months before John Wesley's first conference.
Monthly meetings covering smaller districts, were organised to consider local matters, the transactions of which were to be reported to the Quarterly Association, to be confirmed, modified, or rejected. Exhorters were divided into two classes — public, who were allowed to itinerate as preachers and superintend a number of societies; and private, who were confined to the charge of one or two societies. The societies were distinctly understood to be part of the Church of England and every attempt at estranging them from the Church was reproved; but persecution made their position anomalous. They did not accept the discipline of the Church of England, so the plea of conformity was a feeble defence; nor had they taken out licenses, so as to claim the protection of the Toleration Act. Harris's ardent loyalty to the Church of England, after three refusals to ordain him, and his personal contempt for ill-treatment from persecutors, were the only things that prevented separation.
A controversy on a doctrinal point "Did God die on Calvary?" raged for some time, the principal disputants being Rowlands and Harris; and in 1751 it ended in an open rupture, which threw the Connexion first into confusion and then into a state of coma. The societies split up into Harrisites and Rowlandites, and it was only with the revival of 1762 that the breach was fairly repaired. This revival is a landmark in the history of the Connexion.
William Williams Pantycelyn had just published a little volume of hymns entitled Aleluia, the singing of which inflamed the people. This led the Bishop of St. David's to suspend Rowlands's licence, and Rowlands had to confine himself to a meeting-house at Llangeitho. Having been turned out of other churches, he had leased a plot of land in 1759, anticipating the final withdrawal of his license, in 1763, and a spacious building was erected to which the people crowded from all parts on Sacrament Sunday. Llangeitho became the centre of Welsh Methodism; and Rowland's popularity never waned until his physical powers gave way.
Peter Williams and Thomas Charles
A notable event in the history of Welsh Methodism was the publication in 1770, of a 4th annotated Welsh Bible by the Rev. Peter Williams, a forceful preacher and an indefatigable worker, who had joined the Methodists in 1746 after being driven from several curacies. It gave birth to a new interest in Scripture, being the first definite commentary in the language. A powerful revival broke out at Llangeitho in the spring of 1780 and spread to the south but not to the north of Wales.In North Wales, the Rev. Thomas Charles became a major figure. Having spent five years in Somerset as curate of several parishes, Charles returned to his native North Wales to marry Sarah Jones of Bala. Failing to find employment in the established church, he joined the Methodists in 1784. His circulating charity schools and then his Sunday schools gradually made the North a new country. In 1791 a revival began at Bala, a few months after the Bala Association had been ruffled by the proceedings which led to the expulsion of Peter Williams from the Connection, in order to prevent him from selling John Canne's Bible among the Methodists, because of some Sabellian marginal notes.
In 1790 the Bala Association passed rules regarding the proper mode of conducting the Quarterly Association, drawn up by Charles; in 1801, Charles and Thomas Jones of Mold, published the Rules and Objects of the Private Societies among the People called Methodists. About 1795, persecution led the Methodists to take the first step towards separation from the Church of England. Heavy fines made it impossible for preachers in poor circumstances to continue without claiming the protection of the Toleration Act, and the meeting-houses had to be registered as dissenting chapels. In a large number of cases this had only been delayed by so constructing the houses that they were used both as dwellings and as chapels at one and the same time. Until 1811 the Calvinistic Methodists had no ministers ordained by themselves; their enormous growth in numbers and the scarcity of ministers to administer the Sacrament — only three in North Wales, two of whom had joined only at the dawn of the century made the question of ordination a matter of urgency. The South Wales clergy who regularly itinerated were dying out; the majority of those remaining itinerated but irregularly, and were most of them against the change. The lay element, with the help of Charles and a few other stalwarts, carried the matter through ordaining nine at Bala in June, and thirteen at Llandilo in August. In 1823, the Confession of Faith of the Connextion of Calvinistic Methodists in Wales was published following the Association meetings in Aberystwyth and Bala that year; it is based on the Westminster Confession as Calvinistically construed, and contains 44 articles. The Connection's Constitutional Deed was formally completed in 1826 and tied all its property to the ascension to its Confession of Faith.