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‘In perfect harmony with the spirit of the age’: The Oxford University Wesley Guild, 1883–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2019

Martin Wellings
Martin Wellings*
Affiliation:
Oxford
*
*26 Upland Park Rd, Oxford, OX2 7RU. E-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

From the middle of the nineteenth century, educational opportunities at the older English universities were gradually extended beyond the limits of the Church of England, first with the abolition of the university tests and then with the opening of higher degrees to Nonconformists. Wesleyan Methodists were keen to take advantage of this new situation, and also to safeguard their young people from non-Methodist influences. A student organization was established in Oxford in 1883, closely linked to the city centre chapel and its ministers, and this Wesley Guild (later the Wesley Society, and then the John Wesley Society) formed the heart of Methodist involvement with the university's undergraduates for the next century. The article explores the background to the guild and its development in the years up to the First World War, using it as a case study for the engagement of Methodism with higher education in this period.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 55: CHURCHES AND EDUCATION , June 2019 , pp. 479 - 493
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2019 

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References

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32 Ibid., 19 May 1883.

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37 All three were frequent visitors, and Beet was elected a vice-president in Michaelmas Term 1891.

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53 WGM 2, 18 June 1897.

54 Ibid., 10 February 1899.

55 WGM 1, 10 February 1883.

56 Ibid., 10 February 1883; 28 April 1883.

57 Minutes of the Nonconformist Union, 3–5, 17 May 1881.

58 Ibid., 26 January, 1 March 1884.

59 WGM 2, 2 December 1898.

60 Alan Bullock, ‘“A Scotch University added to Oxford”? The Non-Collegiate Students’, in Brock and Curthoys, eds, History of the University of Oxford, 7: 193–208, especially 201, 207.

61 WGM 2, Term Card, Michaelmas Term 1891, listing members and their colleges.

62 Ibid., 2 June 1894, 21 November 1899.

63 Ibid., 21 May 1892, 19 May 1900.

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75 S. S. Savery: The Times, 28 December 1938, 12.

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80 WGM 2, 4 November 1899.