There are not many religious movements that can claim a social impact like Methodist. Methodism was an evangelical regeneration movement within the Church of England in the early 18th century that spread to the American colonies in the 1760s. In both Britain and America, the original members came mostly from the poorest and most marginal social classes. By 1830 the Methodist Episcopal Church had become the largest religious denomination in the United States, although Methodism had split into various denominational forms over the years. The most direct successor of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church, is currently the second largest of the Protestant churches in the United States. Taken together, the Methodist family of denominations remains a powerful influence on the nation's religious culture. The success and popularity of Methodism derive from two mutually reinforcing factors. First, Methodists learned to foster a series of powerful religious experiences that they placed at the center of their worship. Second, they learned to channel the religious enthusiasm resulting from these experiences into a tightly structured organization. This combination proved particularly well suited to reaching the newly emerging class of British industrial workers, who had been largely ignored by the established church. It also proved effective in evangelizing America's growing frontier population and attracting many people from churches established in the Atlantic Coast colonies. John Wesley was born in 1703. He received his education in London and Oxford. Wesley was ordained as a deacon in the Church of England in 1725 and then as a priest in 1728. Wesley returned to Oxford in 1729 while... middle of paper... to encourage the church to review a comfortable position in society and bring knowledge of the Gospel beyond the middle and upper classes to evangelize among the poor. However, rather than assuming that the Church of England brought evangelical religion to the people, he believed that the people could perhaps evangelize themselves and, ultimately, transform the institutions of the church. Wesley wanted to “reform the nation and spread Scriptural holiness throughout the land” (Church, 2014). John Wesley's great ally in this work was his brother Charles, whose influence on Methodism was chiefly in the hymns he wrote for the new movement. Among populations with low literacy rates and in an era when books were rare, Charles Wesley's hymns became crucial tools for communicating religious ideas as well as a source of inspiration and community solidarity..