Presbyterian Church of Wales / Calvinistic Methodist heritage congregations

Heritage

These congregations descend from the Presbyterian Church of Wales, born as the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist connexion in the great Welsh revivals of the 1730s under Howell Harris and Daniel Rowland — Methodist in fervor, Calvinist in doctrine, and ultimately Presbyterian in government. Welsh immigrants planted such churches in the slate, coal and farm settlements of Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and Wisconsin through the nineteenth century, famous for hymn-singing in harmony and preaching with hwyl. Most of the American connexion merged into the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. in 1920; the congregations carrying the heritage today are few.

Theological family

Calvinistic Methodism: Reformed doctrine — the connexion adopted its own Confession of Faith in 1823, in the Westminster family — wedded to revival warmth; the name Methodist refers to the revival's method and fervor, not to Wesleyan theology, which these churches rejected on predestination.

Who decides what

Presbyterian: elders and graded courts on the connexional pattern; surviving American congregations order their own affairs, some within other denominations, some independently carrying the heritage.

What a first-time visitor would find

The tradition's glory is congregational song — Welsh hymnody in four-part harmony, the gymanfa ganu or singing festival — joined to earnest preaching; heritage congregations may keep Welsh-language elements and the annual gymanfa even where English now predominates.

What it has always cared about

Revival and doctrine held together; hymn-singing as a people's theology — Wales called it the land of song because chapels like these made it so; and the immigrant chapel as the Welsh community's heart.

Its gift to the wider church

Welsh Calvinistic Methodism gave the wider church some of its best-loved hymnody — Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah comes from this stream — and a standing proof that Calvinist doctrine and revival fire are not opposites.

Commonly confused with

With Wesleyan Methodism, because of the nickname — but Calvinistic Methodists are Presbyterians, as the classification note on this body states; and with generic Welsh heritage societies, since the gymanfa ganu now outlives many of the chapels that birthed it.

Range of views inside it

The surviving handful of heritage congregations differ in language use, affiliation, and how much of the connexional past remains living practice; generalization beyond that would be false precision.

Where Presbyterian Church of Wales / Calvinistic Methodist heritage congregations churches are on the map

1 Presbyterian Church of Wales / Calvinistic Methodist heritage congregations congregations appear on The Church Map, across 1 states.

• Florida — 1