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Turner is also eager to give an overview of the movement that Wesley founded, and so he discusses the socio-political impact of Methodism over subsequent centuries and the character of Primitive Methodism, a 19th-century breakaway from Wesleyanism. These topics, though of great importance, are perhaps rather too remote from Wesley himself to warrant inclusion in such a volume. There are also points where unexplained allusions—to George Bell (p. 38), to the Irish textile triangle (p. 43), even to Methodist societies (p. 46)—will not convey their meaning to a newcomer to the field. Nevertheless, this volume will achieve the aim of the author, to explain the significance of Wesley in the light of recent scholarship (Turner is notably up-to-date) to Methodists and non-Methodists alike.

Kent's book also has great virtues. Its attitude to Wesley's conversion rings truer than Turner's. For Turner, the episode of 1738 was relatively unimportant, certainly in comparison with the event of 1725 when Wesley first took up the rigorous self-discipline of the High Church party. For Kent, the 1738 conversion was formative of the mature Wesley, for then he turned from his previous reliance on self-discipline to a personal faith that gave him greater resilience. The issue of whether Methodism saved England from revolution, the perennial Halévy thesis, is also treated more satisfactorily by Kent, who points out that the authorities were so firmly in control that there was no question of revolution in England in the first place. Furthermore, Kent's book puts the revival phenomena—though they are not so labeled—of Wesley's day center stage. Visions, dreams and special providences, the stuff of vibrant popular religion, are shown to be crucial to what occurred. There are welcome passages where contemporary documents, sometimes unpublished, are carefully dissected. The annotations of Archbishop Secker on manuscript correspondence written by John Berridge, an evangelical clergyman, are particularly revealing of the cleavage between the theological opinions of the religious authorities and those of contemporary evangelists. The analysis in Kent's book is very broad, encompassing, for instance, the writings of Thomas Hobbes as well as the novelists of Wesley's day. Above all, Wesley and the Wesleyans is fresh and suggestive, because it challenges all existing interpretations of the rise of Methodism.

The conceptualization of John Kent's book is drawn from Religious Studies, the discipline that the author long taught at the University of Bristol. Certain assumptions, sometimes found in that field but rare elsewhere, are made without argument. In particular, the notion of the existence of such a thing as "primary religion" is asserted. It is very like the "primal religion" that commentators have often attributed to traditional African societies. For Kent it is the impulse, natural to humanity, to seek supernatural power to cope with the experiences of everyday life, whether deep-seated anxieties, particular problems or the need for self-approval. It was this force, expressing itself in perceptions of divine intervention, that, according to Kent, Wesley harnessed for his movement. Primary religion, on the author's account, must be distinguished from "secondary religion," the formulation of theologies and the consequent creation of denominations. The plastic energy of primary religion was molded into the substance of Methodism.

Although this framework is boldly outlined in the first chapter of Kent's book, it is not carefully defended from potential critique. Yet it is remarkably open to dissent. The very distinction between primary and secondary religion is doubtful. Can a single impulse of human spirituality permeating the whole of history be isolated? Surely the quest for divine aid takes on many forms depending on local settings and specific faiths. It is doubtful whether religion could ever exist, even conceptually, except in the form of a particular religion. The primary and the secondary, in Kent's terminology, are therefore inextricably mingled together.

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