This issue begins with the childhood years of John and Charles Wesley, but in many ways we are picking up the story mid-stream. For though the Wesleys are rightly known as evangelical pioneers, the momentum for the movement they founded had been building long before they arrived.

In the seventeenth century, frustration with the German state church led to the rise of Pietism, a renewal movement within Lutheranism led by figures like Philipp Spener and August Francke. The revived Moravian Brethren, centered at Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf's estate in Saxony, grew out of this movement. As the map below illustrates, Pietism and Moravianism exerted a huge influence on Europe and beyond, partially through connections with the Wesleys.

Meanwhile in England, Dissenters (including the Wesleys' grandparents on both sides) offered their own alternative to the state church model. Their gatherings, or "conventicles," could meet anywhere and be led by nearly anyone, as long as the format was simple and ...

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