List of Methodists

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

This list deals with those who are notable in the history or culture of all Methodist churches. For other Methodists who are not notable in Methodist history or culture, see Category:Methodists.

Early leaders

• John Wesley
• Charles Wesley
• George Whitefield
• Richard Allen
• Francis Asbury
• Thomas Coke
• William Law
• William Williams Pantycelyn
• Howell Harris
• James Varick
• Countess of Huntingdon

Clergy

• Bernhard Anderson – Old Testament scholar
• Ephraim Kingsbury Avery – New England minister long thought to be the first American clergyman tried for murder
• Elihu Bailey – Wisconsin State Assemblyman
• Canaan Banana – first President of Zimbabwe
• John C. A. Barrett – Chairman of the World Methodist Council
• William Black (Methodist) – linked to Nova Scotia
• Henry Boehm – centenarian
• George Bramwell Evens – nature writer of the Romani people
• Rev. Dr. Henry Brown – Methodist minister and author of The Impending Peril: Or, Methodism and Amusement
• William Gannaway Brownlow – Governor of Tennessee
• Byron Cage – gospel singer (African Methodist Episcopal Church)
• Thomas Charles – Welsh language author. (Of the Calvinistic Methodists)
• Zerah Colburn (math prodigy) – became a minister, after youth as a mental calculator
• Walter T. Colquitt – circuit-riding Methodist preacher who served in the US House of Representatives and the Senate.
• William Edwards (architect) – Welsh designer of bridges
• Edward Eggleston – also author
• Calvin Fairbank – abolitionist
• Robert Newton Flew – theologian and ecumenist
• Orange Scott – first president of the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion
• Adam Crooks – Wesleyan Methodist Connexion
• Arno Clemens Gaebelein – also a writer
• Leslie Griffiths – life peer in the House of Lords
• Adam Hamilton (pastor) – senior pastor of the 17,000-member United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas
• Harold P. Hamilton – Kentucky Wesleyan College President
• Hill, Rowland – founder of Surrey Chapel, London and early advocate of vaccination
• Silas Hocking – novelist and preacher
• Jabez Bunting – President of the Methodist Conference
• John Hogan – U.S. Congressman and preacher
• Andrew Hunter (Methodist preacher) – "Father of Arkansas Methodism" and a politician
• Leonard Isitt (minister) – New Zealand Methodist minister
• James W. Kemp – minister known for writing about Dr. Seuss as he relates to Christianity
• Samuel Kobia – General Secretary of the World Council of Churches
• Lowen Kruse – Nebraska state senator
• Augustus Baldwin Longstreet – known as a humorist
• William Losee – Canadian circuit rider
• Sarah Mallett – preacher
• William Morley Punshon – preaching/lecturing
• Kathleen Richardson, Baroness Richardson of Calow – first woman president of the Methodist Conference
• Egerton Ryerson – Ryerson University is named for him
• William Ryerson – political figure
• Tex Sample – sociologist of religion
• William J. Simmons – founder of the second Ku Klux Klan (suspended minister)
• Ndabaningi Sithole – founder of the Zimbabwe African National Union and a Methodist minister.
• John Karefa-Smart – leader of the United National People's Party of Sierra Leone
• Donald Soper – Christian socialist and pacifist
• Edward Sugden – first master of Queen's College (University of Melbourne)
• Wilbur Fisk Tillett – clergyman and educator
• Charles Tindley – gospel music composer
• Channing Heggie Tobias – member of the President's Committee on Civil Rights
• Ray Vaughn – Christian musician and evangelist
• Simon Topping – activist on poverty causes like Make Poverty History
• Cecil Williams – involved in HIV/AIDS causes

Bishops

Main article: List of Methodist Bishops

• Richard Allen – founder of African Methodist Episcopal Church
• Sarah Allen – AME, founded the Daughters of the Conference.
• Daniel Payne – AME, first African-American president of an African-American university, Wilberforce University

Missionaries

• Henry Augustus Buchtel – did missionary work in Bulgaria, also a Governor of Colorado.
• Henry Hare Dugmore – Wesleyan missionary and translator in South Africa
• Alexander Robert Edgar – missionary to Australia. (convert from Anglicanism)
• James Hope Moulton – missionary known for studying/preaching to the Parsis
• Christoph Gottlob Müller – founded the Wesleyan Church in Germany.

Theologians

Main article: List of Methodist theologians

• James H. Cone (b. 1938) – advocate of Black theology
• Albert Outler (1908 – 1989) – Wesleyan scholar who formulated the Wesleyan Quadrilateral

Laity

This concerns those not of the Methodist clergy who are still of importance to the history or culture of Methodists.

Educators

• Margaret Davis Bowen – African-American educator, civil rights activist, religious leader in the Methodist church
• Dr. Henry N. Snyder (1865–1949) – educator and author who served as president of Wofford College, Spartanburg, SC from 1902 until his retirement in 1942

Musicians

• Brittany Hargest – member of CCM group Jump5
• Beyoncé Knowles – attended St. John's United Methodist Church in Houston, Texas.
• Brian Courtney Wilson – American gospel and CCM singer

Politicians

Note: The religion of these non-clergy Methodists should relate to their historical significance.

• Paul Boateng – lay preacher who became Britain's first black Cabinet minister in 1997
• Colin Breed – lay preacher and British Liberal Democrat Shadow Cabinet member
• Hillary Clinton – 67th United States Secretary of State, Democratic presidential candidate
• Minnie Fisher Cunningham – helped found a Methodist church in New Waverly, Texas; political figure who worked to uplift the standard of living for the disenfranchised
• Isaac Foot – Vice President of the Methodist Conference (1937–38) and President of the Liberal Party (UK) (1947)
• Chiang Kai-shek – Chinese general and leader of the Republic of China between 1928 and 1975
• John Karefa-Smart – Sierra Leonese foreign minister and Methodist elder
• Robert Newbald Kay – British Liberal MP. Also a member of the Methodist Conference who was important to the Methodist chapel in Acomb, North Yorkshire
• Edmund Marshall – Methodist local preacher, ecumenical adviser to the Bishop of Wakefield and former MP.
• William McKinley – supported Methodist missionaries attempts to evangelize the Philippines and deemed it his duty to "Christianize" the Filipino people.
• Florence Paton – lay preacher, British Labour party
• Fidel V. Ramos – currently of the Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats, was the first Methodist, and first non-Catholic, to be elected President of the Republic of the Philippines
• Alfred Roberts – former mayor of Grantham, Methodist lay preacher, and father of Margaret Thatcher
• Newton Rowell – leading lay figure in Canada's Methodist church and a politician
• William Spence – Australian trade union leader and lay preacher
• Frederick Stewart (Australian politician) – Australian Cabinet minister and lay preacher
• Boris Trajkovski – President of the Church Council of the Macedonian Evangelical Methodist Church and second President of the Republic of Macedonia.
• Taufa'ahau Tupou IV – lay preacher in the Free Wesleyan Church and former King of Tonga
• Elizabeth Warren –United States Senator from Massachusetts
• Feng Yuxiang –General of the Zhili Clique and later founder of the Guominjun, known as the "Christian General" and "Backstabbing General"

Scientists

Note: They should have some involvement in religion and science discussion in order to be relevant.

• Charles Coulson – became Vice-President of the British Methodist Conference in 1959 and won chemistry's Davy Medal in 1970.
• Ernest Walton – Irish physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics
• William Daniel Phillips – Nobel Prize–winning physicist and a founding member of the "International Society for Science & Religion"
• Arthur Leonard Schawlow – co-winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics

Writers (including hymn writers)

• William F. Albright – Methodist archeologist who writes on Bible archaeology
• Samuel Chadwick – The Way to Pentecost
• Phoebe Knapp – Methodist hymn writer
• Ann Griffiths – poet and hymn writer (convert from Anglicanism)
• William Williams Pantycelyn – Welsh Methodist hymn writer (Calvinistic Methodist and preacher)
• Eudora Welty – wrote in One Writer's Beginnings that "we went to the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and of course we never saw anything strange about Methodists." (p. 34)

Fictional characters

• Superman – also known as Clark Kent or Kal-El. Superman is the archetypal costumed super-hero. He is clearly the most influential character in the comic book super-hero genre. The character was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, both of whom were Jewish. The character of Superman, however, has always been depicted as having been raised with a solidly Protestant upbringing by his adoptive Midwestern parents – Jonathan and Martha Kent. Of Clark's parents, Martha is the more devout churchgoer. Clark Kent was raised as a Methodist. The Kents are Methodists, although Jonathan is not as regular a churchgoer as his wife.
• Superboy – also known as Conner Kent or Kon-El Superboy is a clone made from the DNA of Superman (who was raised as a Methodist) and Lex Luthor (a Nietzschean atheist). Superboy was being raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent, who were also the adoptive parents of Clark Kent, the Kryptonian infant orphan who grew up to be Superman.
• Jonathan and Martha Kent – Clark and Conner Kent's adopted parents.
• Supergirl – real name is Linda Danvers, the fictional character of Supergirl (the post-Crisis version written prominently by Peter David during the late 1980s and 1990s) was an active Methodist. Supergirl's minister, Rev. Larry Varvel, was based on a real-life Methodist minister of the same name.
• Sylvia Danvers – Supergirl's (Linda Danvers) Mother, a church assistant studying for the ministry.
• Hank, Peggy, and Bobby Hill along with majority of King of the Hill characters – attend Arlen First Methodist Church.
• Atoman – also known as Craig Wallace, one of the Seven Sentinels
• Amanda Waller – also known as The Wall, White Queen, and Black King—leader of the Suicide Squad and Checkmate
• Francine Peters-Silver – one of the characters in Strangers in Paradise
• Church Mice – comic strip character created by Karl Zorowski
• Samuel and Rose Sayer – Methodist missionaries played by Robert Morley and Katharine Hepburn in John Huston's film adaption of C.S. Forester's novel, The African Queen.