Description
John Wesley, a key leader and organizer of Methodism, is shown preaching on his fathers grave in the churchyard at Epworth, England, on June 6, 1742. Wesleys father, Samuel, had served as rector for the twelfth-century Saint Andrews Church (Church of England) in Epworth. In the previous decade, John Wesley and a group of fellow students at Oxford had organized the Methodists as a reform movement within the Church of England. After the death of his father, Wesley was forbidden to preach inside the church at Epworth; thus, he used his fathers tombstone in the churchyard as a pulpit.
