The Bible Christians trace their origins to William
O’Bryan (1778-1868), a local preacher in the Wesleyan
Methodist Church. Finding many of the villages of Devon
and Cornwall in almost complete ignorance of the Gospel,
he extended his own very successful evangelism beyond
the limits of his own Circuit. In the conflict with the
local Wesleyan authorities which ensued, O’Bryan, not
without hesitation and regret, separated himself, and in
1815 he founded the first society of a new community at
Shebbear in North Devon.
Although faced by much
opposition and persecution, the new movement spread
rapidly. At the end of the first year there were 567
members, and after only five years of work in the West,
missionaries were sent to London, Kent and Sussex. The
Bible Christians held the doctrines common to all the
branches of Methodism, and placed the Bible very much at
the centre of life and worship. One of their greatest
pioneers was Billy Bray
, tin miner and
reformed drunkard, whose simple and no-nonsense
application of biblical principles won him an enduring
reputation.
An interesting point to note is that the Bible
Christians admitted women to the Ministry equally with
men. It took the Methodist Church a long time to get
back to sound Bible Christian practice!
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