John Dickins (17461798) was an early

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christianity, Christian Christian tradition, tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother ...

preacher A preacher is a person who delivers sermons or homilies on religious topics to an assembly of people. Less common are preachers who Open-air preaching, preach on the street, or those whose message is not necessarily religious, but who preach com ...

in the United States. Born in

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in 1746 and educated at

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, he came to America and was appointed a Methodist preacher in 1774. He served circuits in

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and

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, then went to

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in 1784. He was one of the founding members of the

Methodist Episcopal Church The Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) was the oldest and largest Methodist denomination in the United States from its founding in 1784 until 1939. It was also the first religious denomination in the US to organize itself nationally. In 1939, th ...

(actually it was he who suggested the name) at the Christmas Conference in

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in 1784. He had been one of the greeters of Thomas Coke who had arrived as Wesley's emissary to the new American Church. In 1789 he set up the Methodist Book Concern with $600 of his own money and began to publish books and other literature. Methodist circuit riders from then on carried his materials on their travels and distributed them widely. His first book was ''Christian Pattern'' by

Thomas à Kempis Thomas à Kempis, CRV ( – 25 July 1471; ; ) was a German-Dutch Catholic canon regular of the Augustinians and the author of '' The Imitation of Christ'', one of the best known Christian devotional books. His name means "Thomas of Kempen", ...

. He also published the Methodist hymn book, the ''

Arminian Arminianism is a movement of Protestantism initiated in the early 17th century, based on the Christian theology, theological ideas of the Dutch Reformed Church, Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius and his historic supporters known as Remo ...

Magazine'' and later ''The Methodist Magazine''. In time his publishing concern grew into ''The Methodist Publishing House'', which in the mid-twentieth century was the largest religious publishing house in the world. As the principal provider of literature for the growing Methodist movement, he must take a significant amount of credit for its growth into the largest American church by the mid 20th century.

References

Pilkington, James Penn. ''The Methodist Publishing House''. New York: Abingdon Press, 1968. Vol 1. {{DEFAULTSORT:Dickins, John 1746 births 1798 deaths American Methodists American Christian religious leaders Arminian ministers Arminian writers Clergy from London English emigrants People from colonial Virginia