John Dickins (17461798) was an early

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...

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

in the United States. Born in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

in 1746 and educated in

Eton College Eton College () is a public school in Eton, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1440 by Henry VI under the name ''Kynge's College of Our Ladye of Eton besyde Windesore'',Nevill, p. 3 ff. intended as a sister institution to King's College, C ...

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

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and

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

, 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 on a national basis. In ...

(actually it was he who suggested the name) at the

Christmas Conference The Christmas Conference was an historic founding conference of the newly independent Methodists within the United States held just after the American Revolution at Lovely Lane Chapel in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1784. Prior to the revolution, ...

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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 (c. 1380 – 25 July 1471; german: Thomas von Kempen; nl, Thomas van Kempen) was a German-Dutch canon regular of the late medieval period and the author of ''The Imitation of Christ'', published anonymously in Latin in the N ...

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

Arminian Arminianism is a branch of Protestantism based on the theological ideas of the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609) and his historic supporters known as Remonstrants. Dutch Arminianism was originally articulated in the ''Re ...

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 religious leaders Arminian ministers Arminian writers Clergy from London English emigrants Virginia colonial people