The Methodist Church is an Evangelical Christian Church that began as a renewal movement within the Church of England in the 18th Century.

John Wesley (an ordained Church of England priest, as was his brother Charles) had a conversion experience on 24 May 1738 when, whilst attending a Moravian service in London, he heard a reading on Martin Luthers's commentary on St. Paul's Letter to the Romans, and as he later reported, he became aware "I felt my heart strangely warmed.  I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death".

A few months after this experience, Wesley was invited by his friend, George Whitfield, to preach to coal miners near Bristol who felt neglected by the Church of England.  The itinerant, open-air preaching of John & Charles Wesley and George Whitfield drew immense crowds and led to a revival of faith among members of the English working and agricultural classes who felt alienated from the formalism and conservatism of the Church of England.  The movement continued to gain ground among the outcasts of society and the Methodists (a name given as a nickname to John Wesley and a group of devout students at Oxford University who were methodical in regular Bible reading, attendance at Holy Communion and visiting prisoners in the local jails) formed a society within the Church of England.  Methodist doctrines are contained in Wesley's Sermons and 'Notes on the New Testament'.

During this period both John and Charles Wesley paid many visits to Ireland.  Charles Wesley first visited Cork in 1748 and John came to Blarney in 1749.  John Wesley paid his last visit to Cork in 1789, having come to Cork during seventeen of his twenty one visits to Ireland.

In England, hostility between the regular Anglicans and the Methodists grew.  In 1784, when there was a shortage of clergymen in North America, the bishop of London refused to ordain a Methodist.  John Wesley then consecrated three men to serve in the United States.  In the same year he made arrangements for governing the Society of Methodists after his death through an annual Conference.  He died in 1791.

Four years later the Society broke with the Church of England and formed itself into the Wesleyan Methodist Church, the new denomination being governed by the annual Conference.

In more recent times the churches have drawn closer and in 2002 a Joint Covenant was ratified between the Methodist Church in Ireland and the Church of Ireland, committing the churches to closer working relationships in the interest of the extension of God's Kingdom.  A similar Covenant exists between the Church of England and the Methodist Church in Britain.