Kilham, Alexander

(1762–98)

   Sect Founder.

   Kilham was born in Epworth, England, into a Methodist family. As a young man, he acted as an aide to the preacher Robert Carr and he himself was admitted as a preacher in 1785. He became deeply involved in controversy about the relationship of the Society to the Church of England and he was expelled from the Conference in 1796. In consequence, in the following year, he founded the ‘New Connexion’ which was based on complete separation from the established Church and on greater lay participation. The Connexion grew rapidly despite Kilham’s death in 1798. ln 1907, it joined with the United Methodist Free Churches and the Bible Christians to form the United Methodist Church. This in its turn reunited in 1932 with the Wesleyan Church and the Primitive Methodist Churches to form a single Methodist Church.

   R.E. Davies and E.G. Rupp (eds), A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain (1965);

   W.J. Townsend, Alexander Kilham (1889).