Hugh Price Hughes

1847-1902. Wesleyan divine. Born at Carmarthen and educated there and at Swansea, he trained for the Wesleyan ministry at Richmond College and graduated from London University. He served in various circuits, founding new churches wherever he went, and in 1885 while superintendent of the Brixton (London) circuit he launched the Wesleyan Forward Movement, a campaign of evangelism and social service characterized by the erection of central halls and encouraged by the Methodist Times (founded 1885) which he edited. Other related causes were the Wesleyan Twentieth Century Fund which, as president of conference in 1898, Hughes instigated to raise a million pounds for church extension, Methodist reunion, and social reform-his bitter attacks on Parnell after the divorce crisis of 1890 led him to formulate the term “the Nonconformist Conscience.” His self-styled “Christian Imperialism” caused him to champion British imperial expansion overseas and a campaign of social and ecclesiastical aggression against the Anglican Church at home. Despite his missionary enthusiasm, Hughes's theology was reductionist, and appears particularly so in his teaching on sin and on the Last Things. The central halls and big city missions of contemporary British Methodism remain his most permanent memorial.