List of Methodists

Early leaders

• John Wesley
• Charles Wesley
• George Whitefield
• Richard Allen
• Francis Asbury
• Thomas Coke
• William Law
• William Williams Pantycelyn
• Howell Harris
• James Varick
• Countess of Huntingdon

  Early women preachers

• Alice Cambridge
• Ann Carr
• Anne Lutton
• Agnes Smyth

  Clergy

• Bernhard Anderson – Old Testament scholar
• Ephraim Kingsbury Avery – New England minister long thought to be the first American clergyman tried for murder
• Elihu Bailey – Wisconsin State Assemblyman
• Canaan Banana – first President of Zimbabwe
• John C. A. Barrett – Chairman of the World Methodist Council
• William Black – linked to Nova Scotia
• Henry Boehm – centenarian
• George Bramwell Evens – nature writer of the Romani people
• Rev. Dr. Henry Brown – Methodist minister and author of The Impending Peril: Or, Methodism and Amusement
• William Gannaway Brownlow – Governor of Tennessee
• Byron Cage – gospel singer
• Thomas Charles – Welsh language author.
• Zerah Colburn – became a minister, after youth as a mental calculator
• Walter T. Colquitt – circuit-riding Methodist preacher who served in the US House of Representatives and the Senate.
• Thomas Mears Eddy, pastor
• William Edwards – Welsh designer of bridges
• Edward Eggleston – also author
• Calvin Fairbank – abolitionist
• Robert Newton Flew – theologian and ecumenist
• Wallace Wattles – New Thought pioneer, theologian and Christian Socialist - Famous for inspiring the blockbuster book, The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. Author of Science of Getting Rich bestselling book 1910. Possibly the biggest selling author in the 20th and 21st Century who was a Methodist minister.
• Orange Scott – first president of the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion
• Adam Crooks – Wesleyan Methodist Connexion
• Arno Clemens Gaebelein – also a writer
• Leslie Griffiths – life peer in the House of Lords
• Adam Hamilton – senior pastor of the 17,000-member United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas
• Harold P. Hamilton – Kentucky Wesleyan College President
• Hill, Rowland – founder of Surrey Chapel, London and early advocate of vaccination
• Silas Hocking – novelist and preacher
• Jabez Bunting – President of the Methodist Conference
• John Hogan – U.S. Congressman and preacher
• Andrew Hunter – "Father of Arkansas Methodism" and a politician
• Leonard Isitt – New Zealand Methodist minister
• James W. Kemp – minister known for writing about Dr. Seuss as he relates to Christianity
• Samuel Kobia – General Secretary of the World Council of Churches
• Lowen Kruse – Nebraska state senator
• Augustus Baldwin Longstreet – known as a humorist
• William Losee – Canadian circuit rider
• Sarah Mallett – preacher
• William Morley Punshon – preaching/lecturing
• Kathleen Richardson, Baroness Richardson of Calow – first woman president of the Methodist Conference
• Egerton Ryerson – Ryerson University is named for him
• William Ryerson – political figure
• Tex Sample – sociologist of religion
• William J. Simmons – founder of the second Ku Klux Klan
• Ndabaningi Sithole – founder of the Zimbabwe African National Union and a Methodist minister.
• John Karefa-Smart – leader of the United National People's Party of Sierra Leone
• Donald Soper – Christian socialist and pacifist
• Edward Sugden – first master of Queen's College
• Wilbur Fisk Tillett – clergyman and educator
• Charles Tindley – gospel music composer
• Channing Heggie Tobias – member of the President's Committee on Civil Rights
• Simon Topping – activist on poverty causes like Make Poverty History
• Don Wildmon – Methodist pastor; founder of the conservative activist group American Family Association
• Cecil Williams – involved in HIV/AIDS causes

  Bishops

• Richard Allen – founder of African Methodist Episcopal Church
• Sarah Allen – AME, founded the Daughters of the Conference
• Daniel Payne – AME, first African-American president of an African-American university, Wilberforce University
• Richard Whatcoat – third bishop of the American Methodist Episcopal Church

  Missionaries

• Henry Augustus Buchtel – did missionary work in Bulgaria, also a Governor of Colorado.
• Henry Hare Dugmore – Wesleyan missionary and translator in South Africa
• Alexander Robert Edgar – missionary to Australia.
• James Hope Moulton – missionary known for studying/preaching to the Parsis
• Christoph Gottlob Müller – founded the Wesleyan Church in Germany.

  Theologians

• James H. Cone – advocate of Black theology
• Albert Outler – Wesleyan scholar who formulated the Wesleyan Quadrilateral

  Laity

Women Lay Leaders

• Belle Harris Bennett – missionary and suffragist from Richmond Kentucky who led the Southern Methodist Church reform giving women full laity rights in 1919
• Eliza Bennis - early Irish convert and leader in Limerick and Waterford

  Educators

• Dr. Henry N. Snyder – educator and author who served as president of Wofford College, Spartanburg, SC from 1902 until his retirement in 1942

  Entertainers

• Brittany Hargest – member of CCM group Jump5
• Brian Courtney Wilson – American gospel and CCM singer

  Politicians

• David Hallam – British Member of the European Parliament and Methodist Local Preacher
• Paul Boateng – lay preacher who became Britain's first black Cabinet minister in 1997
• Colin Breed – lay preacher and British Liberal Democrat Shadow Cabinet member
• Minnie Fisher Cunningham – helped found a Methodist church in New Waverly, Texas; political figure who worked to uplift the standard of living for the disenfranchised
• Isaac Foot – Vice President of the Methodist Conference and President of the Liberal Party
• John Karefa-Smart – Sierra Leonese foreign minister and Methodist elder
• Robert Newbald Kay – British Liberal MP. Also a member of the Methodist Conference who was important to the Methodist chapel in Acomb, North Yorkshire.
• Nelson Mandela -South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, political leader, and philanthropist who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999.
• Edmund Marshall – Methodist local preacher, ecumenical adviser to the Bishop of Wakefield and former MP.
• William McKinley – 25th President of the United States
• Florence Paton – lay preacher, British Labour party
• Newton Rowell – leading lay figure in Canada's Methodist church and a politician
• Frederick Stewart – Australian Cabinet minister and lay preacher
• Boris Trajkovski – President of the Church Council of the Macedonian Evangelical Methodist Church and second President of the Republic of Macedonia.
• Taufa'ahau Tupou IV – lay preacher in the Free Wesleyan Church and former King of Tonga
• Feng Yuxiang – General of the Zhili Clique and later founder of the Guominjun, known as the "Christian General" and "Backstabbing General"

  Scientists

• Charles Coulson – became Vice-President of the British Methodist Conference in 1959 and won chemistry's Davy Medal in 1970.
• Ernest Walton – Irish physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics
• William Daniel Phillips – Nobel Prize–winning physicist and a founding member of the "International Society for Science & Religion"
• Arthur Leonard Schawlow – co-winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics

  Writers (including hymn writers)

• William F. Albright – Methodist archeologist who writes on Bible archaeology
• Samuel Chadwick – The Way to Pentecost
• Phoebe Knapp – Methodist hymn writer
• Ann Griffiths – poet and hymn writer
• William Williams Pantycelyn – Welsh Methodist hymn writer

  Fictional characters

• Superman – also known as Clark Kent or Kal-El. Superman is the archetypal costumed super-hero. He is clearly the most influential character in the comic book super-hero genre. The character was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, both of whom were Jewish. The character of Superman, however, has always been depicted as having been raised with a solidly Protestant upbringing by his adoptive Midwestern parents – Jonathan and Martha Kent. Of Clark's parents, Martha is the more devout churchgoer. Clark Kent was raised as a Methodist. The Kents are Methodists, although Jonathan is not as regular a churchgoer as his wife.
• Superboy – also known as Conner Kent or Kon-El Superboy is a clone made from the DNA of Superman and Lex Luthor. Superboy was being raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent, who were also the adoptive parents of Clark Kent, the Kryptonian infant orphan who grew up to be Superman.
• Jonathan and Martha Kent – Clark and Conner Kent's adopted parents.
• Supergirl – real name is Linda Danvers, the fictional character of Supergirl was an active Methodist. Supergirl's minister, Rev. Larry Varvel, was based on a real-life Methodist minister of the same name.
• Hank, Peggy, and Bobby Hill along with majority of King of the Hill characters – attend Arlen First Methodist Church.
• Amanda Waller – also known as The Wall, White Queen, and Black King—leader of the Suicide Squad and Checkmate
• Samuel and Rose Sayer – Methodist missionaries played by Robert Morley and Katharine Hepburn in John Huston's film adaption of C. S. Forester's novel, The African Queen.