ALEXANDER

See also:

• ALEXANDER KILHAM (1762-1798)

KILHAM (1762-1798)  , English Methodist, was born at Epworth, Lincolnshire, on the loth of July 1762 . He was admitted by John Wesley in 1785 into the regular itinerant ministry . He became the leader and spokesman of the democratic party in the Connexion which claimed for the laity the free election of class-leaders and stewards, and equal representation with ministers at Conference . They also contended that the ministry should possess no official authority or pastoral prerogative, but should merely carry into effect the decisions of majorities in the different meetings . Kilham further advocated the complete separation of the Methodists from the-Anglican Church . In the violent controversy that ensued he wrote many pamphlets, often anonymous, and frequently not in the best of taste . For this he was arraigned before the Conference of 1796 and expelled, and he then founded the Methodist New Connexion (1798, merged since 1906 in the United Methodist Church) . He died in 1798, and the success of the 'church he founded is a tribute to his personality and to the principles for which he strove . Kilham's wife (Hannah Spurr, 1774—1832), whom he married only a few months before his death, became a Quaker, and worked as a missionary in the Gambia and at Sierra Leone; she reduced to writing several West African vernaculars .