This list deals with those who are notable in the history or culture of all Methodist churches. For other Methodists who are not notable in Methodist history or culture, see Category:Methodists.
John Wesley
Charles Wesley
George Whitefield
Richard Allen
Francis Asbury
Thomas Coke
William Law
William Williams Pantycelyn
Howell Harris
James Varick
Countess of Huntingdon
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 (Methodist) – 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 (African Methodist Episcopal Church)
Thomas Charles – Welsh language author. (Of the Calvinistic Methodists)
Zerah Colburn (math prodigy) – 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.
William Edwards (architect) – Welsh designer of bridges
Edward Eggleston – also author
Calvin Fairbank – abolitionist
Robert Newton Flew – theologian and ecumenist
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 (pastor) – 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 (Methodist preacher) – "Father of Arkansas Methodism" and a politician
Leonard Isitt (minister) – 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 (suspended minister)
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 (University of Melbourne)
Wilbur Fisk Tillett – clergyman and educator
Charles Tindley – gospel music composer
Channing Heggie Tobias – member of the President's Committee on Civil Rights
Ray Vaughn – Christian musician and evangelist
Simon Topping – activist on poverty causes like Make Poverty History
Cecil Williams – involved in HIV/AIDS causes
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
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. (convert from Anglicanism)
James Hope Moulton – missionary known for studying/preaching to the Parsis
Christoph Gottlob Müller – founded the Wesleyan Church in Germany.
James H. Cone (b. 1938) – advocate of Black theology
Albert Outler (1908 – 1989) – Wesleyan scholar who formulated the Wesleyan Quadrilateral
This concerns those not of the Methodist clergy who are still of importance to the history or culture of Methodists.
Margaret Davis Bowen – African-American educator, civil rights activist, religious leader in the Methodist church
Dr. Henry N. Snyder (1865–1949) – educator and author who served as president of Wofford College, Spartanburg, SC from 1902 until his retirement in 1942
Brittany Hargest – member of CCM group Jump5
Beyoncé Knowles – attended St. John's United Methodist Church in Houston, Texas.
Brian Courtney Wilson – American gospel and CCM singer
Note: The religion of these non-clergy Methodists should relate to their historical significance.
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
Hillary Clinton – 67th United States Secretary of State, Democratic presidential candidate
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 (1937–38) and President of the Liberal Party (UK) (1947)
Chiang Kai-shek – Chinese general and leader of the Republic of China between 1928 and 1975
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
Edmund Marshall – Methodist local preacher, ecumenical adviser to the Bishop of Wakefield and former MP.
William McKinley – supported Methodist missionaries attempts to evangelize the Philippines and deemed it his duty to "Christianize" the Filipino people.
Florence Paton – lay preacher, British Labour party
Fidel V. Ramos – currently of the Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats, was the first Methodist, and first non-Catholic, to be elected President of the Republic of the Philippines
Alfred Roberts – former mayor of Grantham, Methodist lay preacher, and father of Margaret Thatcher
Newton Rowell – leading lay figure in Canada's Methodist church and a politician
William Spence – Australian trade union leader and lay preacher
Frederick Stewart (Australian politician) – 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
Elizabeth Warren –United States Senator from Massachusetts
Feng Yuxiang –General of the Zhili Clique and later founder of the Guominjun, known as the "Christian General" and "Backstabbing General"
Note: They should have some involvement in religion and science discussion in order to be relevant.
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
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 (convert from Anglicanism)
William Williams Pantycelyn – Welsh Methodist hymn writer (Calvinistic Methodist and preacher)
Eudora Welty – wrote in One Writer's Beginnings that "we went to the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and of course we never saw anything strange about Methodists." (p. 34)
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 (who was raised as a Methodist) and Lex Luthor (a Nietzschean atheist). 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 (the post-Crisis version written prominently by Peter David during the late 1980s and 1990s) was an active Methodist. Supergirl's minister, Rev. Larry Varvel, was based on a real-life Methodist minister of the same name.
Sylvia Danvers – Supergirl's (Linda Danvers) Mother, a church assistant studying for the ministry.
Hank, Peggy, and Bobby Hill along with majority of King of the Hill characters – attend Arlen First Methodist Church.
Atoman – also known as Craig Wallace, one of the Seven Sentinels
Amanda Waller – also known as The Wall, White Queen, and Black King—leader of the Suicide Squad and Checkmate
Francine Peters-Silver – one of the characters in Strangers in Paradise
Church Mice – comic strip character created by Karl Zorowski
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.
