The Ordination of Bishop Francis Asbury

Francis Asbury (1745-1816) was born in Hamstead Bridge, just north of Birmingham, England. When Asbury was a child, his mother encouraged him to read the Bible daily and he soon began preaching with a band of young Methodists. In 1767, at age 22, he was selected by John Wesley to be a traveling lay preacher and in 1771, he volunteered to preach in the American colonies. He traveled thousands of miles on horseback across the colonies, spreading the Methodist movement up and down the Atlantic coast.

Joining Asbury in America in the 1780s was Thomas Coke (1747-1814), a Welsh-born priest who was made the first Methodist bishop (the term “superintendent” was used until 1787) by Wesley in September 1784. On Christmas Day of that year, Coke and Asbury were officially ordained as superintendents at a meeting in Baltimore with Coke presiding over Asbury’s ordination. This meeting is depicted here by the similarly-named painter Thomas Coke Ruckle, who produced this scene in 1882.