The Methodist Episcopal Church was an outgrowth of the Great Awakening, a colonial American religious movement within the Church of England that emphasized being born again and attaining Christian perfection. Additionally, the Methodist Episcopal ministers and congregants tended to be both anti-elitist and anti-slavery.

John Wesley

John Wesley, who along with George Whitefield founded Methodism, ordained the first American Methodist Episcopal ministers in 1784. Methodists in most Litchfield County towns continued to attend Congregational services until they could build a church of their own. This was the case in the community of North Goshen; however, when – in 1840 –  the Methodists in that area expressed a desire to build their own church, the Congregationalists contributed to their cause.

That church stood at what is now the intersection of East Street North and North Goshen Road. As towns were often created when a significant number of people no longer wanted to travel far for religious services (Morris was carved out of Litchfield and Washington out of New Milford, Litchfield and Woodbury for this reason), the presence of this church suggests that while this area is now quite remote, it was once a vibrant community. In fact, the “History of the Town of Goshen” states that the church “flourished and at the congregation at times filled the church to overflowing.”

That 1897 history, however, also states that in later years the church’s numbers and finances were “greatly reduced,” leading the congregation to accept attendees from other churches and to be “very liberal to all sects, and Adventists, Unitarians, Baptists, and Congregationalists have preached to us but we like the ‘good Old Methodists’ the best.” The North Goshen Church closed 1920, less than two decades before the 1939 merger between the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Protestant Church, which formed the United Methodist Church.