1801 - 1816 | ‘Myself & my Creator’
John Henry Newman was born on February 21st 1801 in London. He was the eldest of six and was the son of John and Jemima Newman. His father was a banker in the city and so John Henry Newman had a middle class upbringing on Southampton Street in Bloomsbury. His family were practising members of the Church of England and therefore Newman was exposed to the Bible at an early age, becoming an avid reader of it. At the age of seven, Newman went to study at Great Ealing School.
When he was only fifteen, he would have a religious experience so strong that it would change his life forever. Writing about it later in life, he describes what happened as follows.
‘When I was fifteen a great change of thought took place in me. I fell under the influences of a definite Creed … I believed that the inward conversion of which I was conscious … would last into the next life, and that I was elected to eternal glory. … I believe that it had some influence on my opinions … in isolating me from the objects which surrounded me, in confirming me in my mistrust of the reality of material phenomena, and making me rest in the thought of two and two only absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my creator.’ Apologia
He would go on to refer to this as his first conversion.
Around the time of this conversion experience (1816), Newman came into contact with Evangelicalism which was gaining momentum with the teaching of figures such as John Wesley, bringing about what is now referred to as the Wesleyan revival, even though Wesley had been rejected by the established Church. In his final year of school, Newman converted to Evangelicalism.