Proto-Methodist theologians

• Jacobus Arminius - ordained pastor of the Dutch Reformed church, studied under Theodore Beza and rejected the teachings of John Calvin, inspired the Remonstrance and the soteriological system now known as Arminianism.
• Hugo Grotius - playwright, poet, and humanist philosopher of the Aristotelian tradition, systematized Arminianism and developed the moral government theory of Christ's atonement.

18th century

• John Wesley
• Charles Wesley
• John Fletcher

19th century

• Adam Clarke - Biblical theologian uncomfortable with systematic approaches to Christian theology, argued that Christ's Sonship began with the Incarnation.
• Richard Watson - outspoken British abolitionist, wrote against Clarke in defense of the eternal Sonship of Christ, one of the first theologians to systematize Wesley's theology.
• Wilbur Fisk - religious educator, favored ending slavery progressively (rather than in the revolutionary way proposed by other notable abolitionists, so as to avoid a split in the Church), early influence on the temperance movement.
• Nathan Bangs - Arminian apologist, first editor of the Methodist magazine Christian Advocate, opposed the antinomianism of the New Light Baptist community.
• Hugh Price Hughes - Welsh social reformer, first editor of the Methodist Times and first superintendent of the West London Methodist Mission.
• William Burt Pope
• John Miley
• James Strong
• Borden Parker Bowne
• Martin Ruter
• Henry Clay Dean

20th century

• Edgar S. Brightman - Christian pacifist, associated with process philosophy and liberal theology of the school known as Boston personalism.
• Justo Gonzalez
• José Miguez Bonino
• E. Stanley Jones
• Albert C. Knudson
• Edwin Lewis
• H. Orton Wiley
• Georgia Harkness
• William Edwin Sangster (1900-1960) - Renowned preacher and theologian of the Wesleyan understanding of sanctification and perfection
• Albert C. Outler - influenced the paleo-orthodox movement, coined the term "Wesleyan Quadrilateral" with respect to John Wesley's method of theological reflection.
• J. Kenneth Grider - scholar of the Wesleyan holiness tradition, served on the translation committee for the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible.
• John B. Cobb
• Young-Ho Chun
• The people of The United Methodist Church

21st century

• William J. Abraham
• Marcella Althaus-Reid - first female professor of theology at the University of Edinburgh in 160 years, associated with feminist, liberation, and queer theology.
• Thomas Jay Oord
• Thomas C. Oden - responsible in large part for founding the theological school known as paleo-orthodoxy, associated also with the confessing movement connected with neo-evangelicalism.
• Mercy Oduyoye - Ghanaian feminist theologian.
• Stanley Hauerwas - theological ethicist and outspoken anti-nationalist Christian pacifist, studied under neo-orthodox theologian H. Richard Niebuhr, associated with narrative theology and was influential in the formation of the Ekklesia Project.
• Christopher Morse - developed a prescriptive type of via negativa, described as "faithful disbelief."
• Scott J. Jones - bishop of the United Methodist Church, international evangelist, and prominent Protestant ecumenical figure who has been involved in relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Methodist Council.
• Marjorie Suchocki - current director of the Whitehead International Film Festival, one of the leading thinkers in the field of process theology.
• William H. Willimon - bishop of the United Methodist Church, sometimes associated with postliberal narrative theology, named one of the top twelve best preachers in the English-speaking world in a 1996 Baylor University survey.
• Geoffrey Wainwright
• Andrew S. Park - systematic theologian and pioneer in Asian American liberation theology, associated with Christian mysticism and the debate over the relationship between religion and science.
• The people of The United Methodist Church