"Moreover, the story of abolition is also the story of the power of the gospel. The unseen background of Wilberforce’s work was the spiritual movement known as the Great Awakening. All throughout England and America the gospel was ablaze under the preaching of Wesley and Whitefield, and many thousands of people came to Christ in a generation. What we did not learn from the movie, is that when Wilberforce presented Commons with petitions from “the people,” a vast majority of these were Quakers, Methodists, Baptists, Dissenters and Anglican – many of whom had been touched by the Great Awakening. Had it not been for the Great Awakening there would have been no abolition—at least not in Wilberforce’s day."
from:
http://www.reformation21.org/Shelf_Life/Shelf_Life/309/vobId__5459/
I think the Great Awakening in the Anglo-American community, and the lack of anything comparable in the rest of Europe, is largely responsible for the fact that Britain, Canada, and Australia are our closest allies. Europe remained wallowing either in reactionary corruption or brutal radical movements, while the English-speaking world proceeded with liberal (in the true sense) reform.
Yes, I'm familiar with the Great Awakening and the work of John Wesley. Indeed, a friend of mine wrote a book, "The Triumph of Augustanism," on the unimaginable extent of disbelief and atheism in the society of the English 18th Century.
If you visit the English countryside, among other signs of this history you will find that almost every ancient church in England had to be repaired after major neglect in the 18th century. Wesley not only founded Methodism, he reinspirited the Church of England as well.
It was not entirely Evangelical. One descendant of this re-inspiriting was the Oxford Movement, which led to High Church Anglicanism and produced Cardinal Newman, who to some degree transformed the Catholic Church in England and Ireland.