[28] The number of circuits had grown to 85 and the number of annual conferences had grown to six. In 1939, it merged.[120]. 1897: The Pilgrim Holiness Church was organized.[125]. 1939: The Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and the Methodist Protestant Church merged to form The Methodist Church. These included Augusta College (1822), McKendree University (1828), Wesleyan University (1831), Emory University (1836), Emory and Henry College (1836), DePauw University (originally Indiana Asbury University in 1837), and what would become the Boston University School of Theology (1839). In a highly controversial move, the Northern MEC used the army to seize control of Methodist churches in large Southern cities over the vehement protests of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. [91] The dispute over the legality of separation and division of the Book Concern's property was not resolved until 1853 when the US Supreme Court rule in Smith v. Swormstedt that the creation of the MECS was legal. [24], Meetings and services were often characterized by extremely emotional and demonstrative styles of worship. Historian Ralph Morrow reports: A War Department order of November, 1863, applicable to the Southwestern states of the Confederacy, authorized the Northern Methodists to occupy "all houses of worship belonging to the Methodist Episcopal Church South in which a loyal minister, appointed by a loyal bishop of said church, does not officiate. 1800: The Evangelical Association was organized by Jacob Albright to serve German-speaking Methodists.[116]. Anywhere from two to four itinerant preachers would be assigned to a circuit on a yearly basis to preach and supervise the societies within their circuit. In response, Wesley ordained the first Methodist elders for America in 1784. Under the leadership of its first bishops, Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury, the Methodist Episcopal Church adopted episcopal polity and an itinerant model of ministry that saw circuit riders provide for the religious needs of a widespread and mobile population. Briefly, during the American Civil War, 1861-1865, it adopted the title of "The Methodist Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America". Mathews-Gardner, A. Lanethea. Bishop Francis Asbury had ordained him earlier in 1799. [16] The German-born Philip W. Otterbein, who later helped found the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, participated in Asbury's ordination. [56], Other Methodists, such as John Fanning Watson, disagreed. [51], In 1808, Matthew P. Sturdevant established a new circuit along the banks of the Tombigbee River in Alabama. [99] The Methodist Ministers Association of Boston, meeting two weeks after Lincoln's assassination, called for a hard line against the Confederate leadership: Resolved, That no terms should be made with traitors, no compromise with rebels. In 1856, the General Conference created a new position, the missionary bishop, to oversee the foreign mission fields. [117] It merged into the Churches of Christ in Christian Union in 1952. Wesley's actions were based in his belief that the order of bishop and priest were one and the same, so that both possess the power to ordain others. [30], This growth revealed problems with the church's decision-making process.
This sparked a wave of petitions from border conferences demanding a return to a neutral position on slavery. Coke had written and met with William White, the Episcopal Church's presiding bishop, discussing the possible lowering of Episcopal ministerial standards, the reordination of Methodist preachers, and the reconsecration of Coke and Asbury as Episcopal bishops. [13], The American Revolution severed ties to England and left America's Anglican Church in disarray. Abolitionist clergy were censured, brought up on disciplinary charges, and appointed to difficult assignments as punishment. The movement was largely urban and mainly led by lay people. Local preachers were made eligible for ordination as deacons after four years of service. [55] Methodist leaders such as Asbury expected order to be maintained, but they were not opposed to the emotional effects often seen in these meetings.
[17], The conference adopted Articles of Religion prepared by Wesley (and adapted from the Church of England's Thirty-nine Articles) as a doctrinal statement for the new church, and it also received an abridged version of the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer provided by Wesley, titled The Sunday Service of the Methodists; With Other Occasional Services. Once this consecration was complete, the Christian could be assured that God would sanctify them. The functions that class meetings and class leaders traditionally provideddiscipline and spiritual formationwere taken over by the preacher and his wife. Camp meetings were often held simultaneously with Methodist quarterly meetings (circuit business meetings held four times each year).
Members of Methodist societies were expected to attend and receive Holy Communion in their local parish church, but Wesley also recruited and supervised lay preachers for itinerant or traveling ministry. Stationing was facilitated by the construction of parsonages. Due to large-scale immigration of Catholics, the Catholic Church displaced the MEC as the largest US denomination by the end of the 19th century. "[111] Probationers who sought full membership into the Methodist Episcopal Church affirmed "a desire to flee from the wrath to come, and to be saved from their sins" which was to be evidenced by "observing the General Rules" delineated the connexion's standards. That we hold the National authority bound by the most solemn obligation to God and man to bring all the civil and military leaders of the rebellion to trial by due course of law, and when they are clearly convicted, to execute them.[100][101]. While African Americans were not yet ordained and classes were segregated by race, important African American leaders did emerge, such as Harry Hosier who was an associate of Asbury and Coke. In addition, the Methodists became affiliated with already existing Dickinson College and Allegheny College in 1833. "[108] MEC women would use the leadership and organizational skills gained during the war to establish orphanages and old age homes. [34] This group was a predecessor body to the United Church of Christ. Under his watch, the Christian Advocate became the most widely circulated periodical in the world, and the Book Concern was transformed from merely a distributor of British reprints into a full-fledged publishing house providing literature for adults, children, and Sunday schools, as well as producing tracts for the Methodist Tract Society organized in 1817.
As Methodism took hold in the Southern United States, church leaders became less willing to condemn the practice of slavery or to grant African American preachers and congregations the same privileges as their European American counterparts. In particular, reformers wanted presiding elders to be chosen by conference elections rather than episcopal appointment. "[111], The following list notes divisions and mergers that occurred in Methodist Episcopal Church history.[112]. [4] In 1939, the MEC reunited with two breakaway Methodist denominations (the Methodist Protestant Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South) to form the Methodist Church.
Around the same time, it became closely tied to the American Colonization Society and its own Liberian Mission, which proposed sending freedmen to evangelize Africa. A major driver in the creation of such institutions was the Woman's Home Missionary Society, founded in 1882. [40], The 1812 General Conference was the first to convene under the new rules adopted in 1808. The MEC's origins lie in the First Great Awakening when Methodism emerged as an evangelical revival movement within the Church of England that stressed the necessity of being born again and the possibility of attaining Christian perfection. [57], While historians have emphasized the importance of camp meetings on the American frontier, camp meetings were vibrant parts of Methodist community life in the more settled areas along the East Coast as well. Merged with the Fire Baptized Holiness Church in 1911 and formed what is now known as the International Pentecostal Holiness Church. As it required an amendment to the Restrictive Regulations, however, the plan had to be ratified by three-fourths of the annual conferences and was rejected by the northern conferences. As a missionary bishop, Burns was not considered a general superintendent of the church, and his episcopal authority was limited to his assigned field. The Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) was the oldest and largest Methodist denomination in the United States from its founding in 1784 until 1939. Wesley ordered the holding of a conference and that Richard Whatcoat be appointed a superintendent. [109], In 1895, during the 19th century holiness movement, Methodist Episcopal minister Phineas F. Bresee founded the Church of the Nazarene in Los Angeles with the help of Joseph Pomeroy Widney. [9] On July 4, 1773, Rankin presided over the first annual conference on American soil at Philadelphia. Asbury had been serving as general assistant since Rankin returned to England. [23] It was common for both women and slaves to publicly deliver exhortationstestimonials and personal conversion narratives distinguishable from sermons because exhorters did not "take a text" from the Bible. These meetings formed the impetus for a new interdenominational holiness movement promoted by such publications as the Guide to Christian Perfection, which published written testimonies from those who had experienced entire sanctification. Despite concerns that this proposal would cause "war and strife in the border conferences", it was approved by General Conference. [114] In 1968 it merged to form the United Methodist Church. No denomination was more active in supporting the Union than the Methodist Episcopal Church. [47] The Methodist Magazine, later renamed the Methodist Quarterly Review, was published continually from 1818 until 1932 and had a longer life than any other religious publication. [22] These social classes were attracted to Methodism's condemnation of the worldliness of the gentry. [8] In 1773, Wesley appointed Thomas Rankin general assistant, placing him in charge of all the Methodist preachers and societies in America. These rules, which were regarded as the church's constitution, prohibited the General Conference from modifying the church's doctrinal standards and episcopal government unless such amendments were approved all the annual conferences. Alternative small group settings were provided by the Sunday school and the local missionary and tract societies. [95], The Methodist split over slavery paralleled a national split. Earlier, Methodism had grown out of the ministry of John Wesley, a priest in the Church of England (also known as the Anglican Church) who preached an evangelical message centered on justification by faith, repentance, the possibility of having assurance of salvation, and the doctrine of Christian perfection. [85], In 1820 (the same year as the Missouri Compromise), the Methodist Episcopal Church ended its ban on preachers and leadership owning slaves. While women were not granted formal leadership roles (though some were class leaders occasionally), they played important roles in evangelization through class relations, family networks, correspondence, and in the home. In order to provide adequate preparation to candidates for the ministry, the bishops were directed to create a Course of Study featuring a prescribed reading list, the first effort to introduce a formal process for ministry preparation.
1820: The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church was organized in New York. At the General Conference, a dispute emerged over the power of bishops to assign preachers to circuits. [12] Anglican clergyman Devereux Jarratt (17331801) was a particularly active supporter, founding Methodist societies in Virginia and North Carolina. The Genesee Conference in New York was most effected. [113] This development had to do only with language. [71], By the 1830s, loud voices had emerged against the transformation of the denomination. [15], The founding conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, known commonly as the Christmas Conference, was held in December 1784 at Lovely Lane Chapel in Baltimore, Maryland. Only the Methodists made many converts, however. While missionaries were appointed and supervised by the bishops, the missionary society raised funds to support them. The Methodist Episcopal Church originated from the spread of Methodism outside of England to the Thirteen Colonies in the 1760s. [115] He organized the "Republican Methodists," later called simply the Christian Church or Christian Connection, that through its successors and mergers eventually became part of the future United Church of Christ in 1957. [84], In the aftermath of the 1824 General Conference, a number of "union societies" were formed to advocate for reform, while church leaders took actions to suppress any effort to alter the church's episcopal polity. A group based in Wilmington, Delaware, founded the African Union Church in 1813, and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church was formed by African American Methodists in New York City. With growth came greater institutionalization and respectability, and this led some within the church to complain that Methodism was losing its vitality and commitment to Wesleyan teachings, such as the belief in Christian perfection and opposition to slavery.
[49] In 1809, William Case was sent as a missionary to Detroit in the Michigan Territory[50] and was followed a year later by William Mitchell, who organized what is today Central United Methodist Church and the oldest Protestant congregation in Michigan. By 1788, there were 37,354 members, of which 6,545 were African American. Following the death of Asbury, the 1816 General Conference elected Enoch George and Robert Richford Roberts to serve as bishops along with McKendree. 1784: Historic "Christmas Conference" held at Lovely Lane Chapel in waterfront Baltimore (at Lovely Lane, off German (now Redwood) Street between South Calvert Street and South Street) and convened to organize the future Methodist Episcopal Church and also several ministers ordain Francis Asbury as bishop. It recommended activities that family members could perform in order to aid the Union cause. [122], 1860: The Free Methodist Church was organized by B. T. Roberts and others.
[92], Northern anger surrounding the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 brought further turmoil to the MEC. [6], Around fifteen or twenty societies formed a circuit. "From Ladies Aid to NGO: Transformations in Methodist Women's Organizing in Postwar America," in Laughlin, Kathleen A., and Jacqueline L. Castledine, eds.. Richey, Russell E. and Kenneth E. Rowe, eds. [39], To solve this problem, delegated representation for General Conference was introduced in 1808. [111] The Methodist Episcopal Church forbade the "singing of those songs, or reading those books, which do not tend to the knowledge or love of God" as well as "dancing; playing at games of chance; attending theaters, horse races, circuses, dancing parties, or patronizing dancing schools, or taking such other amusements as are obviously of misleading or questionable moral tendency. The Restrictive Regulations were also adopted at this time.
[31] Local preachers and other lay members were denied voting rights.[32]. [26], Coke had returned to Britain in 1785 but arrived back in the United States in 1787 with written instructions from Wesley. All of these men had championed the itinerant model of ministry.
[61] Richard Allen of Philadelphia was the first to be ordained under this rule. Most damaging to church unity, the General Conference ordered Bishop James Osgood Andrew, a slave owner, to "desist from the exercise of this office so long as this impediment remains" on the basis that his owning slaves would prevent him from effectively ministering as a bishop in the North.
In the year of its founding, the church claimed 14,986 members and 83 preachers. [73], By the 1820s, Methodists were ready to build institutions of higher education. Local preachers pursued secular employment but preached on Sundays in their local communities. For example, some of the most significant meetings at the start of the 19th century occurred on the Delmarva Peninsula, a place that became known as the "Garden of Methodism". [107], The focus on social problems paved the way for the Social Gospel movement a few years later. The new Church of the Nazarene retained the Methodist Episcopal tradition of education and now operates 56 educational institutions around the world, including eight liberal arts colleges in the United States, each tied to an "educational region". [46] The conference also ordered the publication of a monthly periodical, The Methodist Magazine. It reduced the number of annual conferences to six and, for the first time, gave them geographical boundaries. They were moved into action by a vision of freedom for slaves, freedom from the terror unleashed on godly abolitionists, release from the Slave Power's evil grip on the state, and a new direction for the Union.
[65], Other African American members left to form separate churches as well. [11], Methodist societies in America also operated within the Church of England. "[81], Under her leadership, men began to regularly attend the meetings, including prominent Methodists such as Nathan Bangs, Bishop Leonidas Hamline, and Stephen Olin. "[67] In the Antebellum era, a new generation of leaders, upwardly mobile preachers and laity, would lead the Methodist Episcopal Church toward social respectability and inclusion within America's Protestant establishment. It also expressed concerns over perceived laxity in Methodist standards of discipline, doctrine, dress and sacramental practice. Methodists invested in education for women as well, founding Greensboro College in North Carolina and Wesleyan College in Georgia.
This made nine in all, the others being the New York, New England, Genesee (including circuits in Upper and Lower Canada), South Carolina, Virginia, Baltimore and Philadelphia conferences. [20] Traveling preachers worked full-time in itinerant ministry and were supported financially by the societies they served. [69] Increasingly, preachers were appointed for two-year terms to single-congregation charges called "stations".
[27], Coke's reputation among American Methodists further suffered when his secret negotiations for a union with the Episcopal Church (as American Anglicans now styled themselves) were discovered. In the process, the MEC would experience what some contemporaries and later interpreters considered a "softening of discipline, embrace of the world, compromise of fundamental Wesleyan practices and precepts, abandonment of the evangelistic mission to societys marginalized, and loss of Methodisms prophetic nerve. To avoid alienating southerners, the 1808 General Conference allowed annual conferences to form their own policies related to buying and selling slaves. At that time there were 1,160 Methodists in America led by ten lay preachers. [41], The year 1816 marked the end of an era for the MEC. The differences centered around a traditional/rural vs. modern/urban ethos.[123].
At this conference, Coke ordained Francis Asbury as co-superintendent according to Wesley's wishes. His biographer calls him the "High Priest of the Radical Republicans. William McKendree was elected the fourth bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the first American-born bishop to replace the deceased Whatcoat.
1844: The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, split off because of the slavery controversy. Charles Yrigoyen Jr, and Susan E. Warrick, Methodist Episcopal Church (disambiguation), Lumber River Conference of the Holiness Methodist Church, History of Methodism in the United States, The Sunday Service of the Methodists; With Other Occasional Services, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Washington Square Methodist Episcopal Church, International Pentecostal Holiness Church, List of bishops of the United Methodist Church, "What We Believe Founder of the United Methodist Church", "A Brief History of Central United Methodist Church: The Conscience of a City", Church of the Nazarene - Historical Statement, Pentecostal Holiness Church of North Carolina, Conservative Congregational Christian Conference, National Association of Congregational Christian Churches, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Methodist_Episcopal_Church&oldid=1096275332, Protestant denominations established in the 18th century, Religious organizations established in 1784, United Methodist Church predecessor churches, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from January 2018, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2013, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Richey, Russell E., Rowe, Kenneth E. and Schmidt, Jean Miller (eds.). [110], The Methodist Episcopal Church's doctrines are the Articles of Religion along with an emphasis on "Universal Redemption, the Free Agency of Man, Regeneration or the New Birth, Adoption, the Witness of the Spirit, and Entire Sanctification or Perfect Love. O'Kelly and his supporters wanted the right to appeal assignments to the conference, but this proposal was defeated. 1816: The African Methodist Episcopal Church was organized in Philadelphia by Richard Allen for Wesley followers/African-Americans. A second generation of Methodist preachers were unable to realize Wesley's original vision of a "celibate, self-sacrificing, and ascetic brotherhood". 1767: The Rev. At the conference, James O'Kelly and Jesse Lee led opposition to Coke and to Wesleys authority. These voices were dismissed as "croakers" because it seemed they never missed an opportunity to complain, whether in the pulpit, through conference sermons or on the pages of Methodist periodicals.
1843: The Wesleyan Methodist Church was organized. Sometime around 1800, Methodism expanded into the region around Cincinnati, Ohio, and by 1807, the first Methodist church had been built in the city. [29] In 1791, a circuit was established in Upper Canada by William Losee. "[102][103][104][105], During Reconstruction, Northern denominations all sent missionaries, teachers and activists to the South to help the Freedmen. The meetings of these organizations featured prayer, hymns, testimony and exhortation. These works would guide American Methodist belief for the next century. [75], In 1834, a Liberian Annual Conference was organized. Over the objections of southerners, General Conference created a committee on slavery that recommended the conference act to "separate slavery from the church". [64], In the 19th century, the Methodist Episcopal Church became the largest and most widespread denomination in the United States, boasting "the most extensive national organization other than the Federal government. Many preachers were offended that Coke and Wesley seemed to be taking decision making out of the hands of the American church.
[106] Activists sponsored by the northern Methodist church played a major role in the Freedmen's Bureau, notably in such key educational roles as the Bureau's state superintendent or assistant superintendent of education for Virginia, Florida, Alabama and South Carolina. While itinerating in Liberia, Bishop Levi Scott ordained the first African deacons and elders in 1853. In America, quarterly meetings had already evolved into two-day religious festivals, so it became standard practice for quarterly conferences to make one of their warm-weather sessions a camp meeting.
Only ordained elders could administer the Lord's Supper, and they were also placed in charge of circuits. Due to the scarcity of Anglican ministers, Methodists in the United States were unable to receive the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion. It was also the first religious denomination in the US to organize itself on a national basis. [77] In the late 1840s, separate Conferences were formed for German-speaking members of the Methodist Episcopal Church who were not members of the Evangelical Association or the United Brethren in Christ (later merged to form the Evangelical United Brethren (EUB)). [53] After the War of 1812, the Canadian conferences withdrew from the American church to become the Methodist Episcopal Church of Canada. Early Methodism was countercultural in that it was anti-elitist and anti-slavery, appealing especially to African Americans and women. Wesley gave out preaching assignments at an annual conference. [43][44], There was also concern over the appearance in some places of false doctrines, such as Arianism, Socinianism and Pelagianism. [7], In 1769, Wesley sent itinerants Robert Williams, Richard Boardman, and Joseph Pilmore to oversee Methodists in America after learning that societies had already been organized there as early as 1766 by Philip Embury, Robert Strawbridge, and Thomas Webb. [5], Wesley was loyal to the Anglican Church, and he organized his followers into parachurch societies and classes with the goal of promoting spiritual revival within the Church of England. [66] Despite these losses, however, the majority of African American Methodists remained within the MEC.
The Liberian Conference elected Francis Burns to be its missionary bishop, and he was consecrated in 1858, becoming the Methodist Episcopal Church's first African American bishop. In the early 19th century, the MEC became the largest and most influential religious denomination in the United States.
These groups left over not receiving the prerogatives and standing within the denomination that their white counterparts were given, such as ordination, representation and property ownership. [124], 1895: Fire Baptized Holiness Church[citation needed]. The church's reach also began to significantly expand beyond the Appalachian and Allegheny Mountain ranges. [10] Itinerant Methodist preachers would become known as circuit riders.
After the Confederacy's defeat, Methodists formed a major element of the popular support for the Radical Republicans with their hard line toward the white South. It proposed a Plan of Separation that would provide for determining a geographic boundary between the two churches and a peaceful division of property, such as the Book Concern and the pension resources of the Chartered Fund. There, reform-minded Methodists led by B. T. Roberts protested slavery as well as other signs of cultural accommodation, such as pew rents (which alienated the poor) and the decline in revivalism and holiness teaching.
