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The United Methodist Church is the largest American mainline denomination, with nearly 12 million members in 42,000 congregations worldwide. The United Methodist Church is a participating member of the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches and is one of the leading proponents of ecumenism today. The church was formed in 1968 with a merger of the Evangelical United Brethren Church and the Methodist Church, but its roots go back to England in the 1730s.
John and Charles Wesley were missionaries in the Church of England and had returned home after an unsuccessful mission in the colony of Georgia. They were disillusioned and discouraged with their own faith and began attending prayer meetings on Aldersgate Street in London, searching for answers. In 1738, both brothers had revival experiences, which John described as being “strangely warmed” in the heart. With this newfound excitement and energy in spiritual matters, they and their Aldersgate companions began to develop guidelines, or “methods,” in seeking spiritual renewal. This led to a national renewal movement within the Church of England. This revival was then brought to America by colonists. The early Methodist movement in America was mostly led by laypeople in the 1760s and was still within the communion of the Anglican Church. In 1769 and 1771, John Wesley sent preachers, including Francis Asbury, to the Colonies to help strengthen and guide the Methodist efforts. During the Revolutionary War, the Methodists were an unpopular lot due to John Wesley’s Tory stance and the unwillingness of many Methodist preachers to take up arms in support of the Colonies. Following the Revolution, Wesley saw the need to develop a distinctly American church communion, and the Methodist Episcopal Church in America was formed in Baltimore in 1784.
From the very start, the Methodists were concerned with personal holiness and emphasized the need for an experience of salvation. To that end, they were involved in the earliest Sunday schools, and the first church publishing house in America was formed by the Methodists in 1789. The Methodists were an integral part of the Second Great Awakening (1790—1840) and made use of revival meetings and camp meetings to call people to conversion. The concept of circuit-riding preachers was developed by the Methodists—a preacher would travel from settlement to settlement, preaching and serving the people there until there was a large enough body to call a full-time pastor. Circuit riders were a big part of the frontier church in the new country.
The Methodist Episcopal Church had its share of rifts, even in the early years. In 1816 the African Methodist Episcopal Church was formed by Richard Allen, an emancipated slave who had been mistreated in the established church. In 1821 the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church was formed by former slaves for similar reasons. In 1830 the Methodist Protestant Church was formed because the church would not grant representation of the laity or permit the election of presiding elders (this rift was reconciled with a merger in 1939). Today, the main struggles within the United Methodist Church regard the place of homosexuals within the church. Historically, the church has always condemned homosexual practice as sin, and that is still the official position of the church. There is a liberal movement within the church to grant full communion to practicing homosexuals and even to ordain homosexual clergy. The division resulted in a split of the denomination, with many conservative Methodists disaffiliating and forming the Global Methodist Church.
Regarding doctrine, the United Methodist Church follows general Wesleyan theology. Belief in the sinfulness of man, the holiness of God, the deity of Jesus Christ, and the literal death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus for the salvation of man are held in common with other Christian churches. Belief in the inerrancy of Scripture is low among Methodists, although they affirm the authority of the Bible (2 Timothy 3:16).
Though there are individual members and Methodist congregations who are more conservative, many have given in to pragmatism, liberalism, or political correctness: the United Methodist Church ordains women pastors, for example, and supports abortion (the church is, according to the Methodist Book of Discipline, “reluctant to approve abortion,” yet in practice it approves all forms of abortion; plus, the United Methodist Church was a founding member of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, a pro-abortion group).
