Historical
Information on the United Methodist Church
The United Methodist Church was formed in 1968 with the
union of the former Evangelical United Brethren Church and the Methodist Church.
The Evangelical United Brethren Church, established in
1946, represented the union of two U.S.-born denominations:
the Evangelical Church and the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. These two churches originated among
German-speaking people during the great spiritual awakening in late 18th-century colonies.
The two fellowships and the Methodist Church were
similar, particularly in terms of church polity and evangelistic zeal.
Jacob Albright of Eastern Pennsylvania was a lay
preacher who gathered followers in the early 1800s. These
"Albright people" formed the Evangelical Association, later to become the
Evangelical Church. The Rev. Philip
Otterbein, ordained by the German Reformed Church, started the United Brethren Movement in
the late 1700s.
Meanwhile, the Methodist movement had begun in England
in the early 1700s, under Anglican clergyman John Wesley and his followers. Wesley did not officially organize a new church
but sparked a renewal movement within the Church of England. Nonetheless, Methodism spread from England to
Ireland and the colonial United States.
Methodist classes and congregations met in the United
States from the 1760s. Around Christmas 1784,
some 60 ministers gathered in Baltimore and organized the Methodist Episcopal Church, with
the word "episcopal" referring to the church's administration by bishops. The denomination grew rapidly and was known for
its "circuit rider" ministers on the advancing frontiers.
With rapid growth, philosophical differences and
division were inevitable. In 1828, a group of people, largely moved by an insistence on
lay representation, separated and became the Methodist Protestant Church. In 1844, the parent church split again over the
issue of slavery. The offspring denomination
was the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The north and south factions reunited in 1939,
compromising on the race issue by creating a segregated system. Alongside the five
geographic jurisdictions, an overlapping Central Jurisdiction was formed for African
Americans. It was dissolved in 1968 with the merger of the Methodist and Evangelical
United Brethren churches. |
