Methodist Church (USA)
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Methodist Church | |
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Classification | Mainline Protestant and Evangelical |
Orientation | Methodism |
Polity | Connectionalism (modified episcopal polity) |
Associations | Federal Council of Churches |
Merger of | Methodist Episcopal Church the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and the Methodist Protestant Church (1939) |
Separations | Fundamental Methodist Conference, Inc. (1942) Evangelical Methodist Church (1945) Association of Independent Methodists (1965) |
Merged into | United Methodist Church (1968) |
The Methodist Church was the official name adopted by the
Methodist denomination formed in the United States by the reunion on May 10, 1939, of the northern and southern factions of the Methodist Episcopal Church (which had split in 1844 over the issue of slavery and the impending Civil War in America. During the American Civil War, the southern denomination was known briefly as The Methodist Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America) along with the earlier separated Methodist Protestant Church of 1828.[1]
Its book of liturgy used for the reunited denomination was The Book of Worship for Church and Home, editions of which were published in 1945 and later revised in 1965. They had two official hymnals, the first being The Methodist Hymnal, published in 1935 and 1939 by the same three church bodies that later became The Methodist Church. It was replaced in 1966 by The Book of Hymns.
The Methodist Church then later merged with the
modernism in that church as the reason for entering into schism.[3]
References
- ^ The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church, 1984, page 10
- ^ The Constitution of The United Methodist Church, Preamble footnote, as found in The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church, 1984, page 20.
- ISBN 9780865540330.
The Evangelical Methodist Church, which separated from the Methodist Church in 1946 over issues of polity and "modernism," is a congregationally governed group.