Methodism in the United States

The coloured people, with the consent of the Church, withdrew in 187o, and formed a new Church called the Coloured Methodist Episcopal Church. This church leads all branches of Episcopal Methodism with increases of over 6o% in membership and over 00% church-school enrolment from 1910-25.

The titles to 275 educational institutions are held by the Church. The chief foreign missions are in China, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, Korea and China. Its mission in Japan and the mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Church of Canada were united in 1907 as the Methodist Church of Japan.

The African Methodist Episcopal Church.

This body origi nated in 1816 in strained relations between the white and coloured Methodists of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It sustains Wilber force University (of Wilberforce, Ohio) and other educational institutions, and has missions in Africa, South America, the West Indies and Hawaii. It is the largest Christian denomination con sisting wholly of the Negro race.

The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

Some of the coloured people in the city of New York, "feeling themselves oppressed by caste prejudice, and suffering the deprivation of Church privileges permitted to others," organized among them selves, in 1796, and in the year 180o built a church and named it Zion. In this church the sexes are equally eligible to all positions. Its educational operations at first were failures, but gradually be came successful. Its foreign missions were made a separate de partment in 1884.

The Coloured Methodist Episcopal Church.

In 1866 the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South authorized the bishops to organize its coloured members into an independent ecclesiastical body, if it should appear that they desired it. The bishops formed a number of Annual Conferences, consisting wholly of coloured preachers, and in 1870 these Con ferences requested the appointment of five commissioners of the Caucasian part of the Church to meet five of their own number to create an independent Church. Two Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church South presided, and ordained to the Episcopacy two coloured elders, selected by the right coloured conferences. The coloured people by vote named the organiza tion the Coloured Methodist Episcopal Church. The Union Amer ican Methodist Episcopal Church (coloured) agrees in doctrines and usages with other Methodist bodies, but maintains a separate corporate existence.

B.

Non-Episcopal Methodist Churches. The Methodist Protestant Church.—During the Methodist Episcopal General Conference of 1824, held in Baltimore, a Convention of "Reform ers" met, and established a periodical entitled The Mutual Rights of the Ministers and Members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and made arrangements to organize Union Societies. Travelling and local ministers and laymen were expelled for schism and spreading incendiary publications. Prior to the Conference those

expelled, and their sympathizers, formed themselves into a society named "Associate Methodist Reformers." These sent memorials to the General Conference of 1828, and issued addresses to the public. After a powerful and painful discussion, the appeals were rejected. The controversy centered upon lay representation, the episcopacy and the presiding eldership.

A General Convention was held on the 2nd of November 1830, a Constitution was adopted, and a new organization was estab lished, styled the Methodist Protestant Church. Within eight years it had 5o,000 members, the majority of whom were in the South and bordering states. The Methodist Protestant Church has a presbyterial form of government, the powers being in the Conference. There is no episcopal office or General Superinten dent; each Annual Conference elects its own chairman. Its Gen eral Conference meets once in four years. Ministers and laymen equal in number are elected by the Annual Conferences, in a ratio of one delegate for 1,000 members. The General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church of 1908 sent delegates to the Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church, suggesting union, but formal negotiations have not been instituted.

The Wesleyan Methodist Connection or Church of America.—In the Methodist Episcopal Church slavery was al ways a cause of contention. In 1842 certain Methodist abolition ists conferred as to the wisdom of seceding. Among the leaders were Orange Scott (180o-1847), Jotham Horton and LeRoy Sunderland (1802-1885) and in a paper, which they had estab lished, known as The True Wesleyan, they announced their with drawal from the Church, and issued a call for a convention of all like-minded, which met on the 31st day of May 1843, at Utica, New York, and founded the Wesleyan Methodist Connection or Church of America numbering about 20,000 members within 18 months of its organization. As the Methodist Episcopal Church purged itself from slavery in 1844, and slavery itself was abolished in 1862, a large number of ministers and thousands of communi cants, connected with the body, returned to the Methodist Epis copal Church. It had in 1926, 666 ministers, 675 churches, and 2I,00o communicants. The Congregational Methodists originated. in Georgia in 1852 ; but in polity they are not strictly Congrega tional. This Church has its membership chiefly in Southern states. The Free Methodist Church was organized in August 186o, and was the result of ten years of agitation. It was the purpose of the founders to conserve the usage and the spirit of primitive Method ism. The government of the Church is simple, in all but the Episcopacy and its adjuncts resembling that of the Church whence it sprang. The Free Methodist Church had in 1926 1,259 churches, and 34,751 communicants. The Primitive Methodist Church, as it exists in the United States, came from England.