Methodism

METHODISM

METHODISM. In 1744 in England, John Wesley founded the Methodist church as a separate entity. He had initially hoped to reawaken the Church of England to the demands of vital piety. Wesley's theology was a warm-hearted evangelicalism that stressed the experience of Christ within the heart, humanity's capacity to accept Christ's offer of redemption, and the need for a disciplined life. In his later years, Wesley came to believe in the possibility of entire sanctification or holiness (a state of perfection) and taught that it should be the goal of every Christian. This latter doctrine has contributed to many of the divisions within Methodism.

Methodist ideas entered the American colonies informally at first, notably through the efforts of Robert Strawbridge in Maryland and Virginia, Philip Embury and Barbara Heck in New York, and Captain Thomas Webb in Pennsylvania. Their success prompted Wesley to send Richard Broadman and Joseph Pilmoor to America in 1769. Two years later, Wesley sent Francis Asbury, who was to become the great apostle of early Methodism in America. At first, Methodism was an extremely small movement that existed on the fringes of the Anglican church. Members listened to Methodist preachers but still received the sacraments from the Church of England because the Methodists were yet to ordain ministers of their own. Moreover, John Wesley's personal opposition to American independence made his emerging denomination unattractive to many who supported that cause. By the end of the the American Revolution, however, Methodism had become prominent enough to separate itself completely from the Church of England. The Christmas Conference, held in Baltimore in 1784, marks the beginning of the Methodist church in America. At that meeting, sixty preachers joined with Wesley's delegates Richard Vassey, Richard Whitcoat, and Thomas Coke in ordaining Francis Asbury and establishing an order for the church. The conference decided on a form of government by deacons, elders, and superintendents (later bishops); adopted the Book of Discipline, which regulated the life of the church and its members; and elected Coke and Asbury as its first superintendents.

Almost immediately after the Christmas Conference, Methodism entered a period of rapid expansion. The system of circuit riders, which Wesley had experimented with in England, met the need for clergymen in outlying regions and allowed relatively uneducated men to enter the ministry. Wherever the circuit rider could gather a crowd, he would stop, preach a sermon, and organize a Methodist class to continue the work until he was able to return. Religious zeal rather than material reward motivated these circuit riders because remuneration was sparse. Methodist theology was also easy for the average person to understand, and the Methodist emphasis on discipline was invaluable to communities that were far from the ordinary restraints of civilization. The Methodist combination of simplicity, organization, and lay participation not only made it the largest Protestant denomination but also decisively influenced the other frontier churches. Other denominations, even those of Calvinist background, had to accept elements of Methodist theory and practice in order to survive.

The nineteenth century was a period in which the Methodists, like many other American denominations, experienced internal division. Despite Wesley's unequivocable distaste for slavery, the question of slavery became an important issue for Methodist churches in both the North and South. Mistreatment of black ministers and members by white Methodists led some African American Methodists to form their own churches, including the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816 and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church five years later. In 1843, the Wesleyan Methodist Connection, a small antislavery church, formed. The next year at the general conference of the Methodist Episcopal church, that branch

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split into two separate ecclesiastical bodies: the Methodist Episcopal church and the Methodist Episcopal church, South. At issue was whether or not one of the denomination's bishops could serve in that capacity while he owned slaves, and delegates from the slave states founded their own church when the general conference suspended the offending bishop. After the American Civil War, even more black Methodists formed their own denominations. In the same period, the increasingly middle-class nature of the church contributed to disputes over the issue of entire sanctification, and the lower-class membership largely withdrew into the "Holiness" or "Pentecostal" movement. Nevertheless, during the late nineteenth century, the various branches of American Methodism dramatically increased in both members and wealth.

In the twentieth century, Methodism was involved in both the ecumenical movement and the Social Gospel. In 1908, the Federal Council of Churchs adopted the Methodist Social Creed as its own statement of social principles. Methodism has also begun to heal the divisions within its own ranks. In 1939, the Methodist Episcopal church; the Methodist Episcopal church, South; and the Methodist Protestant church merged into the Methodist Church, which resulted in a new denomination of almost eight million people. In 1968, the Methodist Church merged with the Evangelical United Brethren to form the United Methodist church with approximately eleven million members. The Evangelical United Brethen itself had come out of an earlier merger of two churches, the Church of the United Brethren in Christ and the Evangelical Association, in 1946. These two other denominations had arisen about the same time that Methodism emerged as a separate church and had always shared similar beliefs.

Like many mainstream Protestant churches, United Methodist faced falling membership in the second half of the twentieth century. In 1974, the United Methodist church had almost 10.2 million members, but that number had fallen to only 8.4 million by 1999. Nonetheless, the church remains the third largest Christian denomination in the United States and has substantially expanded its membership in Africa and Asia. Current membership levels for other prominent branches of Methodism, which have all grown over the last fifty years, include the African Methodist Episcopal church, 3.5 million members; the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church, 1.2 million members; and the Christian Methodist Episcopal church, 800,000 members.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andrews, Dee. The Methodists and Revolutionary America, 1760– 1800: The Shaping of an Evangelical Culture. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Campbell, James T. Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Richey, Russell E. Early American Methodism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.

Schneider, A. Gregory. The Way of the Cross Leads Home: The Domestication of American Methodism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.

Wigger, John H. Taking Heaven by Storm: Methodism and the Rise of Popular Christianity in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Gleen T. Miller / a. e.

See also African American Religions and Sects ; Camp Meetings ; Dissenters ; Evangelicalism and Revivalism ; Protestantism ; Religion and Religious Affiliation .