wfn.org | American Methodism: divisions in the family

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

March 15, 1999	News media contact: Thomas S.
McAnally*(615)742-5470*Nashville, Tenn.    10-21-31-71BP{139}

NOTE:  This may be used as a sidebar to UMNS story #138.

ATLANTA (UMNS) -- The Methodist movement began under the leadership of John
Wesley and his brother Charles, both clergymen in the Church of England,
during the 18th century. It spread to the American shores, resulting in the
formal creation of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1784.  The church had
both black and white members from its beginning.

The denomination split over the issue of slavery in 1844. The "northern"
branch of the church continued with the Methodist Episcopal Church name,
while the "southern" branch became known as the Methodist Episcopal Church
South. The two branches reunited in 1939, along with the Methodist
Protestant Church, to become the Methodist Church. At the 1939 union, a
"Central Jurisdiction" was created for black members, overlapping five
geographic jurisdictions.

The African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), formally organized in 1816,
traces its origin to an incident at St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church
in Philadelphia in 1787, when a group of African Americans left the church
in protest of racial discrimination. Today, the denomination has more than 2
million members.

The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AMEZ) was organized in 1796 in
New York City, after dissatisfied African Americans left John Street
Methodist Church because of restrictions in public worship, failure to
ordain clergy and other problems. Today the denomination has 1.5 million
members.

The Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (CME) was established as the
Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in 1870, when African-American Christians
and former slaves who were members of the Methodist Episcopal Church South
achieved their separation from the larger church and began a quest for
social justice, religious freedom and equality in education. Today, the
denomination has 886,000 members.

When the Evangelical United Brethren Church and the Methodist Church united
in 1968 to create the United Methodist Church, the last vestiges of the
Central Jurisdiction were eliminated.   Today, the denomination has about
8.5 million members in the United States, of whom 361,500 are black. The
church has more than a million members outside the United States. Of the
church's 50 active bishops in the United States, 10 are black. Since the
United Methodist Church was created in 1968, 19 of the 116 U.S. bishops
elected have been black. 

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