UNITED METHODIST CHURCH

United Methodist Church

Marie Wyatt
Strayer University

Rel 212
Rev. Donna DeVoe Baker
12-10-2012

Getting to know about a religion and getting misconceptions of what you thought about a religion can be very interesting. It is hard to believe that someone can go to a church the majority of their lives and come to find out some of the things they were taught is not all true. Sometimes this misinformation comes from parents, which could be that they were misled as they grew up. To truly know about one’s religion, is to study and research as far back as possible of that religion.

In 1968 when the Evangelical United Brethren and the Methodist church united, it created The United Methodist Church. 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. The Methodist movement began 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. With such growth, philosophical differences and division were inevitable. In 1830, a group, largely moved by an insistence on lay representation, separated and became the Methodist Protestant Church. In the late 18th century, racism in the church caused some groups of African-American
Methodists to leave and form their own denominations, the African Methodist Episcopal
Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion. In 1870, another division in the parent church led to the creation of a third black Methodist denomination, known today as the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1844, the Methodist Episcopal Church split again over the issue of slavery. The offspring denomination was the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The north and south faction’s churches reunited in 1939, compromising on the race issue by creating a segregated system. The Methodist Protestant Church was part of the merger. 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. The term 'Protestant' applies most correctly to those churches that came in existence separate from the Roman Catholic Church from the Reformation in the 16th century.
The Anglican Church does not generally understand itself to be 'Protestant' as it believes itself to be a continuation of the English Church before this period. Anglicans often describe themselves as Catholic (but not Roman Catholic) and Reformed (but not Protestant), However, views on this vary and there are Anglicans/ (Protestant) Episcopalians who consider themselves to be Protestants. Several attempts were made in the twentieth century to reunite the Methodist Church with its founder's own church - the Church of England. These were rejected by the Church of England's General Synod in 1972. However, dialogue and informal relations continued. In 2003 a Covenant between the two churches was signed. This affirms each church as true Christian churches, carrying out the work of God and commits each church to work more closely with the other towards full unity.
The Covenant relationship between the Methodist Church and the Church of England is one element in the Methodist Church's goal to work with a wide range of partners (the other denominations, Christian agencies, Methodist Churches in other parts of the world and secular organisations) to pursue its mission.