Methodist Episcopal Church

The MEC's origins lie in the First Great Awakening when Methodism emerged as an evangelical revival movement within the Church of England that stressed the necessity of being born again and the possibility of attaining Christian perfection.

With growth came greater institutionalization and respectability, and this led some within the church to complain that Methodism was losing its vitality and commitment to Wesleyan teachings, such as the belief in Christian perfection and opposition to slavery.

Members of Methodist societies were expected to attend and receive Holy Communion in their local parish church, but Wesley also recruited and supervised lay preachers for itinerant or traveling ministry.

Deacons were preachers authorized by a superintendent to officiate weddings, bury the dead, baptize, and assist the elders in administering the Lord's Supper.

These bodily experiences as well as Methodist ascetic practices and claims of receiving direct communication from the Holy Spirit inspired its opponents to accuse Methodism of being a form of religious enthusiasm that caused insanity.

This made nine in all, the others being the New York, New England, Genesee (including circuits in Upper and Lower Canada), South Carolina, Virginia, Baltimore and Philadelphia conferences.

[45] The General Conference placed Joshua Soule and Thomas Mason in charge of the Methodist Book Concern, the church's publishing house.

[54] The Presbyterian-led Cane Ridge Revival of 1801 birthed the first definitive camp meeting in American history, and this multi-day revivalistic event would be enthusiastically adopted by the Methodist Episcopal Church.

[64] In the 19th century, the Methodist Episcopal Church became the largest and most widespread denomination in the United States, boasting "the most extensive national organization other than the Federal government.

"[67] In the Antebellum era, a new generation of leaders, upwardly mobile preachers and laity, would lead the Methodist Episcopal Church toward social respectability and inclusion within America's Protestant establishment.

In the process, the MEC would experience what some contemporaries and later interpreters considered a "softening of discipline, embrace of the world, compromise of fundamental Wesleyan practices and precepts, abandonment of the evangelistic mission to society’s marginalized, and loss of Methodism’s prophetic nerve.

As the denomination's book agent and editor of both The Methodist Magazine and the weekly Christian Advocate, Bangs was the MEC's most visible and influential leader up until the 1860s.

[74] Nathan Bangs was also instrumental in the establishment of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1819 to help support foreign mission work.

[76] Domestically, there were efforts among Native American tribes, such as the Wyandotte of Ohio; the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw and Chickasaw in the Southeast; and the Ojibwe, Oneida and Chippewa of the Great Lakes region.

Christian perfection was a doctrine that had been taught by Wesley but had in the words of religion scholar Randall Balmer, "faded into the background" as Methodists gained respectability and became solidly middle class.

"[81] Under her leadership, men began to regularly attend the meetings, including prominent Methodists such as Nathan Bangs, Bishop Leonidas Hamline, and Stephen Olin.

These meetings formed the impetus for a new interdenominational holiness movement promoted by such publications as the Guide to Christian Perfection, which published written testimonies from those who had experienced entire sanctification.

[87] When pro-slavery forces prevailed at the 1840 General Conference, Scott and his allies La Roy Sunderland and Jotham Horton left the church.

It proposed a Plan of Separation that would provide for determining a geographic boundary between the two churches and a peaceful division of property, such as the Book Concern and the pension resources of the Chartered Fund.

This action started a contest between northern and southern conferences to recruit as many border stations and circuits as they could, especially in the Delmarva Peninsula, western Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio and Missouri.

There, reform-minded Methodists led by B. T. Roberts protested slavery as well as other signs of cultural accommodation, such as pew rents (which alienated the poor) and the decline in revivalism and holiness teaching.

[93] Concerned about defections to the Free Methodists, the 1860 General Conference declared owning slaves to be "contrary to the laws of God and nature" and inconsistent with the church's rules.

[99] The Methodist Ministers Association of Boston, meeting two weeks after Lincoln's assassination, called for a hard line against the Confederate leadership: Resolved, That no terms should be made with traitors, no compromise with rebels.

... That we hold the National authority bound by the most solemn obligation to God and man to bring all the civil and military leaders of the rebellion to trial by due course of law, and when they are clearly convicted, to execute them.

[109] In 1895, during the 19th century holiness movement, Methodist Episcopal minister Phineas F. Bresee founded the Church of the Nazarene in Los Angeles with the help of Joseph Pomeroy Widney.

[110] The Methodist Episcopal Church's doctrines are the Articles of Religion along with an emphasis on "Universal Redemption, the Free Agency of Man, Regeneration or the New Birth, Adoption, the Witness of the Spirit, and Entire Sanctification or Perfect Love.

"[111] Probationers who sought full membership into the Methodist Episcopal Church affirmed "a desire to flee from the wrath to come, and to be saved from their sins" which was to be evidenced by "observing the General Rules" delineated the connexion's standards.

[111] Its standards included a ban against marriages with unconverted persons; a prohibition on the buying, selling and use of spiritous liquors; abstinence from tobacco; and an injunction not to wear "gold and costly apparel".

Philip William Otterbein, (1726–1813) of Baltimore and Martin Boehm started Methodist evangelism among German-speaking immigrants to form the United Brethren in Christ.

1793: The first recognized split from the Methodist Episcopal Church was led by a preacher named James O'Kelly who wanted clergy to be free to refuse to serve where the bishop appointed them.