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The United Methodist Church

Also Known As UMC · United Methodist Church
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Origin from 1968

The United Methodist Church was formed in 1968 by the union of the Methodist Church with the Evangelical United Brethren, and was for half a century among the largest Protestant denominations in the United States. Its doctrine, polity and discipline are set out in the Book of Discipline, which its General Conference alone may amend. A conflict over the ordination and marriage of gay people, running through several General Conferences, ended in a large scale separation between 2019 and 2023.

History & Origin

The union of 1968 dissolved The Methodist Church's racially segregated Central Jurisdiction, which the Evangelical United Brethren had made a condition of the merger going ahead. The three historic Black Methodist connexions had by then been separate bodies for between ninety-eight and a hundred and fifty-two years.

Facts
History
Separation or DivergenceSourced to the subject's own account
Large scale disaffiliation of American congregations between 2019 and 2023 2
Separation or DivergenceSourced to the subject's own account
The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, one of the United Methodist Church's four direct predecessor bodies, formed in 1845 after the 1844 General Conference's controversy over Bishop James O. Andrew, who had become a slaveholder by marriage; southern delegates organized the new church at Louisville in May 1845, holding its first General Conference in 1846. It reunited with the northern Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Protestant Church on 10 May 1939 to form The Methodist Church. 3
Date of SeparationSourced to the subject's own account
2019-2023 2
Organisation
Governance
Connexional: congregations bound in a conference with itinerant ministry 2
Sourced to the subject's own accountConnexional: local churches, annual conferences and a General Conference held in one body of shared ministry, property and doctrine, with clergy appointed by the bishop rather than called by the congregation.
Episcopal Tenure
Bishops in the United States hold the office for life. Life tenure was the Methodist practice and was carried into the union of 1968 as one of its compromises, the Evangelical United Brethren side giving way on it. 5
Ordination
Open to women and men 2 6
Sourced to the subject's own accountOrdains women and men to full clergy rights, including election to the episcopacy
Giving
Standing Giving Expectation
Apportioned giving is the mechanism by which local United Methodist congregations, not individual members directly, forward a share of collected income to fund conference and denomination-wide ministry; the church's own materials describe apportionments as "not to be considered special gifts, but rather... similar to our tithes," to be "given first priority in our church budgets." This is written into the Book of Discipline as a real, codified structure with two documented enforcement paths, both institutional rather than aimed at an individual lay member: paragraphs 247.14 and 812 name apportionments the church's first benevolent responsibility, paragraph 340.2c1(e) makes a pastor's failure to lead the congregation in paying apportionments in full a chargeable disciplinary offense of "disobedience to the order and discipline of The United Methodist Church" under paragraph 2702.1d, and a district superintendent holds separately documented authority to recommend the closure of a chronically non-paying local church or to re-align its pastoral appointment. A critical account from within the denomination argues the disciplinary-charge path is "rarely (if ever)" actually invoked against clergy in practice; that practical rarity is recorded here rather than smoothed over, but the codified structure and its institutional-level consequences, unlike the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s per capita, have not been ruled unenforceable by the church's own courts. 8
How the Expectation Is Enforced
Codified Obligation With Consequences 9
Origins
Origin Period
from 1968 1
Its own already-recorded origin-period reads "23 April 1968, at the constituting General Conference in Dallas, Texas", already paired with an end-year of 1968.
Origin Period
to 1968 1
Origin Period
23 April 1968, at the constituting General Conference in Dallas, Texas 1
Place of Origin
Dallas, Texas 1
Founder
No single founder; created by the union of The Methodist Church and The Evangelical United Brethren Church, joined at Dallas by Bishop Lloyd C. Wicke and Bishop Reuben H. Mueller. 1
Belief
Defining Doctrinal PositionSourced to the subject's own account
Trinitarian: one God in three persons 2
Doctrinal StandardsSourced to the subject's own account
The Articles of Religion, the Confession of Faith of the Evangelical United Brethren Church, the General Rules, the Standard Sermons of John Wesley and his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, all protected by the Restrictive Rules and close to impossible to change. 2
Position on Entire SanctificationSourced to the subject's own account
Held through the Standard Sermons of John Wesley, which are a protected doctrinal standard of the church, rather than through a separate article on a second work of grace. 2
Position on SexualitySourced to the subject's own account
Same-sex marriage is performed and LGBT clergy are ordained on equal terms with heterosexual clergy 4
Sexuality Position DetailSourced to the subject's own account
Since the 2 May 2024 General Conference vote of 523 to 161 in Charlotte, the Book of Discipline no longer states that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching, no longer bans the ordination of partnered gay and lesbian clergy, and no longer bans clergy from officiating at or churches from hosting same-sex marriages; the changes took full effect 1 January 2025. From 1972 to 2024 the Social Principles carried the incompatibility language, and from 1984 the Book of Discipline additionally barred the ordination of "self-avowed practicing homosexual" clergy. 4
Practice
Liturgical LanguageSourced to the subject's own account
The vernacular 2
Accountability
Response Policy Adopted
The General Conference resolution "Reducing the Risk of Child Sexual Abuse in the Church," adopted in 1996 and most recently amended and readopted in 2016, requires screening of adult workers, two or more unrelated adults present during children's activities, and liability insurance covering sexual abuse, implemented locally as "Safe Sanctuaries" programs across every Annual Conference. 10
Position Profile
Key TextSourced to the subject's own account
The Book of Discipline, amendable only by the General Conference 2
Status
Status TodaySourced to the subject's own account
Living tradition, practised today 2
Finances
Institutional Wealth or Finances
Wespath Benefits and Investments, The United Methodist Church's pension and investment agency, reports combined total assets of approximately 28.74 billion US dollars (28,738,237 thousand dollars) as of December 31, 2024 in its Grant Thornton LLP-audited combined financial statements, covering the P Series funds serving denominational plan participants and the I Series funds serving other institutional investors together; this figure is distinct from the narrower 25.91 billion dollar "assets under management" figure the same report highlights separately. 7
Basis of the Wealth Figure
Audited Annual Report 7
Financial Disclosure Regime
Wespath's pension, disability and health plans are "church plans" under US federal law (ERISA section 3(33) and Internal Revenue Code section 414(e)), which exempts them from Titles I and IV of ERISA and from Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation oversight; there is no regulator compelling this disclosure. Wespath nonetheless voluntarily publishes an annual report with independently audited combined financial statements, a level of public disclosure most denominational pension agencies of comparable size do not provide. 7
Wealth Figure As Of Year
2024 7
Trajectory
Membership Over Time
As of 2019, immediately before the wave of congregational disaffiliations that ran through 2023, United Methodist Church membership in the United States stood at approximately 6.5 million across 30,543 churches, according to the denomination's own reporting to the General Council on Finance and Administration. 11
Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own account
At its founding merger in 1968, of the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church, the newly formed United Methodist Church reported approximately 11 million members, then overwhelmingly a US and European body. 12
Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own account
By 2022, United Methodist Church membership in the United States specifically had fallen to 5,424,175, during the 2019-2023 wave of congregational disaffiliations that ultimately removed about a quarter of US churches from the denomination. 12
Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account
1968-01-01 12
Membership Figure As Of
2019-01-01 11
Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account
2022-12-31 12
Basis of the Membership Figure
Church-Reported Rolls 11
In Other Languages (27 names)
  • الكنيسة الميثودية المتحدة
  • Evangelisch-methodistische Kirche
  • Iglesia metodista unida
  • Église méthodiste unie
  • 연합 감리 교회
  • Zjednoczony Kościół Metodystyczny
  • Igreja Metodista Unida
  • Объединённая методистская церковь
  • Förenade Metodistkyrkan
  • Об'єднана методистська церква
  • Giáo hội Giám lý Liên hiệp
  • 聯合循道會
  • Església Metodista Unida
  • Evangelická církev metodistická
  • United Methodist Church
  • Unuiĝinta Metodisma Eklezio
  • Ühinenud Metodisti Kirik
  • Eliza Metodista Batua
  • Yhdistynyt metodistikirkko
  • Igrexa metodista unida
  • Egyesült Metodista Egyház
  • Միավորյալ մեթոդիստական եկեղեցի
  • Eglos an Vethodysi
  • Eigreija Metodista
  • Evanjelická cirkev metodistická, Slovenská oblasť
  • Уједињена методистичка црква
  • Nagkakaisang Metodistang Simbahan
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Connexion: How a Methodist Church Is Governed

Methodism calls its structure a connexion, and the word is doing work. A congregation is not a self-standing body that has chosen to associate with others; it is a local expression of one church, and the arrangements follow from that.

Clergy are members of an annual conference rather than of a congregation, and they are appointed to a charge by a bishop rather than called by the people they will serve. The system is called itinerancy and it descends directly from Wesley practice of moving preachers around a circuit. Property is held under a trust clause, so a building belongs to the denomination even though a local congregation paid for it and maintains it, which is why leaving is a legal question and not only a spiritual one.

Above the annual conference sits the General Conference, which meets every four years and is the only body that may speak for the church. Bishops preside but have no vote there, which is unusual among episcopal churches. A Judicial Council rules on whether an act of the General Conference or of a bishop is constitutional. Outside the United States the church is organised into central conferences with authority to adapt parts of the Discipline to their own legal and cultural situations, and roughly a third of the membership before the recent separation was outside the United States, mostly in Africa.

Doctrinal Standards, the Quadrilateral, and a Long Conflict

The doctrinal standards are protected by restrictive rules that make them very difficult to alter: the Articles of Religion that Wesley abridged from the Anglican articles, the Confession of Faith inherited from the Evangelical United Brethren at the 1968 union, and Wesley standard sermons and his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament. Alongside them the church teaches a Wesleyan account of grace, prevenient, justifying and sanctifying, with the expectation of growth in holiness that Wesley called Christian perfection.

The church also describes how it reasons, in a scheme usually named the Wesleyan quadrilateral, a term coined in the twentieth century by Albert Outler rather than used by Wesley. Scripture is primary, and tradition, reason and experience are the other three sources brought to bear on it. Critics inside Methodism have argued that the phrasing makes the four look equal, and Outler himself said later that the term had been misunderstood.

The Social Principles, first adopted in their modern form in 1972, address war, economics, the environment and human sexuality, and it was language added in that year on the last of these that opened the conflict which ran through every General Conference afterwards. A special session in 2019 strengthened the traditional position and provided a route for congregations to disaffiliate. The General Conference of 2024, meeting after those departures, removed the prohibitions on ordaining and marrying gay people and approved a regionalization plan sent to the annual conferences for ratification.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names The United Methodist Church directly: "the official formation narrative for the United Methodist Church: the adoption of life tenure for bishops, and the dissolution of the Methodist Church's racially segregated Central Jurisdiction, a..."

This source names The United Methodist Church directly: "UM News, the United Methodist Church's own official news service, reporting that Cote d'Ivoire Conference members, meeting in a 28 May 2024 special session in Abidjan, unanimously voted for the..."

This source names The United Methodist Church directly: "organization not affiliated with the United Methodist Church or any Methodist body, reporting the 28 May 2024 vote of the Cote d'Ivoire Conference, known locally as EMUCI, to withdraw from the..."

This source names The United Methodist Church directly: "Formation of The United Methodist Church, published on the denomination's own umc.org site, is the church's official account of its own founding, the constituting General Conference of 23 April 1968..."

Source Formation of The United Methodist Church (umc.org)The United Methodist Church

This source names The United Methodist Church directly: "Reliable for the United Methodist Church's 2019 General Conference passing the Traditional Plan by a vote of 438 to 384, upholding restrictions on same-sex marriage and the ordination of..."

Source Global Methodist Church (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names United Methodist Church directly: "of Pension and Health Benefits of The United Methodist Church, including its Grant Thornton LLP-audited Combined Statements of Assets and Liabilities and Net Assets as of December 31, 2024."

This source names The United Methodist Church directly: "The Book of Discipline is the United Methodist Church's own book of order and doctrine, revised at each quadrennial General Conference, and this record deliberately cites no single edition year..."

Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account

This source names The United Methodist Church directly: "in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, members of the United Methodist Church's Cote d'Ivoire Conference, known locally as EMUCI, voted unanimously to leave the denomination."

This source names United Methodist Church directly: "In 2019, the United Methodist Church's General Conference passed the Traditional Plan by a vote of 438..."

Source Global Methodist Church (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names The United Methodist Church directly: "United Brethren Church united to form the United Methodist Church at the Uniting Conference in Dallas in 1968, already recorded here, and twenty seven years before the Global Methodist Church split..."

This source names The United Methodist Church directly: "in Thee, in Thy Church and now in The United Methodist Church."

Source Formation of The United Methodist Church (umc.org)The United Methodist Church

This source names The United Methodist Church directly: "the Primitive Methodist Church and the United Methodist Church met in the Uniting Conference at the Royal Albert Hall in London and adopted the Deed of Union, fifty one years after the Ecumenical..."

This source names United Methodist Church directly: "during a wave of departures from the United Methodist Church over disagreements about ordination and marriage."

This source names The United Methodist Church directly: "Global Methodist Church separated from the United Methodist Church or how that split has actually played out, so a claim about the broader Methodist schism needs an independent historical or..."

This source names United Methodist Church directly: "Wikipedia's article on the United Methodist Church, community-edited."

Source United Methodist Church (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names The United Methodist Church directly: "religion news outlet unaffiliated with the United Methodist Church or any Methodist body, reporting the November 2025 ratification of the United Methodist Church's worldwide regionalization..."

This source names The United Methodist Church directly: "credited to Religion News Service, on the United Methodist Church General Conference's 1 May 2024 vote of 692 to 51 in Charlotte, North Carolina, to overturn the denomination's 1984 prohibition on..."

Source United Methodists Strike Their Ban on LGBTQ Clergy (Christianity Today)Yonat Shimron (Religion News Service)

This source names The United Methodist Church directly: "UM News, the United Methodist Church's own official news service, on the Methodist Church's General Conference vote of 4 May 1956 in Minneapolis, which added one sentence to the Book of Discipline..."

Belongs to Tradition

Branch Of

Formed by the 1968 union of the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren.

Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account

Contained In

Classified as mainline Protestant tradition per Pew Research Center's 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study.

Critiqued

Seven Sacraments, Practices

Kept in the United Methodist Church. The Articles of Religion hold that there are two sacraments ordained of Christ, and that the other five are not to be counted for sacraments of the Gospel.

Veneration of icons, Practices

Kept in the United Methodist Church. The Articles name the worshipping and adoration of images and of relics as a fond thing vainly invented.

Veneration of saints and Mary, Practices

Kept in the United Methodist Church. The Articles name the invocation of saints in the same place, and Methodist prayer is addressed to God alone.

Excluded from Canon

The Apocrypha, Scriptures & Texts

The United Methodist Church does not include the Apocrypha in its Bible or draw doctrine from it. Its canon follows the Protestant return, at the Reformation, to the thirty-nine books of the Hebrew Bible for its Old Testament, setting aside the wider collection of deuterocanonical and apocryphal writings that entered Christian use through the Greek Septuagint and that the Catholic and Orthodox churches continue to read as scripture.

Holds Element

The United Methodist hymnal descends directly from the 1780 collection and still reprints Wesley's Directions for Singing.

The stole is the sign of ordination in the United Methodist Church and is given at the service of ordination itself.

Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account

District superintendents oversee groups of congregations on behalf of the bishop, and the office keeps the name Wesley gave it.

Source The Sermons of John WesleyJohn Wesley

Held Differently

Bishop, Religious Roles & Titles

Bishops are elected from among the elders and hold the office of superintendency; the church does not teach that episcopacy is a separate order of ministry.

Source The Sermons of John WesleyJohn Wesley
Temperance, Virtues

The United Methodist Church inherits the Wesleyan reading of temperance as abstinence and its Social Principles continue to commend it.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Open and Closed Communion, Doctrines
Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account
Predestination and free will, Doctrines
Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account

Rejected Here

The Synod of Dort, Councils and Synods

Refused, on the Arminian ground Methodism has held since Wesley.

Source The Sermons of John WesleyJohn Wesley

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

Kept in the United Methodist Church. Works of mercy stand beside works of piety in the Methodist account of the Christian life, and neither is optional.

Baptism, Rituals

Kept in the United Methodist Church. Baptism is administered by sprinkling, pouring or immersion, the mode being left to the person receiving it, which is unusual among the churches that baptise infants.

Kept in the United Methodist Church. Baptism is understood as the sign of the new covenant and the beginning of a life of grace to be grown into, not a moment complete in itself.

Kept as the Reign of Christ on the last Sunday of the Christian year, from the Revised Common Lectionary.

Kept in the United Methodist Church.

Confirmation, Rituals

Kept in the United Methodist Church. Confirmation is the profession of faith by which a baptised person is received into full membership, and it is not held to be a sacrament.

Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account
Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account
Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account
Fasting, Practices

Kept in the United Methodist Church. Fasting is one of the means of grace, and Wesley kept the Friday fast himself and pressed it on the societies.

Funeral Rites, Rituals

Kept in the United Methodist Church. The Service of Death and Resurrection is the modern form of the burial office and takes its name from what it is meant to proclaim.

Gloria Patri, Prayers

Kept in the United Methodist Church.

Holy Orders, Rituals

Kept in the United Methodist Church. Ordination is to the orders of deacon and elder. The episcopacy is an office to which an elder is elected and consecrated, not a third order, which is the settled Methodist difference from Anglican practice.

Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account

Kept in the United Methodist Church. Infants are baptised, and the service places the congregation under a vow to nurture the child.

Intinction, Practices

Kept in the United Methodist Church. Intinction is the ordinary manner of receiving in many congregations, and it follows from the use of unfermented grape juice in a common cup.

Kept in the United Methodist Church. The liturgical colours were retained from the Anglican inheritance and are set out in the modern service books.

Kept in the United Methodist Church. The marriage service descends from the Prayer Book by way of Wesley's abridgement of it for the American societies.

Kept in the United Methodist Church. Sunday is kept for public worship, and the General Rules bind members to attend upon the ordinances of God.

Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account
Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account
Prayer, Practices

Kept in the United Methodist Church. Prayer stands among the means of grace Wesley called the works of piety, alongside searching the scriptures, the Lord's Supper and fasting.

Kept in the United Methodist Church.

Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account
The Anaphora, Rituals

Kept in the United Methodist Church. The Great Thanksgiving is a full anaphora, restored to Methodist worship in the twentieth century after two hundred years in which the Supper was celebrated from a much shorter form.

The Epiclesis, Rituals

Kept in the United Methodist Church. The Great Thanksgiving carries an explicit invocation of the Holy Spirit on the gifts and on the people, which the sixteenth-century English rite did not.

The Fraction, Rituals

Kept in the United Methodist Church. The breaking of the bread is a distinct action with its own words.

The prohibitions on the ordination of LGBTQ clergy and on same sex marriage were removed at the 2024 General Conference, after a long dispute during which many congregations left the denomination.

Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account
The Grace, Prayers

Kept in the United Methodist Church.

Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account

Kept in the United Methodist Church.

Kept in the United Methodist Church. The Lord's Supper is celebrated as a means of grace and Wesley pressed constant communion on the societies, though quarterly celebration became the practice for most of Methodist history for want of ordained ministers.

Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account
Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account
Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account

Kept in the United Methodist Church. The words of institution stand within the Great Thanksgiving.

Sources
1. Formation of The United Methodist Church (umc.org)
The United Methodist Church, United Methodist ChurchThe constituting General Conference, Dallas, 23 April 1968View the Source
2. The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church
United Methodist Church, The United Methodist Publishing Housethe holders' own accountView the Source
3. Glossary: Methodist Episcopal Church, South, The (UMC.org)
The United Methodist Church, United Methodist Communicationsthe holders' own accountView the Source
4. Church Ends 52-Year-Old Anti-Gay Stance (UM News)
Heather Hahn, UM News (United Methodist Communications), 2024the holders' own accountView the Source
5. Amid Tumult of 1968, a Church Came Together (umnews.org)
Heather Hahn, United Methodist News Service, 2018Life tenure for bishops, and the dissolution of the Central JurisdictionView the Source
6. Why the 1956 Women-Clergy Vote Matters (UM News)
UM News (The United Methodist Church)
7. Rooted in Mission; Growing into the Future: 2024 Annual Report
Wespath Benefits and Investments, 2025View the Source
8. Why Give to Apportionments
The United Methodist Church (umc.org)View the Source
9. Top 25 Ways United Methodists Don't Uphold the Book of Discipline
Jeremy Smith, United Methodist Insight (um-insight.net)View the Source
10. Reducing the Risk of Child Sexual Abuse in the Church
The United Methodist Church, General Conference, 1996View the Source
11. A Quarter of United Methodist Churches in U.S. Have Left During Split
PBS NewsHour, 2023View the Source
12. United Methodist Church (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia, 2026View the Source
The Sermons of John Wesley
John Wesley, Abingdon Press, 2013the standard sermons that remain a doctrinal standardView the Source
The Works of John Wesley, Volume 7: A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists
Franz Hildebrandt and Oliver A. Beckerlegge (editors), Oxford University Press, 1983
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005entries on Methodism, Wesley and the American Methodist bodiesView the Source
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