Methodist Episcopal Church, South
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The Methodist Episcopal Church, South was the so-called "Southern Methodist Church" resulting from the split over the issue of slavery in the Methodist Episcopal Church which had been brewing over several years until it came out into the open at a conference held in Louisville, Kentucky in 1844. This body maintained its own polity until it merged with the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Protestant Church to form the Methodist Church in 1939, which in turn later (1968) merged with the Evangelical United Brethren to form The United Methodist Church. Conservative Southern congregations dissenting from the merger formed the Southern Methodist Church in 1940.
History of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was appalled by American slavery. When the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) was founded in the United States in 1784, the denomination officially opposed slavery. In the early nineteenth century the MEC weakened its stance on slavery, though clergy were still expected not to own slaves. Conflict arose when a southern bishop married a woman who owned slaves and became a slave-owner himself.
The Methodist Episcopal Church's 1844 General Conference voted to defrock the bishop unless he freed his slaves. The decision raised questions (particularly among southern delegates to the conference) about the authority of a General Conference to discipline bishops. Of course, the cultural differences that had divided the nation during the mid-19th century had also been dividing the Methodist Episcopal Church. The 1844 dispute led Methodists in the south to break off and form a separate denomination, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.
After the American Civil War many African American Methodists in the south left the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and joined either the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, or the Methodist church in the north. Most of the black Methodists remaining in the MEC, South left with the denomination's blessing in 1870 to form the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, now the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.
While the two other major Methodist denominations in America—the MEC and the Methodist Protestant Church—had agreed to ordain women either as local elders and deacons (the MEC) or full clergy (the Methodist Protestant Church), the MEC, South did not ordain women as pastors at the time of the 1939 merger that formed The Methodist Church.
Legacy of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South
The Methodist Episcopal Church, South is most remembered for its reluctance to oppose slavery and its lack of hospitality toward African Americans. However, the church was responsible for founding three of the south's top divinity schools: Vanderbilt University Divinity School, Duke University Divinity School, and Candler Divinity School at Emory University. Vanderbilt severed its ties with the denomination in the early 1900s. Duke and Candler maintain a relationship with The United Methodist Church. All three enroll students primarily from mainline Protestant denominations, and all three have a reputation for being progressive.
The denomination's publishing house, opened in 1854 in Nashville, Tennessee, would eventually become home to The United Methodist Publishing House.