United Methodist Church
The United Methodist Church is a worldwide mainline Protestant Christian denomination based in Africa, the Philippines, Europe, and the United States claiming 10 million members, and is a major part of Methodism. In the 19th century, its main predecessor, the Methodist Episcopal Church, was a leader in evangelicalism. The present denomination was founded in 1968 in Dallas by union of the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church, and is shaped by the voluntary separation of 25% of the United States churches leading up to the delayed 2020 General Conference held in 2024. The UMC traces its roots back to the revival movement of John and Charles Wesley in England, as well as the Great Awakening in the United States. As such, the church's theological orientation is decidedly Wesleyan. It embraces liturgical worship, holiness, and evangelical elements. According to its Book of Discipline, "The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world."
The United Methodist Church has a connectional polity, a typical feature of a number of Methodist denominations. It is organized into conferences. The highest level is called the General Conference and is the only organization which may speak officially for the UMC. The church is a member of the World Council of Churches, the World Methodist Council, and other religious associations.
Between 1968 and 2022, the UMC's membership has declined from 11 million to 5,424,175 members and 29,746 churches in the United States. As of 2022, it had 9,984,925 members and 39,460 churches worldwide. In 2025, the Pew Research Center estimated that 3 percent of the U.S. population, or 7.8 million adult adherents, identified with the United Methodist Church, revealing a larger number of adherents than registered members.
On January 3, 2020, a group of Methodist leaders proposed a plan to split the United Methodist Church over issues of sexual orientation and create a new traditionalist Methodist denomination; the Global Methodist Church was formed in 2022. As of December 30, 2023, the number of UMC churches in the United States that were approved for disaffiliation stood at 7,660. This figure represented approximately one-quarter of the UMC churches in the United States. In May 2024, the United Methodist Church General Conference repealed bans on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriage.
In November 2025, the United Methodist Church ratified Worldwide Regionalization, a series of Constitutional Amendments passed at the 2024 General Conference to restructure the UMC designed to give equal autonomy to various regions of the church, renaming former Central Conferences to Regional Conferences and the creation of a US Regional Conference on an equal basis, which many United Methodists believe would help decolonize the church and aid global unity.
History
Church origins
The movement which would become the United Methodist Church began in the mid-18th century within the Church of England. A small group of students, including John Wesley, Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield, met at Oxford University. They focused on Bible study, methodical study of scripture, and living a holy life. Other students mocked them, saying they were the "Holy Club" and "the Methodists", being methodical and exceptionally detailed in their Bible study, opinions, and disciplined lifestyle. Eventually, the so-called Methodists started individual societies or classes for members of the Church of England who wanted to live a more religious life.In 1735, John and Charles Wesley went to America, hoping to teach the gospel to the Native Americans in the colony of Georgia. Instead, John became vicar of Christ Church in Savannah. His preaching was legalistic and full of harsh rules, and the congregation rejected him. After two years in America, he returned to England dejected and confused. While sailing on his original journey to America, he had been impressed with the faith of the German Moravians on board, and when he returned to England he spent time with Peter Böhler, a German Moravian who was passing through England and who believed that a person is saved solely through the grace of God and not by works. John had many conversations with Böhler about this topic. On May 25, 1738, after listening to a reading of Martin Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans, John came to the understanding that his good works could not save him and he could rest in God's grace for salvation. For the first time in his life, he felt peace and the assurance of salvation.
In less than two years, the "Holy Club" disbanded. John Wesley met with a group of clergy, and afterwards said "they appeared to be of one heart, as well as of one judgment, resolved to be Bible-Christians at all events; and, wherever they were, to preach with all their might plain, old, Bible Christianity." The ministers nonetheless retained their membership in the Church of England. Though not always emphasized or appreciated in the Anglican churches of their day, their teaching emphasized salvation by God's grace, acquired through faith in Christ. Three teachings they saw as the foundation of Christian faith were:
- People are all by nature dead in sin and, consequently, children of wrath.
- They are justified by faith alone.
- Faith produces inward and outward holiness.
Predecessors
The English preacher Francis Asbury arrived in America in 1771. He became a "circuit rider", taking the gospel to the furthest reaches of the new frontier as he had done as a preacher in England. The first official organization in the United States occurred in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1784, with the formation of the Methodist Episcopal Church at the Christmas Conference with Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke as the leaders.File:The Ordination of Bishop Asbury.jpg|thumb|left|The ordination of Bishop Francis Asbury by Bishop Thomas Coke at the Christmas Conference establishing the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1784
Though John Wesley originally wanted the Methodists to stay within the Church of England, the American Revolution decisively separated the Methodists in the American colonies from the life and sacraments of the English Church. In 1784, after unsuccessful attempts to have the Church of England send a bishop to start a new church in the colonies, Wesley decisively appointed fellow priest Thomas Coke as Superintendent to organize a separate Methodist Society. Together with Coke, Wesley sent The Sunday Service of the Methodists, Methodism's first liturgical text and the Articles of Religion, which were received and adopted by the Baltimore Christmas Conference of 1784, officially establishing the Methodist Episcopal Church. The conference was held at the Lovely Lane Methodist Church, considered the mother church of American Methodism.
The new church grew rapidly in the young country as it employed circuit riders, many of whom were laymen, to travel the mostly rural nation by horseback to preach the Gospel and to establish churches until there was scarcely any village in the United States without a Methodist presence. With 4,000 circuit riders by 1844, the Methodist Episcopal Church rapidly became the largest Protestant denomination in the country.
St. George's United Methodist Church, located at the corner of 4th and New Streets, in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia, is the oldest Methodist church in continuous use in the United States, beginning in 1769. The congregation was founded in 1767, meeting initially in a sail loft on Dock Street, and in 1769 it purchased the shell of a building which had been erected in 1763 by a German Reformed congregation. At this time, Methodists had not yet broken away from the Anglican Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church was not founded until 1784.
Richard Allen and Absalom Jones became the first African Americans ordained by the Methodist Church. They were licensed by Saint George's Church in 1784. Three years later, protesting racial segregation in worship services, Allen led most of the black members out of St. George's; eventually they founded the Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Absalom Jones became an Episcopal priest. In 1836, the church's basement was excavated to make room for a Sunday school. In the 1920s, a court case saved the church from being demolished to make way for the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. The case resulted in the bridge being relocated. Historic Saint George's welcomes visitors and is home to archives and a museum on Methodism.
In the more than 220 years since 1784, Methodism in the United States, like many other Protestant denominations, has seen a number of divisions and mergers. In 1830, the Methodist Protestant Church split from the Methodist Episcopal Church over the issue of laity having a voice and vote in the administration of the church, insisting that clergy should not be the only ones to have any determination in how the church was to be operated. In 1844, the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church split into two conferences because of tensions over slavery and the power of bishops in the denomination.
The two general conferences, Methodist Episcopal Church and Methodist Episcopal Church, South remained separate until 1939. That year, the northern and southern Methodist Episcopal Churches and the majority of the Methodist Protestant Church merged to create The Methodist Church. The uniting conference took place at First Methodist Church of Marion, Indiana.