Methodist Church (United States)

The Methodist Church
Classification	Mainline Protestant and Evangelical
Orientation	Methodism
Polity	Connectionalism (modified episcopal polity)
Associations	Federal Council of Churches
Merger of	The Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and the Methodist Protestant Church (1939)
Separations	Fellowship of Fundamental Bible Churches (1939) Fundamental Methodist Conference, Inc. (1942) Evangelical Methodist Church (1945) Association of Independent Methodists (1965)
Merged into	The United Methodist Church (1968)

The Methodist Church was the official name adopted by the Methodist denomination formed in the United States by the reunion on May 10, 1939, of the northern and southern factions of the original Methodist Episcopal Church (founded 1784), along with the earlier separated Methodist Protestant Church of 1828. The Methodist Episcopal Church had split in 1844 over the issue of slavery and the impending American Civil War (1861-1865) in the United States. During the American Civil War period, the separated southern denomination in the seceded states of the Confederacy was known briefly as the The Methodist Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America and later renamed after the war as the Methodist Episcopal Church, South up to the 1939 reunification / merger.

Its book of Christian worship and liturgy used for the reunited denomination was the The Book of Worship for Church and Home, editions of which were published in 1945 and later revised two decades later in 1965. They had two official hymnals, the first being The Methodist Hymnal, published first in 1935 and 1939 by the same three church bodies that later became The Methodist Church in 1939. It was replaced in 1966 by the revised The Book of Hymns.

The Methodist Church then later merged with the Evangelical United Brethren Church (E.U.B.) on April 23, 1968, to form the new larger The United Methodist Church (UMC) with its headquarters, offices and publishing houses in Nashville, Tennessee. Over the next few years most of the individual local congregations in the two bodies under the names of "Methodist Church" or "Evangelical United Brethren Church" changed the latter part of their congregational name to: "------ United Methodist Church". The new UMC became one of the largest and most widespread denominations in America.

Earlier in 1946, some Methodists withdrew and formed the Evangelical Methodist Church, of the more fundamentalist theology of the Wesleyan-Holiness movement, separating from the then seven-years old Methodist Church, citing the influence of liberal theology and modernism in that church as the reason for their entering into schism.