The Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC), founded in 1784, was the leading American Methodist denomination until its 1939 union with breakaway groups to create the Methodist Church. Emerging from John Wesley’s evangelical revival, it embraced episcopal leadership and circuit-riding ministry, focusing on social change, opposition to slavery, and support for underserved populations. Writers such as L. M.
Hagood emphasized its crucial role in African American religious life, while Abraham Lincoln recognized its extraordinary contributions during the Civil War. Frederick V. Holman pointed out its civilizing impact in frontier areas, and historical records chart its transformation from a countercultural movement into an organized institution, ultimately reshaping American religious and societal landscapes through its theological discipline and flexible outreach.
L. M. Hagood, The Colored Man in the Methodist Episcopal Church
“ No other Church, since its organization in this country, has figured more conspicuously than the Methodist Episcopal Church in all the living, burning questions touching the salvation of men’s bodies and souls. It may be true that in many instances the Church has not come up to the ideal of some of its devotees, or accomplished all it was considered able to do. ”
Abraham Lincoln,
The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln…
“ Nobly sustained, as the Government has been, by all the churches, I would utter nothing which might in the least appear invidious against any. Yet without this, it may fairly be said, that the Methodist Episcopal Church, not less devoted than the best, is by its greatest numbers the most important of all. It is no fault in others that the Methodist Church sends more soldiers to the field, more nurses to the hospitals, and more prayers to Heaven than—any other. ”
Frederick Marryat,
Diary in America, Series One
“ They cannot resist it, they are overwhelmed by it.”The fact is, that there is little or no healthy religion in their most numerous and influential churches; it is all excitement. Twenty or thirty years back, the Methodists were considered as extravagantly frantic, but the Congregationalists and Presbyterians in the United States have gone far ahead of them; and the Methodist church in America has become to a degree Episcopal, and softened down into, perhaps, the most pure, most mild, and most simple of all the creeds professed. ”
Charles Otis Gill
Christopher RushJohn Christopher Augustus Voelcker and James Monroe BuckleyCharles J. AbbeyHerbert PoleW. McDonaldFrancis A. BakerAtticusSir Emilius BayleyWilliam T CattoCharles Josiah GalpinWilliam Pepperell
Jan Hus
Leonard Woolsey BaconGeorge GillespieJoseph Wilhelm
John Henry Newman