Open Collections

Lane, Steven

Database of Religious History (DRH)

A Christian denomination in the Wesleyan/Holiness tradition which broke away from the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1860. The major issue leading to the split concerned disagreements over slavery. The Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) still had many slaveholders after the schism in 1844 saw the creation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MEC, S). Official church policy recognized slaveholding as sin, but in practice had accepted the reality of the practice and attempted to justify it under several theories (e.g., paternalism toward slaves, keeping slaveholders in the church). Roberts and other abolitionists saw this compromise as a violation of the ethical precepts of Christianity and their Wesleyan heritage (John Wesley had was an abolitionist in Britain). However, the direct cause of the formation of the Free Methodist Church was a series of political maneuvers in Roberts’ home conference which saw Roberts and several other pastors expelled from the MEC. There is a split in the scholarship as to whether Robert’s abolitionist views lead to the political maneuvers or was merely one view amongst many that angered important parts of the church’s hierarchy (see Snyder, 406-7). Upon establishing the new denomination, Roberts ended the practice of ‘pew renting’ by which wealthy individuals could ‘rent’ a pew in church with better visibility, both for and of themselves. He also ended instrumental music in churches, not on grounds against such music, but against the practice of paying trained musicians out of the church’s funds which could have gone to other needs. Like much of the holiness tradition of the nineteenth century, simplicity was a virtue. Currently, the church has less than 100,000 members in the United States but totals more the one million total members worldwide. It is episcopal in organization with three bishops, each based in the USA. The church is connected to five universities in the United States: Roberts Wesleyan in New York, Spring Arbor in Michigan, Greenville University in Illinois, Central Christian University in Kansas, and Seattle Pacific in Washington; and another four internationally. The church is also affiliated with several non-denominational schools, including Azusa Pacific in California, and Asbury University and Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky. The Free Methodist Church fits nearly all definitions of ‘evangelical’ and members are generally theologically and politically conservative (in the USA) though the latter has more diversity among congregants. Among the other Wesleyan related churches, Free Methodists are most similar in theology to the Church of the Nazarene and the conservative (sometimes called ‘traditional’) wing of the United Methodist Church due to their teachings of both progressive and instantaneous sanctification at some point after justification. This experience has many names from different theologians but most use the terms ‘Entire Sanctification’ or ‘Second work of grace’ to describe it.

Other

eng

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0438208

Non UBC

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/