Birth of a Church

To a fanfare of trumpets, 99 bishops --90 representing the Methodist Church and nine from the Evangelical United Brethren--paraded into Dallas' Memorial Auditorium, followed by acolytes and delegates from the 52 countries where the two denominations have worked. Then Bishop Lloyd C. Wicke of New York City, representing the Methodist Church, and E.U.B. Bishop Reuben H. Mueller of Indianapolis clasped hands across a table and pronounced a declaration of unity. Massed in the hall, 10,000 members of the two denominations followed suit, joining hands and reciting in unison: "Lord of the church, we are united in thee, in thy church, and now in the United Methodist Church. Amen."

Thus last week was born a new Chris tian denomination. Product of the largest merger, in terms of total numbers involved, in the entire history of American Protestantism, the new body has a combined membership of slightly more than 11 million (10.3 million Methodists and 745,000 United Brethren). It thus becomes the U.S.'s second largest Protestant body, outnumbered only by the Southern Baptist Convention (11,142,726).

Language Barrier. The merger brings together two groups that have held certain common beliefs ever since their beginnings in the 18th century. The Methodist movement was founded in England by John Wesley, a highway preacher who challenged the antireligious skepticism of the Enlightenment by stressing austere living and personal salvation. The precursors of the Evangelical United Brethren sprang from a similar revivalist movement in Germany, and were popularly called "German Methodists." Transplanted to colonial America by early European immigrants, the two movements remained on friendly terms, their preachers often collaborating in frontier revival meetings. Merger had been proposed twice before but had been defeated by language and cultural differences.

In 1956, however, the leaders of both denominations proposed another plan of union, and the ensuing ecumenical movement within Christianity gave it impetus. Two years ago, the general conferences of the two churches finally approved the merger, which was formalized last week. With no basic differences in doctrine, the architects of the union have spent most of their time ironing out fine differences in structure--which has not presented a major challenge either, since both church bodies have been principally administered by their bishops, with no single national head.

Erasing the Vestiges. The United Methodist Church inherits by necessity the problems of the Methodist Church, most significantly its racially segregated organization.* White-run Methodist churches in the South have been al lowed by their denomination to bar Negroes from membership; as a result, Southern communities often have separate white and Negro Methodist congregations. The new denomination eliminates the Central Jurisdiction, a euphemism for a segregated administrative arm that has overseen most Negro Methodist churches. But it still retains ten all-Negro Methodist conferences in the South as separately administered units. The planners of the new church body have set 1972 as a target date for erasing the last vestiges of its segregated structure. But many Negro Methodists believe that the United Methodist Church should have excluded racial segregation at its very beginning, and a group of Negro demonstrators picketed the uniting conference to make their point.

Although Methodism has been slow to involve itself in contemporary social issues, m recent years politically-minded activists have attained increasing influence in both the Methodist Church and the E.U.B. Delegates to the uniting conference approved a resolution to raise $20,000,000 during the next year for aid to the poor.

At week's end the conference elected Methodist Bishop Eugene M. Frank of Missouri president of the Council of Bishops of the new church. Said Frank: "This is a new church. That is not to say that it is perfect, but anyone who thinks that honest and sometimes wrenching efforts were not made to open up the new Methodist Church is mistaken. The old churches were patronizing at their best as concerns the racial issue. The new church is energetically and sacrificially dedicated to making Christlike brotherhood real. There will be foot-dragging and agonized cries from those who are backing into the future, but it is a new church."

* Not included in the merger is the Southern Methodist Church, a small branch of Methodism that boasts some 10,000 members, mostly in South Carolina. Southern Methodist University was founded by the Methodist Church, and the term Southern refers to its geographical location, not its affiliation.

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