The Southern Methodist Church is a conservative Protestant Christian denomination with churches located in the southern part of the United States. The church maintains headquarters in Orangeburg, South Carolina.
The church was formed in 1940 by conservative members of the former Methodist Episcopal Church, South, which in 1939 had reunited with the Methodist Episcopal Church to form the Methodist Church, nearly 100 years after a split in 1844 that occurred due to divisions over slavery.
In 2006, the Southern Methodist Church had 101 churches and 6,000 members. The denomination describes itself as seeking "to continue the doctrinal heritage of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and to spread the message of salvation and Biblical holiness that John Wesley preached."
The denomination maintains Southern Methodist College, an accredited four-year Bible college with a Christian liberal arts and ministerial program, in Orangeburg, South Carolina, near the church's headquarters. The denomination also supports foreign missionaries. The Woman's Missionary Society (WMS), the Epworth League children and youth program, and the Cartwright Men's Fellowship serve as specialized ministry and training efforts within the local churches and on the district and conference levels.
Famous quotes containing the words southern, methodist and/or church:
“I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous ... as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both north and south. It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Kipling, the grandson of a Methodist preacher, reveals the tin-pot evangelist with increasing clarity as youth and its ribaldries pass away and he falls back upon his fundamentals.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“This is what the Church is said to want, not party men, but sensible, temperate, sober, well-judging persons, to guide it through the channel of no-meaning, between the Scylla and Charybdis of Aye and no.”
—Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801–1890)