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:''This article is about the former denomination. For individual churches of the same name, see Methodist Episcopal Church, South (disambiguation) The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, or Methodist Episcopal Church South (MEC,S), was the Methodist denomination resulting from the 19th-century split over the issue of slavery in the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC). Disagreement on this issue had been increasing in strength for decades between churches of the North and South; in 1844 it resulted in a schism at the General Conference of the MEC held in Louisville, Kentucky. This body maintained its own polity for nearly 100 years. It did not reunite with the elder Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Protestant Church (earlier separated from Methodist Episcopals in 1828) until 1939, then formed the Methodist Church. The national denomination merged in 1968 with the Evangelical United Brethren Church, to form the United Methodist Church, now one of the largest and most widely spread religious denominations in America. In 1940, some more theologically conservative MEC,S congregations, which dissented from the 1939 merger, later forming the Southern Methodist Church. ==History== John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was appalled by slavery in the British colonies. When the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) was founded in the United States at the famous "Christmas Conference" in Baltimore with the synod/meeting of ministers at small plain Lovely Lane Chapel in the city's waterfront district on Lovely Lane, off German (later Redwood) Street (between South Calvert Street and South Street) in December 1784, the denomination officially opposed slavery very early. Numerous Methodist missionaries toured the South in the "Great Awakening" and tried to convince slaveholders to manumit their slaves. In the first two decades after the American Revolutionary War, a number did free their slaves. The number of free blacks increased markedly at this time, especially in the Upper South. During the early nineteenth century, Methodists and Baptists in the South began to modify their approach in order to gain support from common planters, yeomen, and slaves. They began to argue for better treatment of slaves, saying that the Bible acknowledged slavery but that Christianity had a paternalistic role to improve conditions. The invention of the cotton gin had enabled profitable cultivation of cotton in new areas of the South, increasing the demand for slaves. Manumissions nearly ceased and, after slave rebellions, the states made them extremely difficult to accomplish. Northern Methodist congregations increasingly opposed slavery, and some members began to be active in the abolitionist movement. The southern church accommodated it as part of a legal system. But, even in the South, Methodist clergy were not supposed to own slaves. In 1840, the Rev. James Osgood Andrew, a bishop living in Oxford, Georgia, bought a slave. Fearing that she would end up with an inhumane owner if sold, Andrew kept her but let her work independently. The 1840 MEC General Conference considered the matter, but did not expel Andrew. Four years later, Andrew married a woman who owned a slave inherited from her mother, making the bishop the owner of two slaves. As bishop, he was considered to have obligations both in the North and South and was criticized for holding slaves. The 1844 General Conference voted to suspend Bishop Andrew from exercising his episcopal office until he gave up the slaves. Southern delegates to the conference disputed the authority of a General Conference to discipline bishops. The cultural differences that had divided the nation during the mid-19th century were also dividing the Methodist Episcopal Church. The 1844 dispute led Methodists in the South to break off and form a separate denomination, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MEC,S). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Methodist Episcopal Church, South」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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