The " Southern " Church

Slavery split the Methodist Church. The regeneration of religious power in the United States today may unite it.

Back in 1843, two Georgia clergymen married wives who owned slaves. They were promptly accused by the Methodist Conference of New York State of contravening the doctrines of their church, and were found guilty by the Baltimore Conference that same year. Thereupon all the Conferences of the Methodist Churches in the southern states seceded and formed " The Methodist Episcopal Church, South," which has endured until now. They held that slavery was a civil and not a religious issue. During the Civil War, Lincoln said of the Methodist Church in the North that it " sent more soldiers into the field, more nurses to the hospitals, and more prayers to heaven than any."

Many attempts at reunion since the Civil War have failed. But the Con- ference of the Methodist Episcopal Church held in Des Moines, in 1920, appointed a committee on reunion, and asked the Southern Methodists to do the same. The two committees have worked out a plan which will abolish the word " south" from " Methodist Episcopal Church, South," incorporate the two branches of the church into one legal body, appoint one General Conference, and two Jurisdictional Conferences, one north and one south. The General Conference is to be supreme.

Religious journals of both sections feel confident that the plan of union will be passed by the northern branch in 1924 and by the southern branch, through its house of bishops, in the same year.