Methodist Episcopal Church
Methodist · 1784 · United States
Organized at the Christmas Conference with Coke and Asbury as superintendents, adopting Wesley's Sunday Service and Twenty-five Articles; the largest Protestant denomination in 19th-century America and the trunk of the American Methodist family.
Methodist Episcopal Church was formed in 1784. It ended as a separate body in 1939, entering The Methodist Church (1939). Methodist Episcopal Church's institutional line runs back through Methodism, Church of England, Roman Catholicism to the post-apostolic church. No body on this tree is the assembly of Acts 2; where a body claims that, the claim appears in the claimed-lineage layer.
Between the post-apostolic church and Methodist Episcopal Church stand 3 divisions along the institutional line, counting separations and disputed forks, not mergers, renewals or national organizations.
At a glance
- Formed
- In 1784
- Family
- Methodist
- Region
- United States
- Ended
- It ended as a separate body in 1939, entering The Methodist Church (1939).
- Key figures
- Francis Asbury, Thomas Coke
- Cause tags
- Governance, Geography
- Also known as
- MEC
What it separated from
- Separated from Methodism. The American organization of Wesley's movement as an independent church.
Bodies organized out of it or separated from it: African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, Methodist Episcopal Church, South, The Methodist Church (1939), Wesleyan Church, Free Methodist Church, Methodist Protestant Church.
On the tree
Solid lines are separations and unions; dashed lines are renewals that began inside a body; dotted gray lines are national organizations of one communion; a diamond marks a fork event where neither side is drawn as the one that left. Every line runs back to the post-apostolic church; no body descends from the assembly of Acts 2.
Sources
Research compiled July 2026. Page data built 2026-10-10.