Check.Church

United Methodist Church

Methodist · 1968 · United States; Africa, Philippines, Europe

Formed in 1968 from the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren, abolishing the Central Jurisdiction as a condition of merger; from 2019 the denomination passed through a division era in which roughly a quarter of its US congregations departed (see global-methodist-church).

United Methodist Church was formed in 1968. United Methodist Church continues today. United Methodist Church's institutional line runs back through The Methodist Church (1939), Methodist Episcopal Church, 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 United Methodist Church stand 3 divisions along the institutional line, counting separations and disputed forks, not mergers, renewals or national organizations.

At a glance

Formed
In 1968
Family
Methodist
Region
United States; Africa, Philippines, Europe
Also known as
UMC

What it was organized out of

Bodies organized out of it or separated from it: Global Methodist Church.

On the tree

United Methodist Church and its institutional line back to the post-apostolic churchAD 33today10042443145110541534172917841939194619682022The post-apostolic church (The spine)The post-apostolicchurchThe spineChurch of the East (Church of the East)Church of the EastChurch of the EastThe conciliar church (The spine)The conciliar churchThe spineThe Chalcedonian church (The spine)The Chalcedonian churchThe spineOriental Orthodoxy (Oriental Orthodox)Oriental OrthodoxyOriental OrthodoxEastern Orthodoxy (Eastern Orthodox)Eastern OrthodoxyEastern OrthodoxRoman Catholicism (Catholic)Roman CatholicismCatholicChurch of England (Anglican)Church of EnglandAnglicanMethodism (Methodist)MethodismMethodistMethodist Episcopal Church (Methodist)Methodist EpiscopalChurchMethodistThe Methodist Church (1939) (Methodist)The Methodist Church(1939)MethodistEvangelical United Brethren Church (Methodist)Evangelical UnitedBrethren ChurchMethodistUnited Methodist Church (Methodist)United Methodist ChurchMethodistGlobal Methodist Church (Methodist)Global Methodist ChurchMethodist

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.

Adherents

About 10,000,000 adherents (self-reported claim, as of 2026).

A figure the body itself has stated, often years old, with no census apparatus behind it.

Source: UMC worldwide claim (Wikipedia, 2026); Pew 2025 finds ~8M US adult identifiers (kind 4); prior encoded figure 9,984,925 (2022) superseded

Notes

  • Node-timeline updates: 7,660 US churches (~25%) disaffiliated by Dec 31, 2023; prohibitions removed April 30, 2024 (General Conference, Charlotte); Côte d'Ivoire conference voted to leave May 28, 2024; Worldwide Regionalization ratified November 2025; UMC/GMC violence in Nigeria 2024–25 (3 United Methodists killed) — stated soberly.

Sources

Research compiled July 2026. Page data built 2026-10-10. This is live history; a recheck is pending before first publication.