This Week in Texas Methodist History  May 3

Texan Chairs Important Committee at First General Conference of the Methodist Church Meets at Atlantic City, April 1940

Even persons with a casual interest in Methodist history are aware of the Uniting Conference of 1939 in which the Methodist Church was created by the merger of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and the Methodist Protestant Church.  The event, held in Kansas City, was an inspiring display of unity, but deferred many details of the merger to be settled at a later date.   One of the most important details to be settled later was the consolidation of the MEC and MECS boards and agencies.  Both denominations had their own agencies in charge of missions, pensions, publishing, education, evangelism, etc.  As is the case with corporate mergers, elimination of duplicate services was a necessary part of church unification. 

That later date was the General Conference of 1940, held in Atlantic City, New Jersey just one year after the merger in Kansas City.   Only two cities, Denver and Atlantic City, had bid for the 1940 meeting, and Atlantic City was chosen.   There was much grumbling of about the location from former MECS pastors because of Atlantic City’s status as a resort town with high prices for meals and accommodations.  The per diem voted on was only $4.00 which was the same amount the MECS had allowed for the 1938 General Conference which met in Birmingham, Alabama---a city with far lower hotel and restaurant costs.  Perhaps they should have remembered that the MECS had chosen another infamous resort city, Hot Springs, Arkansas, for its 1922 General Conference.  Hot Springs was also notorious for gambling, bootlegging, and prostitution, and organized crime—a strange choice for the MECS.   At least the church has never had a General Conference in Las Vegas. 

One of the deferred decisions the 1940 meeting had to consider was how to allocate the headquarters of the various combined General Boards and Agencies.   Before the merger the MECS Boards Publishing, Education, Church Extension) were concentrated in Nashville, Tennessee with the Pension Board in St. Louis.  The MEC Boards were mainly in New York and a smaller presence in Philadelphia. 

The decision of Board location was not a trivial one---the Boards were major employers and brought considerable payrolls to the local economy, and also carried considerable prestige.

The Chair of the Committee to decide the location of the Boards was Umphrey Lee----from Texas.  His life has been covered several times in this blog, so I will not repeat it, but just type “:Umphrey” in the search box, to re-read those entries. 

Bishop Francis McConnell, well known for his biography of John Wesley, was the presiding officer when Umphrey Lee made his committee report. Lee was also a Wesley biographer.  The report split the “goodies”: so that both the former MEC and MECS would be satisfied. 

New York City was chosen for the Board of Missions and Board of Church Extension.

Nashville got the Board of Education.

Pensions were split between St. Louis and Chicago.

Washington, D. C., got the Board of Temperance. 

Columbus, Ohio, would have the Board of Hospitals. 

All of the publishing houses which existed before the merger would be kept open.  Keeping all the publishing houses open may seem strange, but it should be remembered that the publishing houses were not conventional book publishing enterprises, but also published Methodist newspapers for the region in which they were located. 

The choice of cities lasted for decades, and continues to shape Methodist geography even today.