This Week in Texas Methodist History May 2

 

Methodist Church Created from Predecessor Denominations, May 1939

 

Last week’s post highlighted what some have called the “original sin of racism” baked into the Methodist Church when it was created by the union of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church South and the Methodist Protestant Church in Kansas City in May 1939.

 

The two largest denominations, MEC and MECS, have received the most attention from historians, but what about the MP’s and especially the Methodist Protestant Church in Texas?

 

The Methodist Protestant Church was a product of Jacksonian Democracy.  The MEC had adopted an episcopal governance which placed a great deal of authority in the hands of the bishop. Often that authority turned authoritarian—especially in the appointment process.  Upon entering the “traveling connection”, a preacher had to promise to serve any church to which he was sent.  There are hundreds of examples of vindictive bishops punishing preachers by sending them to undesirable churches, appointments made out of ignorance, and so on.  Episcopal authority in  the MEC and MECS seemed out of touch with American democracy.  The MP Church did not have bishops.  Appointments were made at Annual Conference by the Stationing Committee.

 

In 1939 the MP Church had two conferences in Texas—the Texas Conference for European Americans and the Colorado-Texas Mission Conference for African Americans.  On the eve of union, the Texas Conference had 31 appointments and the Colorado Texas Conference about a half dozen—mostly in the Lockhart-Seguin region. 

 

The Texas Conference appointments included just one major city—Dallas and a number of smaller sized cities—Corsicana, San Angelo, Greenville, Paris, and so on.  Most of the churches, though, were in much smaller settlements---Pike, Klondike, Minter, Purley, Blue Ridge, Miles, and so on.  The most significant MP location in Texas was Tehuacana, where it had its college.  It was located there in the original building of Trinity University which became available when Trinity relocated, first to Waxahachie before moving again to San Antonio.  Student pastors and professors could serve churches in the area so there several near Tehuacana such as the one at Wortham. 

 

Both the MEC and the MECS had bishops, but the MP Church had none.  The newly created Methodist Church needed bishops from the MP so at the Uniting Conference in Kansas City, the MP delegates met separately for the purpose of electing two bishops.  The men chosen were James Straughn and John Calvin Broomfield.  Straughn had been the main denominational representative on the committees leading up to Union.  Broomfield was Scottish immigrant.  Both were from the northeast with few ties to Texas.

 

In 1939 the only big city church was Dallas, pastored by Kenneth Copeland.  It reported a membership of 160.   Copeland was a preacher’s son, his father being the pastor at Slocum.  They, and the other MP preachers entered the respective annual conferences of the new Methodist Church and received appointments from bishop—a new experience for them.  Kenneth Copeland thrived in the new denomination.  His talents propelled him to important churches in Oklahoma and Texas and eventually to his election as bishop in the Methodist Church and United Methodist Church.  He was my bishop in the Texas Conference.  His father, though, was near retirement after a career of serving small rural churches.  His last appointment before retirement was the Tyler Circuit in Smith County.  My father was serving an adjacent appointment which led to my father’s inviting Kenneth Copeland to preach a week long revival and visit his parents who were living nearby.  I was an infant at the time, but later learned that the week spent together forged a lifetime friendship between Bishop Copeland and Bishop Hardt.  Kenneth’s brother, Kennard, was also well-known in Texas Methodist circles.  He was administrator of the Methodist Home in Waco.  Kennard’s thesis which he published as the History of the Methodist Protestant Church in Texas, is the only comprehensive history of the denomination in Texas.