This Week in Texas Methodist History June 5 Texas Conference Votes to Merge with EUB, Abolish Central Jurisdiction, June 6, 1967 The Texas Annuyal Conference met in June 1967 with two resolutions on the agenda that would have dramatic consequences. The dresolutions were both the result of a special session of General Conference that had been held in Chicago the previous November 11. Delegates to that conference ratified the work produced by committees authorized by the 1964 General Conference of the Methodisyt Chruch held in Pittsburgh. The first resolution called for a new constitution for the denomination that would now include the Evangelical United Brethren (EUB) denomination and create a new denomination with a new name, The United Methodist Church. The EUB was also the produce of a previous merger of the Evanglicl Associaiton and United Brethren. Both of those denominations were prominent in Pennsylvania and states to which immigrants from Pennsylvania moved such a Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, but had little prese3nce in Texas. The Texas Conference voted 495 to 6 with no abstenions to approve the merger of the Methodist Church and the EUB. The other resolution was far more consequential and was also supported by an overwhelming positive vote of the conference. That vote authorized that the Central Jurisdiction would be abolished. The Jurisdictional system had been created in 1939 with the Merger of the Methodist Episocal, Chruch, the Methodist Episcopal Church South and the Methodist Protestant Church. The African American annual conferences in the MEC had been put into a Jim Crow, segregated body at the insistence of the MECS. African American delegates to the 1939 conference recognized the move for what it was and refusted to vote for a system in which segrregaiton was maintained. In 1964 the General Conference recognized that the Central Jurisdcition had to go. It voted to set up committees at both the denominational and annual conference level to re-write the Discipline and integrate the church. The plan was passed at the Chicago special session and sent to the annual conferences. The Texas Confernece voted on June 6, 1967 to accept the report. The vote was 605 to 16 with two abstentions. One year later in Dallas both the EUB merger and the Central Jurisdiction abolition were accepted. Annual Conferences were given four years to make the desegregation work at the Conference level. The Texas Conference took two years and completed the task at Jones Hall in Houston in 1970. I later talked to one of the 16 preachers who had voted against desegreaiton. He told me that his reason was based on his opposition to the penision plan that would take effect after the merger. Pension plans were based on years of service and were funded by contributions paid into a pension fund durng a preachert’s working life. African American preacher salaiies were far below the European American preacher salaries so they had paid less into the pension fund. One of the provisions of the resolution was that African American pensioners would receive pensions based on the higher pension contributions of the white preachers. He perceived that provision of the plan was unfair.