Ecumenism: Birth of a Church

To a fanfare of trumpets, 99 bishops —90 representing the Methodist Church and nine from the Evangelical United Brethren—paraded into Dallas' Memorial Auditorium, followed by acolytes and delegates from the 52 countries where the two denominations have worked. Then Bishop Lloyd C. Wicke of New York City, representing the Methodist Church, and E.U.B. Bishop Reuben H. Mueller of Indianapolis clasped hands across a table and pronounced a declaration of unity. Massed in the hall, 10,000 members of the two denominations followed suit, joining hands and reciting in unison: "Lord of the church, we are united in thee, in thy church, and now in the United Methodist Church. Amen."

Thus last week was born a new Chris tian denomination. Product of the largest merger, in terms of total numbers involved, in the entire history of American Protestantism, the new body has a combined membership of slightly more than 11 million (10.3 million Methodists and 745,000 United Brethren). It thus becomes the U.S.'s second largest Protestant body, outnumbered only by the Southern Baptist Convention (11,142,726).

Language Barrier. The merger brings together two groups that have held certain common beliefs ever since their beginnings in the 18th century. The Methodist movement was founded in England by John Wesley, a highway preacher who challenged the antireligious skepticism of the Enlightenment by stressing austere living and personal salvation. The precursors of the Evangelical United Brethren sprang from a similar revivalist movement in Germany, and were popularly called "German Methodists." Transplanted to colonial America by early European immigrants, the two movements remained on friendly terms, their preachers often collaborating in frontier revival meetings. Merger had been proposed twice before but had been defeated by language and cultural differences.

In 1956, however, the leaders of both denominations proposed another plan of union, and the ensuing ecumenical movement within Christianity gave it impetus. Two years ago, the general conferences of the two churches finally approved the merger, which was formalized last week. With no basic differences in doctrine, the architects of the union have spent most of their time ironing out fine differences in structure—which has not presented a major challenge either, since both church bodies have been principally administered by their bishops, with no single national head.