Methodist Church

Caribbean slaves were first Methodists outside UK

PANAMA CITY (Panama) – The first Methodist congregation established outside England and Ireland was in the Caribbean and its members were slaves. Nathaniel Gilbert, a lawyer influenced by Methodism founder John Wesley, brought his witness to the island of Antigua, where the congregation was born in 1759.

During the next century, Methodists from the United States, embracing the American spirit of “manifest destiny”, spread their own missions in various parts of South and Central America.

The history of Methodism in Latin America and the Caribbean was among topics discussed during a recent consultation of churches from that region and The United Methodist Church.

Mr Robert Harman, a retired executive of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, presented a comprehensive chronology of the “expansionist plans” of Methodist evangelism, beginning with a call for a missionary survey of South America in 1832.

Difficult mission field Eventually, mission work was established, beginning in the 1830s in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, by the predecessor bodies of The United Methodist Church – the Methodist Episcopal Church, Methodist Episcopal Church South and Evangelical United Brethren Church. But obstacles, most notably the prevailing Roman Catholic culture, made Latin America more difficult as a mission field.

The 1892 General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church called for the establishment of a South America Conference, which covered the districts of Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Chile and Peru (including Bolivia). Four years later, more than half the total membership – 1,100 members – lived in Argentina.

The mission focus on Central America began after Benito Juarez established a republic in Mexico in 1857, receiving the backing of the United States. “Religious freedom from dogmatic authority of the Roman Catholic Church was widely welcomed and Protestants from the north began to focus their missionary efforts on Mexico,” according to Mr Harman.

Early in 1885, the Mexico Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church was organised. The 1920 Methodist Episcopal General Conference re-organised mission relationships in South America, Central America and Mexico into the Central Conference of Latin America. Included were Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, Costa Rica and Mexico. The two Episcopal areas were based in Buenos Aires and Mexico City.

Road to autonomy The road to autonomy began in 1930 when Brazil, part of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and Mexico, which had mission work from both denominations, became autonomous churches.

In 1939, the Methodist Episcopal Church, Methodist Episcopal Church South and Methodist Protestant Church united to form the Methodist Church.

The 1944 Methodist General Conference established a Commission on the Structure of Methodism Overseas to administer worldwide mission. In the decades that followed, social and political changes in Latin America led Methodists there to conclude that “the effectiveness of their witness may be compromised by their historical and organic relationship to American Methodism,” Mr Harman reports. The churches also wanted a structure more relevant to the cultures of their own countries.

During the 1960s, the Methodist overseas commission, known as COSMOS, looked at how it could repair or replace the central conference system. Its recommendations to the 1968 General Conference, which also united the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren churches, called for the granting of requests for autonomy, which then occurred in 28 of the 54 countries where United Methodist work had been established.

Maintaining ties Bishop Sante Uberto Barbieri of Buenos Aires addressed the requests for Latin American autonomy by endorsing a world Methodist conference of regional bodies “so that all the churches therein involved could learn from each other on an equal basis and … belong to a larger fellowship in pursuit of the final aim of coming to be one flock under the leadership of the one Pastor”.

But the recommendation from COSMOS that would also grant regional autonomy to the US church and create a new worldwide structure for Methodist conferences and churches never came to fruition. The newly-formed Council of Evangelical Churches of Latin America and the Caribbean (CIEMAL) did provide a way for those churches and The United Methodist Church to continue collaborating.

In 1976, the Methodist Church in the Caribbean and the Americas was recognised as a “Concordat Church” by The United Methodist Church, granting it representation at the denomination’s highest policy-making bodies. The same status is given to the British Methodist Church.

Later, the 1988 General Conference established a new category of relationships called “A Covenanting Church”, which would involve mutual spiritual growth, cultural attentiveness, and sharing of resources and ideas for mission.

When the Methodist Church of Puerto Rico became autonomous in 1992, it was also granted a concordat relationship, assuring full participation and vote at United Methodist General Conference sessions. – United Methodist News Service.

Linda Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.

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