Epworth League

Part of a series on Methodism
John Wesley
Background Christianity Protestantism Pietism Anglicanism Arminianism Wesleyanism
Doctrines Articles of Religion Prevenient Grace Governmental Atonement New Birth Imparted righteousness Christian perfection Assurance Conditional preservation of the saints Works of Piety Works of Mercy
Key people John Wesley Richard Allen Francis Asbury Thomas Coke William Law William Williams Pantycelyn Howell Harris Albert Outler James Varick Charles Wesley George Whitefield Countess of Huntingdon Bishops · Theologians
Largest groups World Methodist Council AME Church AME Zion Church Church of the Nazarene CME Church Free Methodist Church Methodist Church of Southern Africa Methodist Church of Great Britain Methodist Church in Ireland Methodist Church in India United Methodist Church Wesleyan Church
Related groups Holiness movement Moravian Church Salvation Army United Church of Canada Uniting Church in Australia
Other topics Connexionalism Saints in Methodism Homosexuality and Methodism
Methodism portal

The Epworth League is a Methodist young adult association for individuals ages 18-35. It traces back to the founding of the organization by the United Methodist Church's predecessor denomination, the Methodist Episcopal church, formed in 1889 at Cleveland, Ohio, by the combination of five young people's organizations then existing. At its conception, the purpose of the league the promotion of intelligent and vital piety among the young people of the Church:

To encourage and cultivate Christ-centered character in young adults around the world through community building, missions, and spiritual growth.

— Epworth League Mission Statement, 2011

Members of the Epworth League are known as Epworthians.

Contents 1 Historical Growth 2 1913 figures 3 Modern era 4 Publications 5 In popular culture 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

Historical Growth

The League existed in both the Northern and Southern branches of the Methodist Episcopal denomination and also in the Methodist church of Canada.

1913 figures

The membership of the Senior branch in the Methodist Episcopal church North in 1913 was 593,465, and of the junior branch 218,509.^[1] In the Methodist Episcopal church South there were, in 1913, 3846 chapters of the league, with 133,797 members. The headquarters of the Northern League was in Chicago and its organ was the Epworth Herald. The organ of the Southern branch was the Epworth Era, published monthly at Nashville, Tenn.

Modern era

Today, the Epworth League is a global organization that has local church based chapters.^[2]

Publications

• Bacon and Northrup, Young People's Societies (New York, 1900)
• The Methodist Year Book
• Dan B. Brummett, Epworth League Methods (New York, 1906)

In popular culture

• In The Music Man, set in 1912 Iowa, teenager Zaneeta Shinn declines a date because "it's Epworth League night".
• In All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren, the protagonist describes the blandness of the column he is hired to write by reference to the Epworth League.
• In Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon, a saucy secretary tells St. Cosmo, who has entered the office after-hours, that "'this [place] ain't the Epworth League.'"
• In Sherwood Anderson's short story/Winesburg, Ohio piece titled "Adventure," the self-stifled heroine Alice, "who could not have understood the growing modern idea of a woman's owning herself and giving and taking for her own ends in life," joins the Winesburg Methodist Church and every "Sunday evening attended a meeting of an organization called The Epworth League."
• In the 1934 W. C. Fields movie It's a Gift, when Amelia Bissonette tells her husband Harold that his Uncle Bean has died, she says, "It seemed he was getting better, but he attended the Epworth League picnic, and he choked to death eating an orange."
• In Across the River and Into the Trees, by Ernest Hemingway, the Colonel describes General Eisenhauer as "strictly the Epworth League."

See also

• Epworth-Euclid United Methodist Church, Cleveland, Ohio
• Waukee United Methodist Church
• Hamilton v. Regents of the University of California

References

This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.

External links

• Epworth League: A United Methodist Association for Young Adults
• Epworth League Institute: 2011 Global Conference for the Epworth League
• Epworth League Handbook (2011)
• The Epworth League: its place in Methodism - a manual by Rev. J.B. Robinson, D.D., Ph.D.
• The Efficient Epworthian by Dan B. Brummitt