United Methodist Church (Great Britain)

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The United Methodist Church in Great Britain was a Protestant denomination that existed in the early twentieth century. It was a relatively small grouping of British Methodism, formed in 1907 by the union of the United Methodist Free Churches with two other small groupings, the Bible Christian Church and the Methodist New Connexion.^[1]

Formation

The act of Parliament which enabled this amalgamation received the royal assent on the 26 July 1907, and authorised the union "to deal with real and personal property belonging to the said three churches or denominations, to provide for the vesting of the said property in trust for the United Church so formed and for the assimilation of the trusts thereof, and for other purposes." The union was completed on the 16 September 1907 in Wesley's Chapel, City Road, London. The Church gave power of speech and vote in its meetings to every member of 18 years of age and upwards. Its principal courts were constituted of an equal number of ministers and laymen. The Church had theological colleges at Manchester and Sheffield, boys' schools at Shebbear College, Devon and at Harrogate (Ashville College), and a girls' school, Edgehill College at Bideford. It issued a weekly and two monthly journals.^[2] It formed one of the three streams of Methodism then extant in Britain.

In the Methodist Union of 1932 the United Methodists merged with the Primitive Methodists and the Wesleyan Methodists to form a new church, known simply as the "Methodist Church".^[1]

The British United Methodist Church had no particular connection with the United Methodist Church in the United States, other than a common Methodist heritage; the American church did not take the title "United Methodist Church" until 1968.^[3]

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