South Methodist Episcopal Church

…Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (organized in 1845). A third church formed as a result of the slavery question, the all-African American Colored (now “Christian”) Methodist Episcopal Church (1870), split from the southern Methodist church. After the Civil War the two main churches grew rapidly and…

…begun in 1866 within the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, to organize the Black members into an independent church. At the founding convention in 1870, two bishops from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, consecrated two Black elders as the first bishops of the new church.