The ''Book of Discipline'' constitutes the law and

doctrine Doctrine (from la, doctrina, meaning "teaching, instruction") is a codification of beliefs or a body of teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the essence of teachings in a given branch of knowledge or in a belief system ...

of the

United Methodist Church The United Methodist Church (UMC) is a worldwide mainline Protestant denomination based in the United States, and a major part of Methodism. In the 19th century, its main predecessor, the Methodist Episcopal Church, was a leader in evangelical ...

. It follows similar works for its predecessor denominations. It was originally published in 1784, in the

Methodist Episcopal Church The Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) was the oldest and largest Methodist denomination in the United States from its founding in 1784 until 1939. It was also the first religious denomination in the US to organize itself on a national basis. In ...

, and has been published every four years thereafter following the meeting of the General Conference, which passes legislation that is included in the ''Book of Discipline''. The most recent edition is that of 2016. The basic unit of reference is the paragraph, not the page, chapter or section. The paragraphs are numbered consecutively within each chapter or section,''The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church 2008'', pg. vii but numbers are skipped between chapters or sections. The paragraph is often only a few lines, but many are several pages long and they can be divided into multiple subdivisions. Paragraphs are first divided using Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3,...) which can themselves be divided by italicized lower case letters with parentheses (''a)'', ''b)'', ''c)'', ''d)''...) which may be divided using Arabic numerals within double parentheses ((1), (2), (3),...) Traditionally a list of all the bishops with the year of their election is at the beginning of the book. That is followed by a brief history of the church, then the church constitution, and a statement concerning the doctrine and theology of the church. The Social Principles of the church follow. Finally the legislative section, by far the largest part of ''The Discipline'', appears.

Notes

External links

''Book of Discipline''
2016 edition, online 1784 non-fiction books 18th-century Christian texts Methodist texts United Methodist Church Church order {{methodist-stub