United Methodist Free Churches, sometimes called Free Methodists, was an English nonconformist community in the last half of the 19th century. It was formed in 1857 by the amalgamation of the

Wesleyan Association The Wesleyan Association, or the Wesleyan Methodist Association, was a 19th-century Wesleyan denomination in the United Kingdom. It was formed in 1836 and merged with other groups to form the United Methodist Free Churches in 1857. The Associat ...

(which had in 1836 largely absorbed the

Protestant Methodists The Protestant Methodists were a small Methodist church based in Leeds. They left the Methodist conference in 1827 in protest at the installation of an organ in Brunswick Chapel in Leeds. This grew into a wider dispute around the style of governm ...

of 1828) and the Wesleyan Reformers (dating from 1849, when a number of Methodist ministers were expelled from the Wesleyan Methodist Church on a charge of insubordination). It merged with the

Bible Christian Church The Bible Christian Church was a Methodist denomination founded by William O’Bryan, a Wesleyan Methodist local preacher, on 18 October 1815 in North Cornwall. The first society, consisting of just 22 members, met at Lake Farm in Shebbea ...

and the

Methodist New Connexion The Methodist New Connexion, also known as Kilhamite Methodism, was a Protestant nonconformist church. It was formed in 1797 by secession from the Wesleyan Methodists, and merged in 1907 with the Bible Christian Church and the United Methodist F ...

to form 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 evangelic ...

in 1907. The United Methodist Free Churches had sent missionaries and established congregations in various colonies of Australia. These joined with four other Methodist denominations to unite as the

Methodist Church of Australasia The Methodist Church of Australasia was a Methodist denomination based in Australia. On 1 January 1902, five Methodist denominations in Australia – the Wesleyan Methodist Church, the Primitive Methodists, the Bible Christian Church, the Unite ...

in 1902.

See also

References

Further reading