Bible Methodist Connection of Churches
Bible Methodist Connection of Churches belongs to the Methodist family of churches.
Governance: connexional.
Bible Methodist Connection of Churches reports 93 congregations in the United States (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020).
Conservative holiness Methodists who declined a merger to keep camp-meeting religion — a small connection where entire sanctification is still preached for a verdict.
Heritage
When the Wesleyan Methodist Church moved to merge into The Wesleyan Church in 1966–68, several conferences and congregations withdrew rather than enter the new body, judging that the merger would cost the old holiness standards and conference liberties. They organized as the Bible Methodist Connection of Churches, inheriting the 1843 abolitionist Wesleyan Methodist lineage of Orange Scott. The connection is organized in regional conferences and belongs to the conservative holiness movement, where the camp meeting is still the spiritual center of the year.
Theological family
Wesleyan-holiness: justification by faith and entire sanctification as a definite, testify-about-it second work of grace; conservative holiness convictions on dress, amusements and separation from worldliness.
Who decides what
Connexional: regional annual conferences of churches and ministers with elected conference presidents rather than bishops; congregations and conferences hold real authority, and the general connection is deliberately light.
What a first-time visitor would find
Revivalist and warm: gospel songs, spirited congregational singing, testimony, preaching that expects a response, and open altars; camp meetings each summer function as the connection's family reunion and revival at once.
What it has always cared about
The holiness camp meeting kept at full strength; plainness of life as discipleship; and a Wesleyan doctrine of sanctification preached with the expectation that God actually does it.
Its gift to the wider church
With its sister conservative holiness bodies, a witness the wider church periodically rediscovers: that the Wesleyan message of a heart made clean is meant to be experienced, not only affirmed — and that small connections can sustain colleges, missions and camp meetings without any large institution behind them.
Commonly confused with
With The Wesleyan Church (the merger body it declined), the Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist Connection (a sister continuing body), and the Free Methodist Church; "Bible Methodist" is also easily misread as a generic label rather than a specific denomination.
Range of views inside it
Conferences differ modestly in standards and emphasis, and congregations range from tiny rural works to established county-seat churches; the connection's doctrine is uniform.
A note from the mapmakers: The 93-congregation figure is RCMS 2020. Beyond that count, the published record on this connection is modest and this record stays within it. Nothing here may be asserted of a specific congregation; sentences drawn from this record hedge as "Bible Methodist congregations typically…" and yield to the connection's own materials.
Sources: The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century (Vinson Synan, Eerdmans) · Handbook of Denominations in the United States (Abingdon Press) · 2020 U.S. Religion Census (ASARB)
Where Bible Methodist Connection of Churches churches are on the map
1 Bible Methodist Connection of Churches congregations appear on The Church Map, across 1 states.
- Tennessee — 1
More of the Methodist story · Find these churches on the map