Free Methodists

Free Methodist Church
Emblem of the Free Methodist Church
Classification	Protestant
Orientation	Methodist Holiness
Polity	Modified episcopacy
Associations	Christian Holiness Partnership; Christian Churches Together; National Association of Evangelicals; Wesleyan Holiness Consortium; World Methodist Council
Region	Worldwide: divided into 13 General Conferences
Founder	Benjamin Titus Roberts
Origin	1860 Pekin, New York
Separated from	Methodist Episcopal Church
Congregations	957 in the United States (average congregation size: 77)
Members	1,000,000 (77,000 in the United States)
Official website	fmcusa.org

The Free Methodist Church is a Methodist Christian denomination within the holiness movement. It is evangelical in nature and has its roots in the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition.

The Free Methodist Church has 77,000 members in the United States and 850,000 members worldwide in 82 nations. The Light & Life Magazine is their official publication. The Free Methodist Church World Ministries Center is in Indianapolis, Indiana.

The Free Methodist Church was organized at Pekin, New York, in 1860. The founders had been members of the Methodist Episcopal Church but were excluded from its membership for too earnestly advocating what they saw as the doctrines and usages of authentic Wesleyan Methodism. Under the leadership of the Rev. Benjamin Titus (B. T.) Roberts, a graduate of Wesleyan University and an able and eloquent preacher, the movement spread rapidly. Societies were organized, churches built and the work established.

At the 1910 session of the General Conference of the Methodist Church at Rochester, New York, a full acknowledgement was made of the wrong done to Roberts fifty years before, and the credentials unjustly taken from him were restored in a public meeting to his son, Rev. Benson Roberts.

Before the founding of the church, Roberts began publication of a monthly journal, The Earnest Christian. In 1868, The Free Methodist (now Light & Life) was begun. A publishing house was established in 1886 to produce books, periodicals and Sunday school curriculum and literature.

The name "Methodist" was retained for the newly organized church because the founders felt that their misfortunes (expulsion from the Methodist Episcopal Church) had come to them because of their adherence to doctrines and standards of Methodism. The word "Free" was suggested and adopted because the new church was to be an anti-slavery church (slavery was an issue in those days), because pews in the churches were to be free to all rather than sold or rented (as was common), and because the new church hoped for the freedom of the Holy Spirit in the services rather than a stifling formality. However, according to World Book Encyclopedia, the third principle was "freedom" from secret and oathbound societies (in particular the Freemasons).