Methodist Church of Canada
| Methodist Church | |
|---|---|
| Classification | Protestant |
| Orientation | Methodist |
| Polity | Connectional |
| Associations | World Methodist Council |
| Region | Canada, Bermuda |
| Origin | 1884 |
| Merger of | Methodist Church of Canada; Methodist Episcopal Church in Canada; Bible Christian Church of Canada; Primitive Methodist Church in Canada |
| Merged into | United Church of Canada (1925) |
The Methodist Church was the major Methodist denomination in Canada from its founding in 1884 until it merged with two other denominations to form the United Church of Canada in 1925. The Methodist Church was itself formed from the merger of four smaller Methodist denominations with ties to British and U.S. Methodist denominations.
Laurence Coughlan was a lay preacher of the British Methodist movement. He arrived in Newfoundland in 1766 and began working among Protestant English and Irish settlers. In 1779William Black, born in England but raised in Nova Scotia was converted to Methodism and commenced evangelizing in the Maritimes, his work falling under the supervision of the British Wesleyan Methodist Church in 1800. In 1855 this body formed the Wesleyan Methodist Conference of Eastern British America.
Under the leadership of William Losee, meanwhile, the Methodist Episcopal Church in the U.S., established on Christmas Day in 1784, began work in 1791 among British immigrants to Upper Canada. By 1828 the Methodist Episcopal work in Canada had formally severed ties with the U.S. In 1833 most of it joined with the British Wesleyans to form the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Canada, adding to itself the Methodist people of Lower Canada in 1854. That part of it which absented itself from the union re-formed into the Methodist Episcopal Church of Canada in 1834, eventually growing into the second largest Methodist body in Canada.
In turn the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Canada and the Wesleyan Methodist Conference of Eastern British America united in 1874, annexing as well the Methodist New Connexion Church in Canada (itself an amalgam of several small groups), thereby forming the Methodist Church of Canada.
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