Excerpted from IRD President Mark Tooley’s upcoming book, Methodism and Politics in the 20th Century: From William McKinley to 9-11, to be published in January 2012
1900—The Methodist Episcopal Church (northern), Methodist Episcopal Church, South and Protestant Methodist Church together number over 4.2 million.
1901—Methodists mourn assassination of fellow Methodist President William McKinley.
1904—Northern Bishops urge Prohibition Constitutional amendment and voting rights for “negro” Americans.
1908—Northern Methodist General Conference adopts Social Creed from Methodist Federation for Social Service and forms Temperance Society. President Theodore Roosevelt addresses delegates.
1908—Northern bishops denounce permissive divorce laws for permitting “consecutive polygamy.”
1910—Methodists number more than 5 million.
1915—President Woodrow Wilson hails Methodists as “stabilizers of the nation.”
1916—Northern General Conference backs national Prohibition and bases newly named Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals in Washington, D.C. Delegates also back womens’ suffrage and League of Nations.
1917—Northern bishops back U.S. entrance into World War I.
1918—Southern Methodist General Conference forms Commission on Temperance and Social Service.
1918—Southern Bishops back President Woodrow Wilson and U.S. entrance into World War I.
1920— Methodists number more than 6 million.
1922—Methodist Building is constructed on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., to house northern Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals.
1922—Southern bishops defend legal rights for “negro” Americans and condemn lynchings.
1922—Southern General Conference declares church must “hate” war but refuses to call war “murder.”
1924—Northern General Conference urges federal anti-lynching law and denounces war as “supreme enemy.”
1926—Southern bishops urge abolition of “aggressive war.”
1928—Southern Methodist Bishop James Cannon campaigns against Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith.
1928—Northern General Conference denounces war but affirms need for military for “police” purposes.
1928—Northern bishops denounce divorce for the last time in an episcopal address.
1930—Methodists number more than 7.3 million.
1930—Southern bishops warn against “un-American” attacks on capitalism.
1932—Northern temperance leader Clarence True Wilson backs socialist Norman Thomas for president.
1932—Northern General Conference denounces the “profit motive” in capitalism and requests “conscientious objector” status for Methodists against military service.
1936—Northern General Conference adopts neutrality between “profit-seeking” and “planned” economies, while declaring Methodism “does not endorse, support, or purpose to participate in war.” Delegates decline to endorse birth control.
1938—Southern bishops demand “war plans must stop.”
1939—Northern and southern Methodism merge with Methodist Protestants to become The Methodist Church. Special General Conference denounces any American “entanglement” in global war.
1940—Methodists number almost 7.7 million.
1940—General Conference declares Methodism “will not officially endorse, support, or participate in war.”
1941—Bishops offer “loyalty” to President Franklin Roosevelt after Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
1944—General Conference narrowly affirms “necessity” of military force to resist “aggression.”
1948—General Conference urges “better relationships” between American and Soviet Union while commending United Nations.
1948—Bishops “reject” Communism’s “class warfare” and “dictatorship” while affirming “civil liberty to the American Negro.”
1950—Methodists number more than 9 million.
1952—General Conference disavows Methodist Federation for Social Action and condemns Communism’s “atheistic totalitarianism” and “ruthless violence.” Delegates also denounce “racial discrimination and segregation.”
1952—Bishops commend America for defending South Korea from the “aggression of a Communist invasion.”
1955—General Board of Evangelism hails a Supreme Court school desegregation ruling as being in the “right direction of a fully integrated Christian society.”
1956—General Conference reaffirms “freedom and self-government for all people” and rejects “materialistic ideologies.” Delegates endorse birth control.
1959—Bishops visit President Dwight Eisenhower and receive Senator John Kennedy.
1960—Methodists number almost 9.9 million.
1960—General Conference urges “abolition” of war and “complete disarmament.” Delegates commend antisegregation sit-in demonstrators for “awakening community conscience.”
1964—Bishops declare “prejudice against any person because of color or social status is a sin.”
1964—General Conference urges “fair employment practices,” “voting rights” and “integrated” public education and neighborhoods. Delegates denounce war as “contrary to the will of God.”
1966—President Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr. address Methodist Bicentennial Celebration.
1967—Segregated Methodist Central Jurisdiction meets for the last time.
1968—The Methodist Church merges with the Evangelical United Brethren Church to form the 11 million member United Methodist Church.
1968—General Conference shows “growing concern” over U.S. war in Vietnam and urges U.S. to “reexamine” policies towards communist governments. Delegates reiterate opposition to sex outside marriage.
1968—Bishops denounce “chicanery and savagery” of U.S. foreign policy.
1970—Bishops “deplore” U.S. war in Vietnam.
1970—General Conference urges states to revoke antiabortion laws.
1972—General Conference denounces Vietnam War as “immoral,” affirms abortion rights, declares homosexual practice “incompatible with Christian teaching,” suggests outlawing hand guns and denounces war as “incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ.”
1973—United Methodist Women’s Division and General Board of Church and Society help form the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.
1975—Bishops unanimously oppose antiabortion constitutional amendment.
1976—General Conference opposes same-sex marriage.
1980—General Conference dispatches bishops to warn President Carter against military force on behalf of the U.S. hostages in Iran.
1980—United Methodists number about 9.5 million.
1984—Bishops’ episcopal address denounces abortion beyond “extreme circumstances” as “barbarous.”
1985—Bishops condemn U.S. help for anti-Marxist rebels in Nicaragua.
1986—Bishops renounce nuclear deterrence and oppose missile defense in pastoral letter “In Defense of Creation.”
1988—Bishops declare both communism and capitalism as “morally wanting.”
1989—General Board of Church and Society denounces U.S. invasion of Panama as “not the valid act of a civilized nation.”
1989—Bishops respond to Berlin Wall’s collapse by warning against “imposing Eastern or Western value systems.”
1990—United Methodists number 8.8 million.
1990—General Board of Church and Society chief demands the U.S. “stop the rhetoric of war” after Iraq invades Kuwait.
1991—United Methodist Women’s Division and General Board of Church and Society oppose U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.
1992—General Conference affirms “rights and liberties for homosexual persons.”
1993—Bishops and General Board of Church and Society back national health care plan.
1996—General Board of Church and Society defends legality of partial-birth abortion.
1996—First Lady Hillary Clinton addresses General Conference.
2000—United Methodists number 8.4 million.
2000—General Conference opposes partial-birth abortion, affirms laws defining marriage as man and woman, supports “voluntary school prayer” and declares “most” Christians justify war in cases of “aggression, tyranny, and genocide.”
2001—George W. Bush is inaugurated as the first Methodist president since William McKinley.
2001—Bishops respond to the 9/11 attacks by rejecting “violence in all of its forms.”
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