Categorizing United Methodist Churches [closed]

Question

The process of categorization must balance the objective of accuracy with the objectives of usefulness and ease of use.  Religion is one of the ways we can categorize people, and is especially useful when we can categorize a person by the specific faith community they participated in while living.

My own denomination, United Methodist, is organized by districts, annual conferences and jurisdictions, which somewhat resemble -- but often overlap, counties, states and countries.  Accuracy would say that local churches would be categorized by the church structure.  But the normal genealogist categorizing a great-grandfather is very unlikely to know the church structure, the effort to categorize would be abandoned, and errors would be magnified.  I propose, therefore, that at least for United Methodists, we group congregations by the civil structure:  Category: United Methodist Churches, Maryland;  Category:  United Methodist Churches, New Mexico.   

What are the pros and cons of doing this?

Comments

Locally, significant numbers of what are today UMC members were brought in through a merge with United Brethren. Any thoughts on how they might be categorized, particularly those who predate the merge? Since there appear to still be UB churches, were their several denominations with a similar name?

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Just noticed this thread is now over 4 years old.

Answer 1

In my town, what is now a part of the United Methodist Church went through these transmogrifications:  1)  Methodist Episcopal Church  2)  United Methodist Church 3) Methodist-Presbyterian Church.  So are you proposing to use what the church is now, ignoring the earlier versions?

Comments

No, I think it would probably make more sense to have a separate category for each one.  They can be crosslinked.  One advantage is that the category for the church as a Methodist Episcopal Church will have members born in a different time period than those who are members of the church in its period as a United Methodist Church, which would only be people who have been members since 1968.  In smaller towns, members who were in a church in a particular time period were often quite interrelated, which makes for genealogical interest!

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One nice thing about the earlier churches in the USA is that they can be found in county History books which came out  in the 1880s and later.  These usually have a section about the formation of the churches, often by township and often have a list of the founders of the church, which as you say are often related (either then or in later generations.)

Answer 2

Hi,

I found a Methodist person in my tree. There neat story which goes along with him. I don’t know which category or project he fit in though. Sometimes knowing background helps one find more information about the person so I try to list as much as possible.

 https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Nixon-2924

Billie

Answer 3

I found a Methodist. He was the first Member of this Harlan Mission of the Council Bluffs District, Iowa Annual Conference. I like to get a category made for this conference if could. I saw where some missions getting made. It be nice to have categories listed here like the mission is. I saw several conferences as well listed out there but they not easy to find. 

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Bergstresser-74

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Methodists

Billie

Comments

The current guidance is to do categories for congregations only, not for conferences.

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Jack,

I had a idea that hit me yesterday why don’t we make a free page. Name it something like Methodist Church conferences. We explain  what a conference is and it function in church history. Then we can list the ones that are out there. One page for all link the page to my Methodist project. And put in page this only for referencing conferences and maybe supply ways to look up information on various conferences. Leave it open for people to ask questions and we all can learn about various conferences. I coming across bunch subprojects that were made already this way we can keep track of the ones made easier, I put section on my page so we can start to gather them there. This way if the list get long with what I seeing it may lol. We not clustering up the Methodist page. If you look at page you will see various minsters subcategories the list long. Just looking at breaking up some stuff but yet give valuable information for people to search by. And if anymore made they can list them there in future. Just idea for Conference problem and we can make list we find that not included too.  

Billie 

 

 

Answer 4

This is an old thread which has been overtaken by events.  The current guidance on creating categories for congregations is at CIB (Category Information Box) for Congregations.

Comments

Jack,

I had a idea that hit me yesterday why don’t we make a free page. Name it something like Methodist Church conferences. We explain  what a conference is and it function in church history. Then we can list the ones that are out there. One page for all link the page to my Methodist project. And put in page this only for referencing conferences and maybe supply ways to look up information on various conferences. Leave it open for people to ask questions and we all can learn about various conferences. I coming across bunch subprojects that were made already this way we can keep track of the ones made easier, I put section on my page so we can start to gather them there. This way if the list get long with what I seeing it may lol. We not clustering up the Methodist page. If you look at page you will see various minsters subcategories the list long. Just looking at breaking up some stuff but yet give valuable information for people to search by. And if anymore made they can list them there in future. Just idea for Conference problem and we can make list we find that not included too.  

Billie