ABSTRACT
The world-wide family of Methodist/Wesleyan denominations exhibits an array of patterns of church government and of modes of appointing and consulting, particularly impressive in its variety if the offspring churches across the globe and the extended family of united/uniting churches and Pentecostalism are included. Certainly within Methodism one can find divers forms of congregational, presbyterian and episcopal polities and divers contextualisations or acculturations of these classic forms in the global array of Methodisms. A British or American polity behaves differently when fully indigenised in Africa or Asia. However, two patterns predominate, both framed by John Wesley in 1784. They care in different ways for the two constant factors of Methodist polity. By his provisions for the American movement Wesley created an independent episcopal church, a Church
of England modified for the new nation, perhaps an Anglicanism-lite, a church that looked and behaved something like colonial Anglicanism. So it named itself, the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC). By contrast, anticipating British Methodism’s need for governance after his death Wesley in 1784 granted supremacy not to superintendents, bishops or key leaders but to Conference, a deliverance that would eventuate in Presbyterian-like structure and later, when ordination was regularised, in leadership by presbyters.2 The bishop-led church in the newly independent and proudly democratic nation would look royal. The Conference in Georgian and Victorian Britain, once led autocratically by John Wesley, would elect presidents and chairs and look democratic. In both contexts, however, Conference and centralised power (formal and informal) would interact, collaborate and vie in complex fashion.
