Wow!
First of all, I’m honored to have you as my first challenger, DDG. I didn’t know this would be “stump the Methodist,” but this should be good practice for my next DCOM meeting!
Like I said, my experience is limited to United Methodism, so you’re throwing me some curve balls, but I’ll try my best.
1)The Free Methodist Church was formed in 1860 after its members were kicked out of the Methodist Episcopal Church (one of the predicessors to the UMC). I don’t know what the charges were, but they held to more conservative beliefs and what they saw as the historic doctrines of Methodism, including opposition to slavery and ministry to the poor. I also see from their website www.freemethodistchurch.org that they are a holiness church, which usually indicates a divergance from a Wesleyan understanding of Christian perfection in the opposite direction from United Methodists, (i.e., insisting upon it, where United Methodists don’t even think about it anymore–unfortunately). I got this information from their website and from the 10th edition of Frank S Mead’s Handbook of Denominations in the United States, published by Abingdon.
United Methodists are very diverse theologically, and fall pretty much in the Protestant mainstream, which means we’re not too far from Episcopalians, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ, or the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
2)The Free Methodist Church forbids membership in “secret societies.” I don’t know why specifically, but Cecil addressed the Masons generally (including attitudes toward them and condemnation by churches) here. I can find nothing to indicate that the UMC currently has any position on Masons or secret societies.
3)There may be some Methodist Churches that don’t allow women to be ordained, but if so, I’m not aware of them. (The FM website was unclear on the issue–it appears to still be a controversy for them, though their founder allowed it.) Historically, Methodist Churches went through the same process that other “mainline” Protestant denominations have of re-evaluating longstanding assumptions about gender roles in the Church.
Wesley was torn about the issue of women preachers, but allowed them on the advice of his mother. He advised them to call themselves “exhorters” rather than “preachers” to avoid controversy. Methodist preachers at that time were unordained, though, so he never addressed that issue directly. Of the groups that eventually formed the UMC, the United Brethren (a German-speaking Wesleyn church) ordained women earliest (1889), but stopped when they merged with the Evangelical Association (another German-speaking Wesleyan body) in 1946. The rest of the future UMC did not ordain women until after WWII. The first female bishop was elected in 1980. I believe some of the African-American Methodist denominatiions had a much better early track record. Julia A.J. Foote was the first woman ordained deacon by the African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion in 1894, and their 2nd female elder shortly before her death in 1900.
- Like His4ever, I knew they were a Christian rock band, but since I don’t like “contemporary Christian” music, I’ve never heard them. I think I may have heard once what college they went to, but I don’t know now and don’t feel like looking it up (since you obviously know.)
Did I pass? 
Now that that’s dealt with, on to Sanders.
The page you’re looking at belongs to the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, a predominantly African-American denomination that split from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South after the Civil War. The UMC had the same Articles of Religion, which Wesley edited from the Articles of Religion of the Church of England for use by Methodists in America. The Constitution of the UMC states (PP16, Article 1 of the Restrictive Rules) “The General Conference [the highest legislative body in the UMC and the only one that can speak for the whole church] shall not revoke, alter, or change our Articles of Religion or establish new standards or rules of doctrine contrary to our present existing standards of doctrine.” Theoretically, they could be changed, but first the Constitution would have to be amended to change the first restrictive rule, no easy task, believe me. That hasn’t stopped them from providing a long historical account of the Articles and the varying degree to which they’ve been used. Like Catholic doctrine, they are “reinterprited” rather than changed or abandoned, but not because they’re seen as infallable (far from it). They’re just too hard to change, beacuse some of us think there is value in having some standards that can’t be too easily changed, and because they’re part of our history.
Finally, Blackeyes, Methodism is a movement that began in the Church of England under the leadership of John Wesley and his brother Charles in the mid and late 1700s. John lead the movement, while Charles wrote hymns (a far greater contribution than it may sound). It was a revivial movement that emphasised evengelistic piety and sacramental worship. Wesley was a Church of England priest until his death, but the Methodists ultimately became a seperate denomintaion under complicated circumstances. The UMC is a mainstream Protestant denomination. We don’t have any unique doctrines (and don’t aim to), but we do have sertain emphases, like a traditional concern with social issues; belief in prevenient grace, “the divine love that surrounds all humanity and precedes any and all of our concious impulses” and which leads believers to Christ; and sanctification, the belief that salvation is not the goal but the start of Christian discipleship, which ultimately ends in “having the mind of Christ and walking as he walked” and being “habitually filled with the love of God and neighbor.”
