# Religious homogeneity in small (or large) town America

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-homogeneity-in-small-or-large-town-america/384727>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [December 19, 2006, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-homogeneity-in-small-or-large-town-america/384727 "2006-12-19T02:29:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\
**Post date:** [December 21, 2006, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-homogeneity-in-small-or-large-town-america/384727/21 "2006-12-21T13:20:25Z")

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[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]  
Any Wisconsinites here who can tell me what a Free Methodist is? I noticed churches by that name in the vicinity of Shullsburg, where my great-great grandfather used to dig zinc.  
[/QUOTE]  
My father came from such a church.

It’s an old term, from around 1800-1850. It refers to a church that was strictly abolitionist (anti-slavery), as opposed to the methodists who felt that the Bible approved of owning slaves. Those churches eventually split off into the Southern Methodists.

Around a hundred years later (WW II time) most of them joined back together. But some churches (mostly in the deep south) thought the combined churches were not conservative enough, and especially, not segregated enough, so they remained as Southern Methodist congregations.

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