Methodist Episcopal Church, South

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The Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MEC, S; also Methodist Episcopal Church South) was the American Methodist denomination resulting from the 19th-century split over the issue of slavery in the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC). Disagreement on this issue had been increasing in strength for decades between churches of the Northern and Southern United States; in 1845 it resulted in a schism at the General Conference of the MEC held in Louisville, Kentucky.

This body maintained its own polity for nearly 100 years until the formation in 1939 of the Methodist Church, uniting the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, with the older Methodist Episcopal Church and much of the Methodist Protestant Church, which had separated from Methodist Episcopal Church in 1828. The Methodist Church in turn merged in 1968 with the Evangelical United Brethren Church to form the United Methodist Church, now one of the largest and most widely spread Christian denominations in America.

In 1940, some more theologically conservative MEC,S congregations, which dissented from the 1939 merger, formed the Southern Methodist Church, which still exists as a small, conservative denomination headquartered in South Carolina. Some dissenting congregations from the Methodist Protestant Church also objected to the 1940 merger and continue as a separate denomination, headquartered in Mississippi.