Methodist Episcopal Church, South and South and was criticized for holding slaves. The 1844 General Conference voted to suspend Bishop Andrew from exercising his episcopal office until he gave up the slaves. Southern delegates to the conference disputed the authority of a General Conference to discipline bishops. The cultural differences that had divided the nation during the mid-19th century were also dividing the Methodist Episcopal Church. The 1844 dispute led Methodists in the South to break off and form a separate denomination, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MEC,S). The statistics for 1859 showed the MEC,S had as enrolled members some 511,601 whites and 197,000
Reformed Episcopal Church his own dreams of ecumenicity with racial exclusivism. The Reformed Episcopal Seminary itself is one of the first, if not the first, seminaries to be racially inclusive. The founders of the Reformed Episcopal Church professed a faith rooted in the English Reformation, regarding the Holy Scripture as the Word of God, and accepting the authority of the Nicene, Apostles' and Athanasian Creeds, the first four ecumenical councils, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (in the form published in 1801 by the Protestant Episcopal Church), and the "Declaration of Principles of the Reformed Episcopal Church". They emphasized the Protestant, Reformed, Evangelical and