The United Methodist Church, the second largest Protestant denomination in the United States, specifically holds that "the covenant of marriage was established by God who created us male and female for each other". Methodists further teach that marriage is "God's gift and covenant intended to imitate God's covenant with humankind" that "Christians enter in their baptism." The rite used in the Free Methodist Church proclaims that marriage is "more than a legal contract, being a bond of union made in heaven, into which you enter discreetly and reverently."