How has the UMC understood Confirmation?
Although the Methodist Church grew out of the Anglican/Protestant Church, the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, did not encourage or recommend that the new Methodist Church in America should take part in confirmation. The church that Wesley started participated regularly in class meetings where members came together for accountability, acts of outreach and devotion, nurture, and spiritual growth. Methodists by design gathered often for the daily living of the faith. Wesley believed “.. . baptism was initiation into the church; (and that) Methodists would learn the faith in the discipline of the class meetings,” (QPAC, p. 24). Confirmation as a catechism or time of instruction was not needed! The process of confirmation, however, is a natural fit for the distinctive United Methodist theology that emphasizes the need for justifying grace, repentance, and conversion later in life. In the process of time the Methodist Church grew as did the primacy of the class meetings. Beginning in the
