Book of Discipline (United Methodist)
Encyclopedia
The Book of Discipline constitutes the law and doctrine
Doctrine
Doctrine is a codification of beliefs or a body of teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the body of teachings in a branch of knowledge or belief system...

 of the United Methodist Church
United Methodist Church
The United Methodist Church is a Methodist Christian denomination which is both mainline Protestant and evangelical. Founded in 1968 by the union of The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church, the UMC traces its roots back to the revival movement of John and Charles Wesley...

. It follows similar works for its predecessor denominations.

It was originally published in 1784, in the Methodist Episcopal Church
Methodist Episcopal Church
The Methodist Episcopal Church, sometimes referred to as the M.E. Church, was a development of the first expression of Methodism in the United States. It officially began at the Baltimore Christmas Conference in 1784, with Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke as the first bishops. Through a series of...

, and has been published every four years thereafter following the meeting of the General Conference, which passes legislation that is included in the Book of Discipline. The most recent edition is that of 2008.

The basic unit of reference is the paragraph, not the page, chapter or section. The paragraphs are numbered consecutively within each chapter or section, but numbers are skipped between chapters or sections. The paragraph is often only a few lines, but many are several pages long and they can be divided into multiple subdivisions. Paragraphs are first divided using Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3,...) which can itself be divided by italicized lower case letters with parentheses (a), b), c), d)...) which may itself be divided using Arabic numerals within double parentheses ((1), (2), (3),...)

Traditionally a list of all the bishops with the year of their election is at the beginning of the book. That is followed by a brief history of the church, then the church constitution, and a statement concerning the doctrine and theology of the church. The Social Principles of the church follow. Finally the legislative section, by far the largest part of The Discipline, appears.
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