Rev. Stephen Perry,  retired elder and Dakotas Conference historian, has posted chapter four of the new history of The United Methodist Church’s Dakotas Annual Conference.  

This chapter, “The Great War and the Great Depression (1920-1939),” opens with war and global pandemic—the Great or First World War and the Spanish influenza.  It shows the many unintended consequences of war, like a new and larger scale of production for agriculture. 

As a result, “peace” brought recession to farm country, disruption to the global financial system, and the Great Depression to everyone including North Dakota and South Dakota.  By the end of two decades, on the eve of the Second World War, events had severely weakened the Church in all material respects. When people endured suffering together and helped each other, however, they cherished the memories of these years as a time of spiritual growth.

The posting of chapter four has brought the new history of the Dakotas Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church, “We Are Yet Alive,” more than halfway to completion.  Three additional chapters remain to be written on the periods 1939-1968, 1968-1993, and 1993-2012.

Chapter Four is divided into three sections:

• Open Market Investment Committee Meeting with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Washington, D.C., January 12, 1928
• Election Day, November 6, 1928
• Uniting Conference of Methodist Episcopal Church, Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and Methodist Protestant Church, Kansas City, Missouri, April 26-May 10, 1939