The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-12-15
HE QUITS CONFERENCE.
CLAUDE L. cHuToN LEAVES METHODIST MTMIsTRY.
Declares That His Brethren Have Departed from the Teachings
 of Jcnn Wesley and Can
 Not Follow Them.

Claude L. Chiffon, for twenty-six years a member of the Alabama Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, the announcement of whose withdrawal from that body The Advertiser printed Sunday, returned to his home in Mont gomery yesterday and gave out state ment of the reasons for his withdrawal.
 Mir. Chiffon has been connected with the Alabama Conference for thirty-one years. For twenty-six of these years ne has been preacher.
 that he has nothing but the love of God and man In his heart and his action Is not In the least the result of pidue. or disappointed ambition, but the result of convictions, which he arrived at after careful deliberation.
 His personal relations with all the members of the Alabama Conference, he declares to be of the most pleasant char acter. He affirms that never before in his life was he more fully convinced of the superiority of the Methodist doctrine as promulgated by John Wesley. He still believes in Methodist doctrine and Meth- odist discipline and in his opinion South ern Methodism was formerly the truest type of the creed. which Wesley stood for, and that the Alabama Conference was at one time the banner conference of Southern Methodism.
 But the Methodists of today, he de- ciares, have largely renounced their own doctrines, not in theory, but in practice.
 He declares that the Methodists of to- day have forsaken the doctrine of the innate depravity of the human heart. the doctrine of Entire Sanctifcation. the use- fulness of the class meeting and the love feast, the abandonment of the practice of some of the primal rules of Methodist discipline, the ignorance of the men and women of the church of Methodist doc Urine, the absolute impossibility of preachers to carry out their promise to administer the discipline of Christ under prevailing conditions.
 The Church in these things, he says, violates the Bible in that that LOOK de- clares that so long as churches fail to administer Christian discipline, they for felt the favor of God.
 He attacks the way in which the pub fishing house war claim was smothered in that the Methodist Church. he ayers. appealed to the UnA.-A States Senate to decide a question of morals for 1t.
 The position taken by the Alabama Conference on the uIspensary question, he declares to be so at variance with his conscientious convictions that as much as will have the necessity for the step, he VIII nave to let ms brethren so tneir way without him.
 It will be remembered that MT. Chiffon, at the meeting of the Alabama Confer ence in Montgomery last year. attempted to put the Conference on record as against the dispensary system. on the grounds that 1t is he most pernicious feature of the liquor question. He was voted down by an overwhelming majority.
 He declares that Methodists of today are following the steps of the Episcopal and Catholic Churches in ritualism.
 MT. Chiffon will make his home in Montgomery. He was serving has first year as pastor of the church at Union Springs and has had several of the largest charges in the Conference. For a while. several years ago. he severed his official connection with the Alabama Conference and did evangelistio work.
 Rev. Claude L. Chiffon, IT,, a son of the resigned minister. is a member of the Alabama Conference and is stationed at Linden.