AME Church
The African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME Church) is a historically significant Christian denomination founded in 1816 in Philadelphia, primarily to serve the African American community. Established by a group of sixteen African Methodist delegates, the church emerged as a response to racial discrimination within the broader Methodist Episcopal Church, particularly after incidents that highlighted the exclusion of Black worshippers. Richard Allen, a former enslaved person who became a key figure in the church's founding, was consecrated as its first bishop.
Throughout its history, the AME Church has been a powerful advocate for social justice and equality, playing a crucial role in the abolition movement and later the Civil Rights movement. It has promoted self-reliance among African Americans through education and community support initiatives. The church quickly grew in membership and influence, expanding its reach to multiple cities and even internationally, with AME churches now present in thirty-nine countries. The AME Church continues to serve as a vital institution within the African American community, fostering a sense of solidarity and advocating for the rights and well-being of its members.
AME Church
Significance:A radically distinct denomination becomes an advocate for the cause of abolition and a bulwark of the African American community.
Sixteen African Methodist delegates met in Philadelphia on April 9, 1816, to unite as the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Delegates from Philadelphia and Attleborough, Pennsylvania, joined representatives from Baltimore, Wilmington, and Salem to elect a bishop. They elected Richard Allen, who was consecrated as the first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME Church) on April 11, 1816. From the original sixteen delegates in 1816, membership grew to 7,257 by 1822.
Allen, known as the father of African American religion, was born a slave in 1760 in Philadelphia. Sold to the Stokeley plantation near Dover, Delaware, Allen attended evangelical tent meetings and experienced a religious conversion when he was seventeen years of age. He joined the Methodist Society, which held classes in the forest under the leadership of a white man, Benjamin Wells. Allen became a convincing proselytizer, converting first his family and then his owner, who agreed to Allen’s proposal to purchase his own freedom in 1777. Allen worked at many jobs and preached at his regular stops, developing broad contacts through his travels. As an aide to other itinerant preachers, he met Bishop Francis Asbury, who established the first General Conference of the Methodist Church in America in 1784. Allen declined to accompany Asbury on a trip through the South and returned to Philadelphia in February, 1786.
Allen joined such Philadelphia leaders as former slave clerk and handyman Absalom Jones and other members of the St. Thomas vestry: James Forten, William White, Jacob Tapisco, and James Champion. Allen and Jones became lay preachers throughout the city, including early-morning and evening services at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church. As African American attendance increased, racial conflict became apparent. In November, 1787, African Americans worshiping at St. George’s were ordered to the gallery. After mistaking the section of the gallery assigned for their worship, Allen, Jones, and White were physically removed while praying at the Sunday morning worship service.
The Free African Society
The humiliation of this incident led to a mass exodus of African Americans from this church and a movement to create a separate church. In the spring, these African American leaders established the Free African Society, the first mutual aid society established to serve their community. By 1791, they held regular Sunday services, assumed lay leadership positions, and made plans for construction of a church building.
The leaders differed over the issue of church affiliation, with the majority voting to unite with the Episcopal church. On July 17, 1794, the St. Thomas African Church was dedicated as the first African church in Philadelphia, a Protestant Episcopal church with Jones as pastor. Jones became the first African American priest in 1804.
Allen withdrew from the Free African Society to form a separate church, the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, on July 29, 1794. Allen declared the church independent in management but did not sever all relations with the Methodist Episcopal Church. The articles of incorporation ensured independence by allowing membership only to African Americans. Allen became the first African American to receive ordination from the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States.
A Force for Change
Such church independence helped African Americans resist the insults and subordination resulting from slavery and racial prejudice and reflected a growing role of the church in the community. Sermons underscored the need for the African American community to become self-reliant through the church, schools, and economic organizations in order to gain group solidarity and recognition. Christian character, in turn, depended upon Christian education.
In 1804, Allen established the Society of Free People of Color for Promoting the Instruction and School Education of Children of African Descent. In 1809, he helped Forten and Jones organize the Society for the Suppression of Vice and Immorality in Philadelphia, to provide community supervision of the morality of African Americans and to establish means for their moral uplift. These leaders recruited three thousand members for the Black Legion during the War of 1812. The successful functions associated with African American churches led to greater membership. By 1813, St. Thomas had a membership of 560, while Bethel Church had 1,272 communicants.
The movement spread to other cities and along the seaboard states. Church leaders continued their pioneering efforts for group solidarity. In January, 1817, the First Negro Convention met at the Bethel Church to protest the plans of the American Colonization Society for emigration of free blacks to Africa. Also in 1817, Allen and Tapisco published the First Church Discipline as well as a book of hymns compiled by Allen, Daniel Coker, and Champion.
The church continued to improve the conditions for African Americans. It supported the use of boycotts to protest the economic basis of slavery through the Free Produce Society of Philadelphia, which was organized at an assembly at Bethel Church on December 20, 1830, to advocate purchase of produce grown only by free labor. The First Annual Convention of the People of Color, convened in Philadelphia in 1831, elected Allen as its leader shortly before his death on March 26, 1831. The African Methodist Episcopal Church has survived as an integral part of the African American community and continued its strong leadership role.
Bibliography
Elkins, Stanley M. Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2013. Print.
Hindson, Edward E., and Dan Mitchell. The Popular Encyclopedia of Church History. Eugene: Harvest House, 2013. Print.
Hine, Darlene Clark, William C. Hine, and Stanley C. Harrold. African Americans: A Concise History. 5th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2014. Print.
Otter, Samuel. Philadelphia Stories: American's Literature of Race and Freedom. New York: Oxford UP, 2013. Print.
Stuckey, Sterling. Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America. New York: Oxford UP, 2013. Print.