A Brief History of
The African Methodist Episcopal Church

The African Methodist Episcopal Church grew out of the Free African Society, a mutual aid organization that Richard Allen founded in 1787. Allen, a Philadelphia-born slave who had purchased his freedom in Delaware, had experience as an itinerant Methodist preacher and associate of the famed Francis Asbury. An ugly racial incident at St. George Methodist Church in Philadelphia convinced Allen to start another branch of Methodism which affirmed in practice the equality of all human beings. Allen also wanted to assert another principle. The Methodism with which he was familiar was a movement that openly embraced the poor and the slave. Wesleyan preachers sought out such persons and aggressively evangelized them. As Methodism spread from the countryside to the city its preachers and parishioners increasingly distanced themselves from whites and blacks of low estate. Even denunciations of slavery were advanced with lessening vigor. Allen took note of these developments and believed that the racial discrimination that he experienced at St. George Church was another manifestation of Methodism's diminished fervor and religiosity.

Hence, Allen led his followers in building Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia in 1794. Since white Methodists tried to assert authority over its congregational affairs, Allen drew from the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in 1801 a ruling that affirmed Bethel's autonomy. In 1816 Allen convened black Methodists from other middle Atlantic communities to form the African Methodist Episcopal denomination. He was consecrated the first bishop of the church.

The A.M.E. church rapidly spread during the antebellum period to every section of the United States and into Canada and Haiti. On the slave soil of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, Louisiana, the District of Columbia, and for a time South Carolina were numerous A.M.E. congregations. During the Civil War A.M.E. ministers recruited soldiers into the Union Army and served themselves as military chaplains. Even before the Army ended A.M.E. missionaries traveled into the former confederacy to draw freedman into the denomination. As membership swelled to 400,00 by 1880, A.M.E. leaders, both clergy and lay, sat in Reconstruction legislatures, held seats in Congress, and served in scores of other political offices.

Formal entry into West Africa in 1891 and South Africa in 1896 made the denomination a significant black institution beyond the western hemisphere. Reunification in 1884 with the previously dissident British Methodist Episcopal Church brought the denomination back into Canada, and added the Maritime Provinces, Bermuda, and parts of South America. Missionaries also pushed the boundaries of the A.M.E. church to embrace most areas of the Caribbean including significant attention to Cuba.

Also by the turn of the 20th century nearly every southern and border state and some in the north and west contained within them A.M.E. supported schools. They ranged from the secondary to the college, university, and seminary levels. Wilberforce University in Ohio, founded in 1856 and A.M.E. sponsored since 1863, was the denomination's most prominent educational institution. In the Caribbean and Africa the A.M.E. Church similarly started schools with Monrovia College and Industrial Institute in Liberia and Wilberforce Institute in South Africa as the best Known.

The two world wars which inaugurated a massive movement of the blacks from the American South to northern and western cities spearheaded another period of A.M.E. development. Numerous churches in Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, and other areas developed a social gospel which redefined the thrust of A.M.E. ministry. This approach to ministry had been pioneered in Chicago and New York City by Reverdy C. Ransom's Institutional Church and Social Settlement and his Church of Simon of Cyrene respectively. Such clergy as Harrison G. Payne, pastor of Park Place A.M.E. Church in Homestead, Pennsylvania, for example, replicated Ransom's efforts in the 1920's. As black migrants moved in large numbers into the Pittsburgh steel district Payne initiated efforts to supply them with housing. Such southern and border state clergy as Josph DeLaine in Clarendon County, South Carolina and Oliver Brown in Topeka, Kansas, moved to end legalized segregation with local court suits they initiated in their respective locales. Culminating with the famous Brown case of 1954, A.M.E. leaders like their predecessors during the Civil war helped to spearhead important changes in American society.

With more than two million members in 7,000 congregations on four continents, the A.M.E. Church plays a pivotal role in sustaining the Allen tradition in numerous nations in the America, Africa, and Europe. At the 1996 General Conference, for example, numerous congregations in Angola and Uganda came into the denomination. Within the United States mega-churches have been developed in Jamaica, New York, Baltimore, Lanham, and Fort Washington, Maryland, Los Angeles, California, Atlanta, Georgia and in several other cities.


Dennis C. Dickerson