Richard Allen and the A.M.E. Church - From Book Black People... Vaughn

Bishops of the A.M.E. Church

From the book
BLACK PEOPLE
AND THEIR PLACE IN WORLD HISTORY
by Dr. Leroy Vaughn, MD, MBA, Historian, Honorary African Chief

 . 

After1775 - Richard Allen and the A.M.E. Church

The African Methodist Episcopal Church (A. M. E. Church) was one of the first Black organizations dedicated to Black self-improvement and Pan-Africanist ideals. The A. M. E. Church was also distinguished by its commitment to political agitation, Black education, and social activism. The interest in education initially culminated in the founding of Wilberforce University in 1863, as the first Black college founded by Blacks. Numerous other A. M. E. Colleges soon followed.

A. M. E. pastors were also responsible for numerous lawsuits against public school segregation, which eventually led to the 1954 case: “Brown vs. Board of Education.” During the Civil Rights movement, the A. M. E. Church was very active, and in addition to a pragmatic gospel, the church addressed the housing, welfare, and unionization issues of new immigrants to northern cities. However, nothing more completely captures the spirit and embodiment of the A. M. E. Church than its founder and first bishop, Richard Allen.

Richard Allen was born into slavery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on February 14, 1760 and shortly thereafter his entire family was sold by a Philadelphia lawyer, Benjamin Chew, to a Delaware plantation owner, Stokely Sturgis. Although the slave master was unconverted, he allowed Richard Allen to attend Methodist meetings. In addition to their antislavery beliefs, Allen was especially impressed by their emphasis on a simple set of virtues including honesty, modesty, and sobriety and converted to Methodism at age 17. By age 20, Allen was able to convert his slave master and to convince him that slave holding was wrong. Allen was allowed to buy his freedom for $2,000 by working a variety of odd jobs over the next five years. Once freed, “Allen traveled widely on the Methodist circuits, preaching, holding prayer meetings, and giving religious counsel to groups of White and Black Christians in the small towns and rural settlements of Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New York.” While in Philadelphia, Allen was asked by the elders at St. George Methodist Church to preach to their Black members. After the Black membership increased dramatically, Richard Allen determined that his calling was to minister to the “uneducated, poor, and un-churched community” and that he could best reach them in a separate Black church. However, the White Methodist elders ridiculed the whole idea with “very degrading and insulting language.”

St. George’s Black membership became so large that the church was forced to build a new seating gallery. When church authorities demanded that Blacks sit in the rear of the gallery, Allen and others decided they had been insulted enough: “We all went out of the church in a body and they were no more plagued with us.” The Black Methodists agreed to purchase a blacksmith shop and to move it to a lot Allen had purchased with his own savings. Carpenters were hired to make the building suitable for church meetings and on April 9, 1794, Bishop Asbury dedicated the structure as “Bethel African Church.” Bishop Asbury also ordained Allen as the first Black Methodist deacon and within four years the Bethel membership increased from 45 to 457 members. Richard Allen’s success was the inspiration for many other Black Methodist groups to form African Methodist Churches throughout the Northeast especially in New York, Delaware, and Maryland.

Since Bethel African Church was still under White Methodist ecclesiastical jurisdiction, White Methodists sued for legal control of Bethel, but in 1807 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in Allen’s favor. In 1816, Allen organized a national convention of Black Methodists, since many of them had similar White Methodist challenges. The convention delegates resolved that the churches they represent “should become one body under the name ‘African Methodist Episcopal Church’ in order to secure their privileges and promote union and harmony among themselves.” Richard Allen became the new denomination’s first Bishop and retained that title until his death in 1831.

Richard Allen dedicated his entire life toward uplifting his fellow African Americans. He felt that true Christians had to stretch out their hands beyond the circle of family and friends “to comfort the poor neighbor, the stranger, the widow, and the orphan.” He helped establish the Free African Society, the Bethel Benevolent Society, and the African Society for the Education of Youth “in order to support one another…from a love to the people of our complexion whom we behold with sorrow.” Bethel Church became the scene of numerous Black conventions to discuss the abolition of slavery and racial discrimination, and Richard Allen was commonly recognized as the leader of free Northern Blacks. Allen also published “An Address to Those Who Keep Slaves” in which he attacked slavery and the arguments for it.

Allen spent the final years of his life vehemently opposing the American Colonization Society, which Whites organized in 1817 to support the emigration of free Blacks from America to Africa. The American Colonization Society argued that free Blacks would have to leave this country to find true freedom, since the Fugitive Slave Act allowed any White person to call a free Black a fugitive slave. Since African Americans could not testify in court and therefore could not defend themselves, they had to find someone White who could speak in their behalf or they would become enslaved. Richard Allen himself was once called a fugitive slave, but fortunately, he was so famous that he not only won his case but had his accuser thrown into jail for three months. The American Colonization Society also argued that African Americans could help civilize and convert their less fortunate African brothers. However, Allen angrily responded that American Blacks could not convert or civilize anyone since they were mostly illiterate and uneducated themselves. He felt the real purpose of the colonizationists was to expel the most vociferous opponents of slavery. Allen told the American Colonization Society: “We will never separate ourselves voluntarily from the slave population in this country; they are our brethren and we feel there is more virtue in suffering privations with them than fancied advantage for a season.”

Richard Allen propelled the A. M. E. Church to the center of Black institutional activity during his lifetime. Allen’s life, as much as his sermons, remained an effective example for the future leadership of the A. M. E. Church. Moreover, his leadership direction is responsible for the continued proliferation of A. M. E. membership throughout the 19th and 20th century, which today boasts a total of over three million members.