Origins The AME Church worked out of the
Free African Society (FAS), which
Richard Allen,
Absalom Jones, and other free blacks established in Philadelphia in 1787. They left
St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church because of discrimination. Although Allen and Jones were both accepted as preachers, they were limited to black congregations. In addition, the blacks were made to sit in a separate gallery built in the church when their portion of the congregation increased. These former members of St. George's made plans to transform their mutual aid society into an African congregation. Although the group was originally non-denominational, eventually members wanted to affiliate with existing denominations. Allen led a small group who resolved to remain Methodist. They formed the
Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1793. In general, they adopted the doctrines and form of government of the
Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1794 Bethel AME was dedicated with Allen as pastor. To establish Bethel's independence, Allen successfully sued in the Pennsylvania courts in 1807 and 1815 for the right of his congregation to exist as an institution independent of white Methodist congregations. Because black Methodists in other middle Atlantic communities also encountered racism and desired religious autonomy, Allen called them to meet in Philadelphia in 1816 to form a new Wesleyan denomination. Sixteen representatives, from Bethel African Church in Philadelphia and African churches in Baltimore, MD, Wilmington, DE, Attleboro, PA, and Salem, NJ, met to form a church organization or connection under the title of the "African Methodist Episcopal Church".
Growth It began with eight clergy and five churches, and by 1846 had grown to 176 clergy, 296 churches, and 17,375 members. Safe villages, like the village of
Lima, Pennsylvania, were set up with nearby AME churches and were sometimes involved in the Underground Railroad. The 20,000 members in 1856 were located primarily in the North. AME national membership (including probationers and preachers) jumped from 70,000 in 1866 to 207,000 in 1876. The church also expanded internationally during this period. The
British Overseas Territory of
Bermuda, 640 miles from
Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, was settled in 1609 by the
Virginia Company and retained close links with Virginia and the Carolinas (with
Charleston settled from Bermuda in 1670 under
William Sayle) for the next two centuries, with Bermudians playing both sides during the American War of Independence, being the point from which the blockade of southern Atlantic ports was maintained and the
Chesapeake Campaign was launched during the
American War of 1812, and being the primary port through which European-manufactured weapons and supplies were smuggled into the
Confederacy during the
American Civil War. Other Bermudians, such as First Sergeant
Robert John Simmons of the
54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, fought to end slavery in the United States. Among the numerous residents of the American South with ties to Bermuda was
Denmark Vesey, who was brought to
South Carolina from Bermuda as a slave before purchasing his freedom. Vesey was a founder of Mother
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church before his execution after conviction in a show trial resulting from white hysteria over an alleged conspiracy for a slave revolt in 1822. The majority of the population of Bermuda during the first century of settlement was European, with free and enslaved blacks primarily from the Spanish West Indies and Native Americans, primarily from New England (anyone not entirely of European ancestry was counted as
coloured). As any child of a coloured and a white parent was counted as coloured, the ratio of the white to coloured population shifted during the course of the 18th century (4,850 whites and 3,514 coloured in 1721; but 4,755 whites and 5,425 coloured in 1811). The
Church of England was the
established church, and was the only church originally permitted to operate in Bermuda. Presbyterians were permitted to have a separate church and to conduct their own services during the 18th century. The Wesleyan Methodists sought to include enslaved blacks and a law was passed by the
Parliament of Bermuda in 1800 barring any but Church of England and Presbyterian ministers from preaching. The Methodist Reverend
John Stephenson was incarcerated in December, 1800, for six months for preaching to slaves. The law and attitudes changed during the course of the following century, but any church organised by blacks and organising blacks would not be welcomed by the white dominated Government. Stephenson was followed in 1808 by the Reverend
Joshua Marsden. There were 136 members of the Society when Marsden left Bermuda in 1812.
Susette Harriet Lloyd travelled to Bermuda in company with the Church of England's Archdeacon of Bermuda
Aubrey Spencer. Her visit lasted two years, and her "Sketches of Bermuda" (a collection of letters she had written en route to, and during her stay in, Bermuda, and dedicated to Archdeacon Spencer) was published in 1835, immediately following the 1834 abolition of slavery in Bermuda and the remainder of the British Empire (Bermuda elected to end slavery immediately, becoming the first colony to do so, though all other British colonies except for
Antigua availed themselves of an allowance made by the Imperial government enabling them to phase slavery out gradually). Lloyd's book gives a rare contemporary account of Bermudian society immediately prior to the abolition of slavery. Among her many observations of the
people of Bermuda, Lloyd noted of the coloured population: Lloyd's negative comments on the
dissenters was in reference to the Wesleyan Methodists. The degree of education of coloured Bermudians would be noted by later visitors, also. Christiana Rounds wrote in ''
Harper's Magazine'' (re-published in an advertising pamphlet by A.L Mellen, the Proprietor of the Hamilton Hotel in 1876): The foundation stone of a Wesleyan Methodist Chapel was laid in
St. George's Town on the 8 June 1840, the local Society (by then numbering 37 class leaders, 489 members, and 20 other communicants) having previously occupied a small, increasingly decrepit building that had been damaged beyond use in a storm in 1839. The inscription on the foundation stone included: The AME First District website records that in the autumn of 1869, ''three farsighted Christian men—Benjamin Burchall of St. George's, William B. Jennings of Devonshire and Charles Roach Ratteray of Somerset—set in motion the wheels that brought African Methodism to'' Bermuda. By the latter Nineteenth Century, the law in Bermuda specified that any denomination permitted to operate in the United Kingdom should also be permitted in the colony (although only the Church of England, the Presbyterian Church, and the Wesleyan Methodists were permitted to conduct baptisms, weddings and funerals until after the First World War). As the Imperial Government had ruled that the AME Church could operate in the United Kingdom, the first AME church in Bermuda was erected in 1885 in
Hamilton Parish, on the shore of Harrington Sound, and titled St. John African Methodist Episcopal Church (the congregation had begun previously as part of the
British Methodist Episcopal Church of Canada). Although the Church of England (since 1978, titled the Anglican Church of Bermuda) remains the largest denomination in Bermuda (15.8%), the AME quickly flourished (accounting for 8.6% of the population today), overtaking the Wesleyan Methodists (2.7% today). The rise of the
Wesleyan-Holiness movement in Methodism influenced the African Methodist Episcopal Church, with
Jarena Lee and
Amanda Smith preaching the doctrine of
entire sanctification throughout pulpits of the connexion.
Education AME put a high premium on education. In the 19th century, the AME Church of Ohio collaborated with the
Methodist Episcopal Church, a predominantly white denomination, in sponsoring the second independent
historically black college (HBCU),
Wilberforce University in Ohio. By 1880, AME operated over 2,000 schools, chiefly in the South, with 155,000 students. For school houses they used church buildings; the ministers and their wives were the teachers; the congregations raised the money to keep schools operating at a time the segregated public schools were starved of funds.
Bishop Turner After the America Civil War, Bishop
Henry McNeal Turner (1834–1915) was a major leader of the AME and played a role in Republican Party politics. In 1863 during the American Civil War, Turner was appointed as the first black chaplain in the
United States Colored Troops. Afterward, he was appointed to the
Freedmen's Bureau in Georgia. He settled in Macon, Georgia, and was elected to the state legislature in 1868 during Reconstruction. He planted many AME churches in Georgia after the war. In 1880 he was elected as the first southern bishop of the AME Church after a fierce battle within the denomination. Angered by the
Democrats' regaining power and instituting
Jim Crow laws in the late nineteenth century South, Turner was the leader of black nationalism and proposed emigration of blacks to Africa. The African Methodist Episcopal Church has a unique history as it is the first major religious denomination in the western world that developed because of race rather than theological differences. It was the first African-American denomination organized and incorporated in the United States. The church was born in protest against racial discrimination and slavery. This was in keeping with the Methodist Church's philosophy, whose founder
John Wesley had once called the slave-trade "that execrable sum of all villainies." In the 19th century, the AME Church of Ohio collaborated with the Methodist Episcopal Church, a predominantly white denomination, in sponsoring the second independent historically black college (HBCU),
Wilberforce University in Ohio. Among Wilberforce University's early founders was
Salmon P. Chase, then-governor of Ohio and the future
Secretary of Treasury under President
Abraham Lincoln. Other members of the FAS wanted to affiliate with the
Episcopal Church and followed
Absalom Jones in doing that. In 1792, they founded the
African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, the first Episcopal church in the United States with a founding black congregation. In 1804, Jones was ordained as the first black priest in the
Episcopal Church. While the AME is doctrinally Methodist, clergy, scholars, and lay persons have written works that demonstrate the distinctive racial theology and
praxis that have come to define this Wesleyan body.
W. E. B. DuBois said AME was "the greatest Negro organization in the world". In an address to the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions, Bishop
Benjamin W. Arnett reminded the audience of blacks' influence in the formation of Christianity. Bishop
Benjamin T. Tanner wrote in 1895 in
The Color of Solomon – What? that biblical scholars wrongly portrayed the son of David as a white man. In the post-
civil rights era, theologians
James Cone, Cecil W. Cone, and Jacqueline Grant, who came from the AME tradition, criticized Euro-centric Christianity and African-American churches for their shortcomings in resolving the plight of those oppressed by racism, sexism, and economic disadvantage. == Statistics ==