Richard Allen and the African Methodist Episcopal Church: the walkout that built a denomination
The Black worshippers at St. George’s Methodist Church in Philadelphia had been moved to the gallery. During prayer one Sunday, white trustees tried to pull them off their knees and send them elsewhere. Richard Allen, Absalom Jones and others stood up and walked out together. That walkout, in the late eighteenth century, led to the founding of the first independent Black denomination in the United States: the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Freedom and Bethel Church
Richard Allen was born into slavery in 1760. As a young man, he converted to Methodism and began preaching. He bought his freedom in the early 1780s and travelled as a Methodist preacher before settling in Philadelphia. In 1787, Allen and Absalom Jones founded the Free African Society, a mutual aid group for free Black people in Philadelphia.
Allen founded Bethel Church in 1794, in a converted blacksmith’s shop. It became known as Mother Bethel. After years of legal disputes with white Methodist leaders, Bethel won its independence.
The AME Church and abolition
In 1816, Black Methodist congregations from several cities met in Philadelphia and formed the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Allen became its first bishop. The church was active in the fight against slavery, and its buildings sometimes sheltered people escaping bondage. After the Civil War, the AME Church grew rapidly in the South and became one of the largest Black denominations.
The AME Church spread to Africa, including Liberia, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Ghana, where it has congregations today. Richard Allen died in 1831 and was buried at Mother Bethel. He is remembered as a pioneer of Black independence, faith and self-help.
Yellow fever, Sarah Allen and AME schools
Mother Bethel AME Church still stands in Philadelphia and houses a museum. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 in Philadelphia, Allen and Absalom Jones organised Black volunteers to nurse the sick and bury the dead. Their service was vital to the city, though it was later unfairly criticised, and they published a defence of their work.
His wife, Sarah Allen, supported the church’s work and helped people escaping slavery. The AME Church founded schools and colleges, including Wilberforce University in Ohio. Richard Allen walked out of a church that would not let him pray in peace. He built one where millions have prayed since, on two continents.
