The African Methodist Episcopal Church is one of America’s most venerable African-American institutions. With 2.5 million members [1] in thirty-five countries on five continents [2] it is one of the most populous and oldest black churches founded in the United States. When a young talented preacher and former slave named Richard Allen led a small group of African American worshipers out of a Philadelphia Methodist church in the late 1700s, the seeds were planted for what would become the AME Church—a refuge and spiritual home for millions in the United States and around the world.
Childhood and Conversion
“I was born in the year of the Lord 1760, on February 14th, a slave to Benjamin Chew, of Philadelphia. My mother and father and four children of us were sold into Delaware State, near Dover, and I was a child and lived with him until I was upwards of twenty years of age, during which time I was awakened and brought to see myself poor, wretched, and undone, and without the mercy of God would be lost. Shortly after I obtained mercy through the blood of Christ and was constrained to exhort my old companions to seek the Lord.” [3]
Despite the autobiographical account of the date and place of his birth, there has been debate on Allen’s birthplace. In his book, Freedom’s Prophet Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers, professor of history Richard Newman presents competing locations for Allen’s birth—Philadelphia and Delaware. There seems to be a consensus that Allen was born on February 14th, 1760 however.
Benjamin Chew was a prominent attorney who owned property in Pennsylvania and Delaware. [4] In 1868 Allen and his family were sold to Stokely Sturgis, one of Chew’s Delaware neighbours. [5]
On Sturgis’ farm the young Allen would likely have planted corn, wheat and flax. He got to know his master personally, as would many of their neighbours, since Delaware farms were small–ten persons or fewer, including the master’s family. [6]
Nine years later, Sturgis sold Allen’s mother and three of his siblings. [7] This would be a watershed event in Allen’s life. One scholar suggests the sale of his mother precipitated a spiritual crisis for the teenage Allen, one that was addressed by faith, specifically, faith practiced by the Methodist denomination. [8] Allen and his remaining siblings on the Sturgis farm, embraced religion, namely, Methodism. [9]
Methodist preachers held prayer meetings which some slaveholders allowed their slaves to attend. Allen and his brother attended such meetings every other Thursday evening. Aware of the neighbours’ talk–that religion would ruin their master–Allen and his brother ensured that their religious meetings did not impact their work. “[M]y brother and myself held a council together that we would attend more faithfully to our master’s business, so that it should not be said that religion made us worse servants, we would work night and day to get our crops forward, so that they should be disappointed” [10]
One day Allen asked for his master’s permission for a Methodist minister to preach at his house. Sturgis agreed. [11] The meetings eventually migrated from the kitchen to the parlour. After ‘some months’ Sturgis became convinced of the evils of slavery and agreed to allow Allen and his brother to purchase their freedom for $2,000. [12] This amounts to $20,000 and $30,00 in today’s money, depending on how you calculate it.
Allen worked at several jobs to earn the funds to purchase his freedom. He cut ‘cord wood’ (“The first day my hands were so blistered and sore, that it was with difficulty that I could open or shut them. I kneeled down upon my knees and prayed that the Lord would open some way for me to get my living.” [13] He worked in a brick-yard, was employed as a wagon driver during the Revolutionary War, and ‘drew salt’ in Sussex county in Delaware. While working to purchase his freedom, Allen also preached at night and on Sundays. He worked for three and half years and was able to purchase freedom for himself and his brother in 1783. [14] The paper detailing Richard’s freedom would become the first manumission document to be held as a public file, having been donated to the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. [15]
In September of 1783 he left Delaware for New Jersey, and by 1784 was in Pennsylvania. “I walked until my feet became so sore and blistered the first day, that I could scarcely bear them to the ground.” [16] As he traveled Allen was invited to stay at the homes of fellow believers, where he was often asked to preach, at times to ‘a large congregation of different persuasions’. Few in the congregation were ‘coloured’ – the most of my congregation was white. [17]
As his reputation grew he was asked to travel with established ministers, including the Rev. Richard Whatcoat [18] and Bishop Francis Asbury who ‘gave him assignments to preach’. [19]
Bishop Francis Asbury and the Methodist Episcopal Church
Methodism grew out of an evangelical style of preaching that appealed to the impoverished peoples of London in the 1720s. [20] Charles and John Wesley travelled to America in 1736 and started preaching in Georgia. Methodism gradually spread along the eastern seaboard and through the Appalachian region through the work of Methodist itinerant preachers. The denomination’s roots among the poor and marginalized extended to those in bondage as well, and its official opposition to slavery was affirmed in its General Rules in 1743. [21]
During the Revolutionary War (1775-1783) many Anglican clergy returned to England, resulting in a shortage of Anglican ministers in America. At the quadrennial conference in Baltimore, Maryland, in December, 1784, known as the Christmas Conference, Methodist and Anglican clergy untied to form the Methodist Episcopal Church. [22] The church became the United Methodist Church in 1968). Present at the 1784 conference was Francis Asbury and Richard Whatcoat. [23]
Francis Asbury (1745-1816) was an itinerant preacher in England when, in 1771, responding to John Wesley’s call for a preacher to go to America, [24] he volunteered. Wesley designated him ‘General Assistant’, later, Bishop of what would become the first independent Methodist denomination [25]. Asbury would eventually be recognized as one of the founding fathers of American Methodism.
Enforcing John Wesley’s rules for preachers and societies, Asbury required all preachers to travel a circuit. [26] He asked Allen to travel with him. “He told me he wished me to travel with him. He told me that in the slave countries, Carolina and other places, I must not intermix with slaves, and I would frequently have to sleep in his carriage, and he would allow me victuals and clothes.” Allen refused for fear of what would happen to him should he fall sick and require medical attention in a slaveholding region. [28]
Allen did, however, travel with another founding father, Richard Whatcoat. Whatcoat was appointed to the Baltimore Circuit. Allen writes, “I believe [he was] a man of God, I found great strength in traveling with him…” [29]
By 1786 Allen’s itinerant preaching on different circuits took him back to Philadelphia, and to the Methodist church there, St. George’s. [30] There were five black congregants when he arrived [31]. “I strove to preach as well as I could, but it was a great cross to me; but the Lord was with me. We had a good time, and several souls were awakened, and were earnestly seeking redemption in the blood of Christ…I frequently preached twice a day, at 5 o’clock in the morning and in the evening, and it was not uncommon for me to preach from four to five times a day. I established prayer meetings; I raised a society in 1786 of forty-two members.” [32] Allen found it necessary for a place of worship for the ‘coloured’ people but met with stiff opposition. However three black colleagues agreed with him, including the Rev. Absalom Jones [33].
They established prayer meetings for the black members, whom the St. George’s elders, Allen suggests, considered mere ‘nuisances’ [34]. As black membership grew so did hostility directed at them from the church hierarchy.
St. George’s Walkout and Mother Bethel
One sabbath morning in 1787 Allen, Jones and other black members of St. George’s attended service as they usually did. The events that day would spark the creation of what would become the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
“[O]n Sabbath morning we went to church and the sexton stood at the door and told us to go to the gallery. He told us to go and we would see where to sit. We expected to take the seats over the ones we formerly occupied below, not knowing any better. We took those seats. Meeting had begun, and they were nearly done singing, and just as we got to the seats, the elder said ‘Let us pray.’ We had not been long upon our knees before I heard considerable scuffling and low talking. I raised my head up and saw one of the trustees, Mr. H- M-, having hold of the Rev. Absalom Jones, pulling him off of his knees, and saying, ‘You must get up,–you must not kneel here.’ Mr. Jones replied, ‘wait until prayer is over.’ Mr. H- M- said, ‘no, you must get up now, or I will call for aid and I force you away.’ Mr. Jones said, ‘wait until prayer is over and I will get up and trouble you no more.’ With that he beckoned to one of the other trustees, Mr. L- S—to come to his assistance…By this time prayer was over, and we all went out of the church in a body, and they were no more plagued with us in the church.” [35]. When Allen retells the story he makes sure the reader is aware that black members helped build St. George’s– finishing the building, including the floors and the very gallery from which they were driven out. [36].
After leaving St. George’s, the black members held worship services in a rented store room and made plans to build a church of their own [37]. They raised funds among their members and from white benefactors, including a prominent physician, Benjamin Rush, [38] one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. [39]
Free African Society
On April 10, 1787 Richard Allen and Absalom Jones founded the Free African Society, a ‘quasi-religious’, nondenominational mutual aid organization. Members were required to pay one shilling per month and ‘abstain from feasts, drinking, and gambling.’ [40] In return they would receive educational and financial, support in sickness, and receive assistance if the member was a widow or a fatherless child. The Society also functioned as an 18th century ‘lobbying’ group, for example, petitioning for a burial ground for blacks. [41]
Allen soon became disillusioned with the FAS however. In Freedom’s Prophet, Newman suggests Allen’s strong Methodist’s beliefs and his desire to found a Methodist church within the nondenominational structure of the FAS caused severe tensions with the Society. [42]
Allen remained determined to build a church for Philadelphia’s black population. He and his friend Absalom Jones raised funds and finally purchased a plot of land. In March 1793, after being hounded and threatened by elders of St. George’s Methodist church for leaving, Allen, “the first proposer of the African church…put the first spade in the ground to dig a cellar…This was the first African church or meeting house that was erected in the United States of America.” [43] Later a vote was taken to determine the denomination of the church. Jones and Allen voted Methodist, the majority picked the Church of England. Allen, being the only ‘coloured’ preacher at the time in Philadelphia, was chosen to lead the congregation, but he declined. The Rev. Absalom Jones accepted when he was offered the position. The church became St. Thomas African Episcopal Church. [44]
Despite the treatment he and fellow members received at St. George’s Allen remained devoted to the doctrine and principles of the Methodist Church. He explains his decision to decline the invitation to pastor the Episcopal church: “I was indebted to the Methodists, under God, for what little religion I had; being convinced they were the people of God… I could be nothing but a Methodist, as I was born and awakened under them…” [45]
After the financial obligations incurred for establishing St. Thomas were paid, Allen purchased an old blacksmith’s shop and had it moved to a lot he had bought prior to the purchase of the St. Thomas site. “I employed carpenters to repair the old frame and fit it for a place of worship. In July, 1794, Bishop Asbury, being in town I solicited him to open the church for us which he accepted…The house was called bethel agreeable to the prayer that was made.” [46]
The name refers to the ‘Bethel’ of Genesis, 28, the place where Jacob dreams of a stairway to heaven, where the Lord promises him the land on which he is lying, to bless his offspring, and to “not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
Richard Allen’s Marriage and Careers
In October 1790, Richard Allen married his first wife, Flora. Professor Richard Newman depicts her as a helpmate, who aided his ascent as a pastor not only by supporting his vision of African Methodism but by establishing a respectable home. Flora’s role in Allen’s life mirrored the role of women in the early AME church–they were less likely to join the men on the frontlines but provided invaluable support in the background [47]. Flora Allen died on March 11, 1801, after a nine-month illness. Later that year, Allen married Sarah Bass, a member of the Bethel congregation.
One woman who defied the traditional role of helpmate and confidant, was Jarena Lee, who felt called by God to preach. Initially rebuffed by Allen to take the pulpit, he later relented, to the displeasure of the elders of Bethel.
While building his church during the 1790s Allen took on a variety jobs to support himself and his family. At various times he listed himself as a trader, grocer, dry-goods dealer, and ‘mastersweep’ (chimney sweep) [48]. He was also an entrepreneur. In 1793 he, Absalom Jones and another associate applied to a group of abolitionists for a loan to establish a nail factory. On July 10th, 1793 the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society granted Allen and Jones a $50 loan, and the enterprise was off on running by September. [49]
Yellow Fever Epidemic
At about that time, the summer of 1793, Philadelphia experience the initial pangs of what would become one of the worst public health crisis to hit the nation’s capital to date. White refugees fleeing a slave revolt in Saint Domingue (now Haiti) arrived. Then, residents began to display symptoms of Yellow Fever. The highly regarded Dr. Benjamin Rush, who had assisted Allen and Jones financially to build their church, initially blamed the outbreak on unsanitary conditions on the Philadelphia docks. On August 19, Philadelphia recorded its first fatality. [50] The disease spread rapidly and many of the city’s wealthiest and most prominent citizens fled. (Thomas Jefferson reportedly wrote to James Madison that everyone who could escape the city was doing so. [51]
Dr. Rush believed that blacks were immune to the disease and enlisted the help of the city’s 2,000 black residents to address the crisis. Richard Allen and Absalom Jones were asked to volunteer, and they complied. They procured five hundred men to inter the dead, but, as more physicians died, Dr. Rush asked them to attend to the sick, by bleeding and administering copious quantities of mercury.
The outbreak reached its peak in October when about 100 people per day were dying. Dr. Rush’s theory on black’s immunity proved incorrect for blacks began to die at the same rate as whites. [52] Others fell ill, including Allen. Finally a cold front swept through Philadelphia and reduced the mosquito population. The epidemic abated. When it was over, of Philadelphia’s pre-epidemic population of 45,000 residents, 5,000 were dead, including 250 blacks.
The heroic efforts of the city’s black citizens were criticized by some whites, whose comments affirmed long-held negative stereotypes: black’s stealing from white citizens, charging exorbitant fees for their services, price gouging to the point of extortion, and otherwise profiting from the tragedy. Mathew Carey, a Philadelphia publisher, produced a pamphlet chronicling the epidemic. In one section he echoed the charges made against the black volunteers. In January 1794, Absalom Jones and Allen published a pamphlet of their own ‘A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Coloured People During the Awful Calamity in Philadelphia, in the year 1793; and A Refutation of Some Censures Thrown upon Them in Some Publications.’ [53]
The pamphlet described their activities over a span of seventy days: burying the dead, encounters with the afflicted, a detailed record of monies received (they relied on the good graces of the persons they attended to), expenses incurred. They claimed to be out of pocket, £178.
For Allen, the attack by Carey was yet another slight on the black people of Philadelphia, and no doubt confirmed his belief that the coloured people of the city needed their own permanent place of worship.
The AME Church’s Founding and Growth under Allen
By 1794 Bethel was officially ‘organized.’ [54] It had forty members and a Sunday school. To achieve the stamp of approval, not only within the Methodist church, but within the wider community of Philadelphia and beyond, Bethel had to incorporate. In 1796 a Methodist elder, Ezekiel Cooper, offered to draw up the articles of incorporation. [55]
Thirteen articles of association were crafted, two of which would cause particular anguish for Allen and Mother Bethel for two decades. Article 2 held the property of Bethel church in trust to the Methodist Conference: “The corporation and their successors do and shall have and hold the said building called ‘Bethel Church’ and all other churches which are now, or shall become, the property of the corporation, in trust for the religious use of the ministers and preachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church who are in connection with the General Conference of the said church.” Article 4 prohibited the use of Bethel property to be used as payment of any debts without the consent of Bethel’s trustees or of the larger Methodist conference.
In his account of the Articles of Association, Allen writes “[Cooper] offered to draw up the incorporation himself, that it would save us the trouble of paying for it to get drawn. We cheerfully submitted to his proposal plan. He drew the incorporation, but incorporated our church under the Conference, our property was then all consigned to the Conference for the present Bishops, Elders, and Ministers, etc., that belonged to the white Conference, and our property was gone.” [56]
For two decades the Articles of Association would create considerable conflict between the upstart Mother Bethel, under Allen, and the Methodist Conference–a conflict that would involve ‘teams of lawyers’, Allen’s personal financial resources, and legal battles that would eventually extend all the way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. [57]
Bishop Asbury dedicated the building and ordained Allen deacon in 1799. [58] The struggle with the Methodist elders in Philadelphia continued. In 1805 Rev. James Smith was appointed to “take charge in Philadelphia”. He “demanded the keys and books of the church, and [forbade] us holding any meetings except orders from him.” [59] Allen and the Bethel trustees refused. Allen writes, of Rev. Smith’s response: “He observed he was elder appointed to the charge, and unless we submitted to him, he would read us all out of meeting, we told him the house was our’s, we had bought it, and paid for it. He said he would let us know it was not our’s, it belonged to the Conference, we took council on it; council informed us we were taken in, according to the incorporation, it belonged to the white connexion.” [60]
In defiance of the Conference, Allen added an ‘African Supplement’ to the original articles of incorporation. The Supplement reversed the Methodist Conference’s claim on Bethel’s property and of control over Bethel’s membership. [61] In 1807 the ‘African Supplement’ was ratified by the Bethel trustees but was not recognized by elders of the Methodist conference. Instead the Methodist hierarchy demanded a fee of $600 a year ($7,000 in 2010 dollars) to be paid to the Conference for the new relationship specified by the African Supplement. Bethel declined to pay. The Methodist Conference then refused to preach at Bethel, and threatened any local minister who did so, with expulsion. [62] Several preachers, however, demanded to preach at Bethel, albeit ignoring Bethel’s claims of sovereignty. Concomitantly, the Methodist Conference put up Bethel church for auction, with little notification to the congregants. Allen succeeded in buying back the church he built, with an offer of $9,600, the equivalent of $112,000 in 2010 dollars [63]. In addition a series of lawsuits were brought against Bethel, challenging its authority. Finally, at the beginning of 1816, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court found in favour of Bethel. Allen and his congregation were finally free to take full control of Bethel Church. [64]
By 1816 members of other A.M.E. churches had suffered similar experiences as Bethel. Allen invited delegates to gather in Philadelphia. They passed a resolution that “the people of Philadelphia, Baltimore, &c. &c. should become one body, under the name of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.” The church was to be based on “a form of discipline, whereby we may guide our people in the fear of God, in the unity of the Spirit, and in the bonds of peace, and preserve us from that spiritual despotism which we have so recently experienced—remembering that we care not to lord it over God’s heritage…[b]ut with longsuffering, and bowels of compassion to bear each other’s burdens, and so fulfill the life of Christ, praying that our mutual striving together for the promulgation of the Gospel may be crowned with abundant success.” [65]
On April 11th, 1816, Richard Allen was consecrated the first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal church [66] and the first Black person to hold that position in the United States. In 1817 Allen and Jacob Tapisco published the first edition of The Doctrines and Disciplines of the AME Church. The document provided a brief history of the Church, and an outline of its beliefs, teachings and practices. It is reportedly one of the oldest books published by American blacks. [67]
Allen’s Social Views and the Impact of the AME During His Lifetime
Several tenets were key to the early A.M.E church under Allen: moral uplift, racial solidarity, and abolitionism were not least among them. Professor Newman suggests, for example, that the most important actions taken at quarterly meetings was penalizing or banishment of members for such moral infractions as ‘public drunkenness, gambling, domestic abuse, sexual affairs.’ Morality— ‘hard work, piousness in the face of hardship’—furthered the anti-slavery cause, whereas ‘laziness’ and ‘idle conduct’ only strengthened the ‘bands of oppression.’ [68]
Judgement on those who violated church rules was final. For example, Jonathan Tudas, a Bethel member, was summarily expelled after allegedly exposing himself to a female parishioner, fathering a child with a white woman out of wedlock, then offering to assist her to abort the pregnancy [69]
Allen was also a proponent of ‘black solidarity’. Just as establishing a black church was important to him, so too was the idea of establishing a black community, free from the shackles of slavery and oppression. During the 1810s and 1820s Allen supported efforts to establish black communities in Canada [70] and Haiti, [71] the site of the first successful slave rebellion in the Western World.
Into his late sixties, Allen was instrumental in organizing for black uplift. He helped organize the National Convention of Coloured Persons to ‘systemize the struggle for racial justice among black leaders’ and advocated for the Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania, which fought for free labour (contrasted with slave labour) in the production of goods [72]. Bethel also became a meeting place for black organization, and black conventions. [73]
By 1816 Bethel Church had grown to 1,400 members, and by the 1820s the A.M.E church had spread to Pittsburgh, Ohio, Buffalo, and Charleston, SC. [74]
On March 26, 1831, a few days before Easter, Bishop Richard Allen passed away. To his family and friends, Allen–the man who was born a slave on Benjamin Chew’s farm more than seventy-one years earlier—bequeathed his considerable assets, assets for which he had literally slaved, worked and sacrificed for, for so many years. The assets included his Spruce Street residence, a multiple-rent, three story building, a series of land lots, and two houses–all in the city of Philadelphia–and a country home [75]. He was survived by his second wife, Sarah, and children: Ann, James, John, Peter, Richard Jr. and Sarah. [76]
© 2018 Weldon Turner, All Rights Reserved
Next Month
Richard Allen and The A.M.E. Church, Part 2: Legacy
Media
Bishop Richard Allen (1760-1831)
Library of Congress
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016712432/
Title: [Richard Allen, founder of A.M.E. Church]
Creator(s): C.M. Bell (Firm : Washington, D.C.), photographer
Date Created/Published: [between 1873 and ca. 1916]
Medium: 1 negative : glass ; 5 x 7 in.
Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-bellcm-24994 (digital file from original)
Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.
Call Number: LC-B5- 820734 [P&P]
Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
Bishop Francis Asbury (1745-1816)
Wikimedia Commons
Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Appletons%27_Asbury_Francis.jpg
File URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Appletons%27_Asbury_Francis.jpg
Attribution: By Jacques Reich (undoubtedly based on the work of another artist) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Bethel Church
Wikimedia Commons
Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mother_Bethel_Philly_a.JPG
File URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Mother_Bethel_Philly_a.JPG
Attribution: By Smallbones [CC0], from Wikimedia Commons
References
[1] World Methodist Council, http://worldmethodistcouncil.org/about/member-churches/statistical-information/ accessed May 21, 2018
[2] African Methodist Episcopal Church, https://www.ame-church.com/our-church/our-history/ accessed May 21, 2018
[3] Richard Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2015, p9
[4] Richard S. Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, New York University Press, 2008, p29
[5] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p33
[6] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, pp 33-34
[7] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p34
[8] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p40
[9] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p10
[11] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p10
[12] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p11
[13] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p12
[14] Historical Society of Pennsylvania, hsp.org, https://hsp.org/history-online/exhibits/richard-allen-apostle-of-freedom/path-to-glory-path-to-god accessed May 12, 2018
[15] Biography.com, https://www.biography.com/people/richard-allen-21056735 , accessed, May 20, 2018
[16] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, pp 12-13
[17] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, pp 13-14
[18] Allen, Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p15
[19] Carter G. Woodson, The History of the Negro Church, The associated Publishers, Washington D.C., 1921, Kindle Edition, 2014, loc 772
[20] C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience, Duke University Press, 1990, p49
[21] Lincoln and Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience, p50
[22] http://www.umc.org/who-we-are/why-united-methodist-general-conference-history-and-highlights, accessed May 20, 2018
[23] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p15
[24] umc.org, http://www.umc.org/what-we-believe/glossary-asbury-francis, accessed May 20, 2018
[25] umc.org, http://www.umc.org/what-we-believe/glossary-asbury-francis, accessed May 12, 2018
[26] Britannica.com, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Francis-Asbury accessed, May 12, 2018
[27] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p16
[28] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p16
[29] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p15
[30] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p17
[31] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p50
[32] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p17
[33] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p17
[34] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p17
[35] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p18
[36] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p18
[37] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p19
[38] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p68
[39] ushistory.org, http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/signers/index.html accessed May 12, 2018.
[40] Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, http://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/free-african-society/ accessed May 12, 2018.
[41] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, pp 60-61
[42] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p62
[43] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p21
[44] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p70
[45] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p23
[46] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p23
[47] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p74
)[48] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p83
[49] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p85
[50] Penn State University, Psu.edu http://pabook2.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/YellowFever.html accessed May 13, 2018
[51] Harvard.edu, http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/contagion/yellowfever.html accessed May 13, 2018.)
[52] Penn State University, Psu.edu http://pabook2.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/YellowFever.html, accessed May 20, 2018.
[53] Harvard.edu, https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:6483355$1i , accessed May 20, 2018.
[54] Virginia Commonwealth University, https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/religious/african-methodist-episcopal-a-m-e-church/, accessed May 16, 2018
[55] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p32
[56] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p24
[57] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p132
[58] Christianity Today, https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/denominationalfounders/richard-allen.html, accessed May 19, 2018
[59] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p24
[60] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p24
[61] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p155
[62] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p26
[63] Virginia Commonwealth University, https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/religious/african-methodist-episcopal-a-m-e-church/ , accessed May 19, 2018
[64] Virginia Commonwealth University, https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/religious/african-methodist-episcopal-a-m-e-church/
[65] Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, p27
[66] Richard Allen, Jacob Tapisco, Doctrines and Disciplines of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Kindle, loc 113, p11, https://www.amazon.ca/Doctrine-Discipline-African-Methodist-Episcopal-ebook/dp/B00KXCZUQO/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1520133397&sr=8-13&keywords=ame+church
[67] Bethel A.M.E Church and Shaffer Chapel A.M.E., BehtelAME62091.org, https://www.bethelame62901.org/history-of-the-african-methodist-episcopal-church.html, accessed May 21, 2018
[68] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p213
[69] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p212
[70] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p272
[71] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p253
[72]. Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p266
[73] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p268
[74] Virginia Commonwealth University, https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/religious/african-methodist-episcopal-a-m-e-church/ , accessed May 20, 2018
[75] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, p274
[76] Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, pp197-198
Bibliography
Richard Allen, The Life, Experience and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2015
Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience, Duke University Press, 1990
Carter G. Woodson, The History of the Negro Church, The Associated Publishers, Washington D.C., 1921, Kindle Edition, 2014
Links
World Methodist Council, http://worldmethodistcouncil.org/about/member-churches/statistical-information/
African Methodist Episcopal Church, https://www.ame-church.com/our-church/our-history/
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, hsp.org, https://hsp.org/history-online/exhibits/richard-allen-apostle-of-freedom/path-to-glory-path-to-god
Biography.com, https://www.biography.com/people/richard-allen-21056735
Umc.org, http://www.umc.org/who-we-are/why-united-methodist-general-conference-history-and-highlights
Umc.org, http://www.umc.org/what-we-believe/glossary-asbury-francis
Umc.org, http://www.umc.org/what-we-believe/glossary-asbury-francis
Britannica.com, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Francis-Asbury
Ushistory.org, http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/signers/index.html
Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, http://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/free-african-society/
Penn State University, Psu.edu http://pabook2.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/YellowFever.html
Harvard.edu, http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/contagion/yellowfever.html accessed May 13, 2018.)
Penn State University, Psu.edu http://pabook2.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/YellowFever.html
Harvard.edu, https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:6483355$1i , accessed May 20, 2018.
Virginia Commonwealth University, https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/religious/african-methodist-episcopal-a-m-e-church/
Christianity Today, https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/denominationalfounders/richard-allen.html,
Virginia Commonwealth University, https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/religious/african-methodist-episcopal-a-m-e-church/
Virginia Commonwealth University, https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/religious/african-methodist-episcopal-a-m-e-church/
Richard Allen, Jacob Tapisco, Doctrines and Disciplines of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Kindle, loc 113, p11, https://www.amazon.ca/Doctrine-Discipline-African-Methodist-Episcopal-ebook/dp/B00KXCZUQO/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1520133397&sr=8-13&keywords=ame+church
Bethel A.M.E Church and Shaffer Chapel A.M.E., BehtelAME62091.org, https://www.bethelame62901.org/history-of-the-african-methodist-episcopal-church.html
Virginia Commonwealth University, https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/religious/african-methodist-episcopal-a-m-e-church/
This church was really raised on Christianity principles and value’s