AME Church Though Not Really

AME Church

Though not really strictly a black church, the African Methodist Episcopalian Church (or AME church) has had a major leadership position in the black community and has served to empower the people, promote political and social causes, attract the patronage of political leaders, and at the same time develop a large and loyal congregation. The church has had a long history and is an important part of the history of the black church in America even if it is open to people of all races. The church is similar to others in terms of its organization and governance, and in theology it is a Methodist denomination. In other ways, it is a unique religious institution in the American system and continues to be an important part of its community.

History

The African Methodist Episcopal Church is a United States Methodist Church and is not affiliated with the United Methodist Church. The AME was formally organized in 1816, developing from a congregation formed by a group of Philadelphia-area slaves and former slaves. They had been members but withdrew from St. Georges's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia in 1787, and they did so because of discrimination. They built their own church, the Bethel African Methodist Church in Philadelphia, today known as Mother Bethel, and in 1799, Richard Allen was ordained minister of the church by Bishop Francis Asbury of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Before the Civil War, the church was found only in the Northern states, but it spread rapidly in the South after the war. In terms of doctrine and church government, the AME is Methodist, and it holds a general conference every four years ("History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church" paras. 1-4).

The church formed during the era when slavery was still in force in parts of the country, which affected many in the North because of fugitive slave laws even if there was no slavery in the North. One source of opposition to slavery was found in the church, and the black Christian churches did what they could to promote emancipation and the abolitionist cause. Religion developed so it formed the center of the world the slaves made for themselves. Parish cites Eugene Genovese to the effect that Christianity was a double-edged sword which could sanction either accommodation or justify resistance to slavery:

In the everyday routine of plantation life, it brought spiritual comfort and relief to the individual slave and sustaining power to the slave community. An emotional brand of Christianity, spiced with elements of the African religious legacy, developed into a distinctive African-American religion (Parish 81-82).

Researchers believe that slave religion inspired a powerful sense of community and offered leaders and spokespersons for that community, and it also helped to provide alterative standards and alternative possibilities in terms of relations between slaves. The influence of religion was likely different on large plantations as opposed to smaller farms. Masters and white preachers alike worked to convert the slaves, but African influences remained diverse and potent. Voodoo was still widely practiced, and conjurers had great influence within the slave community. These two strains merged to produce a distinct, syncretic African-Christianity (Parish 81-83).

The most important black denomination started when black members of St. George's Methodist Church found themselves segregated for the first time within the church, so they left and formed the African Methodist Episcopal Church, or the AME, as noted. This was to be an important center for social organization, economic cooperation, education, leadership training, political action, and religious life. It would be the primary example of the black church, the one institution African-Americans controlled (Raboteau 79-80).

Some of the fears of slave owners seemed to come true in the early part of the nineteenth century with the attempt on the part of Denmark Vesey to plot a revolt, and the suppression of that revolt in 1822 also led to attempts to suppress the black church as a source of dissension. Vesey was a member of the AME church, and a number of black churches in the South were forced to go underground. The Nat Turner revolt in 1830 led to further restrictions on the freedom of blacks to move about and organize, but in any case, between 1822 and 1861 there was a substantial increase in the number of black Christian congregations and church organizations in the country. By 1936 there were 86 AME churches with nearly 8,000 members. In that same year, the first organization of black Baptist churches, the Providence Baptist Association, was formed in Ohio, and by 1850 there were 150,000 black members of the Baptist Church (Ploski and Williams 1258).

Methodist preachers who had attended the Baltimore Conference in 1780 agreed to work for abolition. This conference established the Methodist Episcopal Church and saw slavery as contrary to the laws of God. The church ordered its members to divest themselves of their slavs, but by 1800 this order was withdrawn because the church was too busy increasing membership to concentrate on social reform (Richardson 53-55). This was the background against which the black members split off to form their own church in 1816.

By the end of the Civil War, many blacks had left the white Methodist Episcopal Church for AME, and by 1896 AME had more than 450,000 members.

The related African Methodist Church of Zion had 380,000 members, and even more blacks ere abandoning white churches for other black churches, such as the Colored Primitive Baptists and the African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church in 1866; the Reformed Zion Union Apostolic church and the Colored Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1869; the Colored (later Christian) Methodist Episcopal Church (CME), which separated from the Methodist Episcopal church, South in 1870; the Colored Presbyterian Church, which separated from the mainline Presbyterian Church in 1874; and so on. One group left the Northern-dominated AME church and formed the Independent African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1885. In 1895, various black Baptist associations merged to form the National Baptist Convention in Atlanta. Many of the ministers in these churches promoted racial consciousness, and many participated in Reconstruction politics. Henry Turner, a bishop of AME, advocated migration to Africa. Many black churches sent missionaries to Africa and the West Indies, and by 1990, four of nineteen AME districts were found in Africa (Carroll 86-87).

Success of the Church

As the church became more successful and attracted larger numbers of congregants, it also encountered new issues. Growth on this scale saw congregations in every northern sates and many southern states, bringing changes:

Inevitably, the church became more structured and hierarchical, as leaders struggled to accommodate tens of thousands of new members. These changes, in turn, posed fundamental questions about the church's character and mission -- questions that pitted leaders against laity, the learned against the "ignorant," the free-born against the freed. If we are to understand how the AME Church came to be in South Africa, and what happened to it after it arrived, we need first to understand these transformations and struggles. (Campbell 32)

African Methodism was from the first an expansive creed fueled by prophecy and dedicated to sending emissaries to encourage others to join the movement. However, there were hazards to the program of evangelization, especially in the South, "where a series of uprisings led by Christian slaves had left southern whites deeply suspicious of black independent churches" (Campbell 34). The church did manage to establish a foothold in many southern and border cities where there was relative social fluidity and an overlap between salve and free populations. Some of the problems could be seen in the rise and fall of the church in Charleston, South Carolina, where the roots of the church reached back to 1817. Membership reached about 3,000 and was established as the AME Church's second largest conference. However, the Vesey conspiracy created new suspicions:

Whether the uprising conceived by Vesey was as massive as panicky whites believed, and whether the AME Church played as pivotal a role in the plot as critics charged, are matters of considerable debate. What is clear is that the church bore the brunt of white reaction. Whites alleged that Vesey, who undoubtedly was a member of the church, had preached sedition from the pulpit and used weekly class meetings to plan his bloody insurrection. (Campbell 35)

The official investigation suggested that the AME Church had played a major role, and the church was banned and dozens of alleged conspirators hanged. African Methodism would not return to Charleston for another four decades.

Campbell also suggests that the rise of this church illustrates the view of H. Richard Niebuhr on the movement from "sect" to "church," seen as one of the major themes of Protestantism:

Virtually all the great Protestant churches began with small knots of saints, rebelling against religious establishments they regarded as worldly, ritualistic, and corrupt. Taking root in society's lower orders, most tended toward antiauthoritarianism, eschewing theological training and other conventional trappings of religious authority in favor of insight, enthusiasm, and an openness to spirit. Such movements, however, had a way of becoming victims of their own success, as Niebuhr argued. Insofar as they spoke to popular aspirations and needs, they attracted large followings, necessitating new structures and hierarchies. The sharp critiques of social injustice became muffled as devotees percolated up into the respectable classes. Enthusiasm waned, leaving liturgy and ritual to provide what spontaneity and spirit no longer could. Sects became churches. (Campbell 36)

Campbell syas that Methodism especially illustrates this idea beacsue this movement always possessed something of a divided soul:

On one hand, the early Wesleyan movement was an extraordinarily decentralized affair, that invested authority in an army of itinerant ministers and lay preachers, many with little formal religious training. On the other hand, Methodism retained a strong episcopal center that reigned supreme on questions of doctrine and discipline, finance, and ministerial appointment. The stresses implicit in this situation first became apparent in English Wesleyanism, which was wracked in the early nineteenth century by a seemingly endless series of schisms and disputes arraying ministers against congregations, the poor and the working class against the "better classes," defenders of enthusiastic "low" Methodism against those developing a taste for more cerebral fare. By mid-century, mainstream English Methodism had lost more than a million adherents and most of its political edge. (Campbell 36)

The process was slow in the United States, "where the persistence of revivalism and the exigencies of western expansion kept Methodists closer to their evangelical roots" (Campbell 36). Still, the church did become accepted as a church and not a sect.

The church increased in importance into the twentieth century, and between 1918 and 1932, representatives from the three black denominations of African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, and Colored Methodist Episcopal developed plans to merge into one religious body to be named the United Methodist Episcopal Church.

At this time, the clergy and laity of these three black denominations debated the advantages and shortcomings of the Birmingham Plan of 1918 and the Pittsburgh proposals of 1927, both seeking to create a single black Methodist organization. Opponents of the two agreements feared that organic union would work against their particular denominational interests and would also destroy their historical identity. Those advocating such a merger stressed the common religious and racial background of the three churches, holding that black Methodist unity would benefit the nation's black population: "By 1932, however, the deep denominational divisions among black Methodists slowed the movement toward merger and undermined efforts to end the religious rivalry among these three important black institutions" (Dickerson 479). At the time, the AME church was the largest of the three 545,814 members in 6,708 churches in 1926 (Dickerson 480).

Mission of the Church

The mission statement for the AME church stats that its purpose is "to minister to the spiritual, intellectual, physical and emotional, and environmental needs of all people by spreading Christ's liberating gospel through word and deed. At every level of the Connection and in every local church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church shall engage in carrying out the spirit of the original Free African Society, out of which the a.M.E. Church evolved..." ("Mission Statement" para. 1). This program covers a number of topics, including to seek out and save the lost and to serve the needy through a continuing program the covers the following elements: preaching the gospel: feeding the hungry: clothing the naked: housing the homeless: cheering the fallen: providing jobs for the jobless: administering to the needs of those in prisons, hospitals, nursing homes, asylums, and mental senior citizens' homes; caring for the sick, the shut-in, the mentally and socially disturbed; and encouraging thrift and economic development.

The AME church has recently undertaken to address social issues such as the role of women in the church itself. The organization elected its first woman bishop in 2000 and then added two more in 2004. In addition, the church has be3n increasing its presence in Africa by electing three native African bishops, showing a commitment to local leadership in that part of the world ("AME Church Elects More Women Bishops" 18).

Another part of the mission to which AME is dedicated is economic advancement for those in the community, and AME has been instrumental in raising funds for various charitable organizations and also for developing programs to aid in developing more black-owned business and to gain similar opportunities for economic improvement for people. Black churches of all sorts are working to address the many problems facing the inner cities across the country, such as chronic unemployment, crime, substance abuse, illiteracy, the spread of AIDs, and absent fathers: "While the rest of the United States is enjoying an economic boom, these blights remain the rampant pathology of inner-city America and the context in which many urban African-American churches work out their historic commitment to God and their fellow man" (How'd 18). Government has failed to solve these issues or to make much of a difference in impoverished neighborhoods. Arican-American churches have long served as the hub of life in their communities, and one recent example given is as follows:

There is Payne Memorial African Methodist Episcopal (or AME) Church in Baltimore, where a huge office building was dedicated on Sept. 19, 1999, to house community services under the leadership of the Rev. Vashti Murphy McKenzie, the first woman to pastor a large congregation in that denomination. Already the building hosts a dozen outreaches ranging from a welfare-to-work center for unemployed women to an entrepreneurial-skills program in which a dozen youths are marketing their own line of clothing. Some of Payne Memorial's programs are funded by a $1.5 million government social-services contract. (How'd 18)

Many of the black churches today exist not in the sort of major edifices that many of the larger denominations have but in storefronts, in effect matching the depressed areas in which they are found. An example cited is that of the AME church in Washington, D.C. where more than 80 people gather every Sunday. As Amanda Mantone writes,

Storefront churches dot most street comers in Petworth, ministering from dilapidated row houses and boarded-up commercial strips. Some are new, but most have been there for several years, having started in school buildings or the basements of more established churches. Many of the area's largest congregations once worshiped in storefront sanctuaries, sandwiched between liquor stores and funeral homes. (Mantone 14)