The African Methodist Episcopal Church's role in Black American history and community empowerment

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).

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)

This is seen as reaching out to those most in need in an era otherwise dedicated to the "megachurch," and "storefronts buck the trend toward massive congregations and televised, PowerPoint sermons. They instead offer intimate Bible studies to which members can walk. An urban phenomenon, storefront churches are difficult to study because so many are started by unordained ministers and are independent of denominational hierarchies" (Mantone 14). One of the reasons why storefront churches remain vital in this age is immigration, for many of these new arrivals seek out such local institutions and avoid the larger and more institutionalized church groups. Churches like the AME in Washington, D.C. also dedicate much of their effort to outreach work, which the pastor in Washington says is funded almost entirely by tithing.

To make the movement stronger and to reach more people, efforts continue today to create a unified Methodist movement as the black churches try once more to join into a union of churches. In this case, it is the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) and the Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) church, whose general conferences are considering a new Christian Methodist Episcopal Zion Church with a membership of more than 2 million members ("Black Methodist Churches Moving Toward Union" 676). The AME is not part of this recent effort and is by far the largest church of this type and well able to go it alone if it chooses. There has also been a move by some to create an even larger Methodist entity, a union between the traditionally white Methodist churches and the black churches. Some see the invitation of the white churches for the black churches to join them as paternalistic, and a merger seems unlikely given the opposition to it:

Some church officials worry that in a merger, the black denominations would be absorbed into the larger white denomination and could lose their special identity. In 1964 the United Methodist Church began dissolving what was then called the Central Jurisdiction - a nongeographic district comprising United Methodist churches that were black - and brought them into the white districts, which United Methodists call annual conferences. Some people believe that the members whose ancestors refused to leave the old Methodist Church despite racism and slavery lost their sense of black community when they lost the Central Jurisdiction. ("Methodist Groups Talk of Merger" 1071)

Some also believe that there is still a degree of hidden racism that might emerge if there were such a union, and this also mitigates against such a union.

Conclusion

The AME Church was created when a group of black members of the Methodist Church were discriminated against and worked to create their own church. This was in a different age, long before the abolition of slavery, and the church indeed worked for abolition until it was achieved. The church continued to work for the betterment of the black community, though the church has never been strictly a black institution and is open to all.

The church grew into a major institution and today holds a particular place in the community not only as an African-American institution but as an international institution, with a large contingent in Africa. The church has also become a major promoter of social change and economic improvement for the inner city region and the people who live there, achieving a good deal as both a politically aware force and a charitable organization. The political commitment has created some problems when government officials want to crack down on supposed illegal politicizing from the pulpit, as the IRS does from time to time, often against perceived enemies of the administration. The commitment of the church to change remains an important part of its mission and as a unifying force for the poor communities it serves.