Richard Allen - Founder and First Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
Richard Allen founds church, buys his way out of slavery from religious owner
Richard Allen was born into slavery in 1760. Had he been born a decade or two earlier, he might have been born free. Previously, anyone born in the colonies was born free. Due to economic influence, laws were passed to change this, making children born of slaves into slaves themselves, regardless of the father's social status.Richard Allen overcame his unnatural condition by purchasing his freedom. As the story goes, Richard Allen's owner had bought him along with family members in 1777. The Allen's were moved to Delaware where the farmer lived. This farmer was converted to Methodist faith by a peripatetic preacher, Freeborn Garretson. Freeborn convinced the farmer that the judgement of God would not be in favor of slaveowners. Who says religion is all bad?
Allen became a licensed exhorter, preaching the Methodist view to all who listened from New York to South Carolina. This attracted attention from the white leaders of the Methodist Church. Frances Asbury, first American Bishop of the Methodist Church, worked to appoint Allen as an assistant minister in Philadelphia. This was in 1786 at St. George's Methodist Church.
With Absalom Jones and others including Quakers, Richard Allen formed the Free African Society. This benevolence organization was chartered to assist free blacks. Later, in 1794, when Allen turned down the pastor's job at St. Thomas's African Episcopal Church, Absalom Jones took the job instead. Absalom did not break with the Anglican Church, while Allen pursued his own Black Reformation.
The reserved Quaker philosophy left some energetic Methodists like Allen underwhelmed. In an attempt to keep the tradition they developed, and to respond to white racism in the Anglican church, Allen created his own all-black congregation in south Philadelphia.
Opened in 1794, the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church was approved by Bishop Asbury (who attended the opening). At the same time the blacks were acting in a separatist fashion and continued to develop their own religious style.
By 1799 Asbury appointed Allen as deacon of the Methodist Church, and by 1813 the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church had grown to 1,200 congregationalists. The organization of the Bethel Society led, in 1816, to the election of Allen as its first bishop. Allen's followers were known as Allenites.
Richard Allen -- First Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
