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African Methodist Episcopal Churchleft African Methodist Episcopal Church, usually called the "AME Church," is a Christian denomination founded by Bishop Richard Allen in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1816. The African Methodist Episcopal Church has a unique history. It is unique in that it is the first major religious denomination in the Western World that had its origin over sociological rather than theological beliefs and differences, and the first African-American organized and incorporated denomination. The AME church is also the church that sponsored the first independant historical black college, Wilberforce University. The church was born in protest against slaveryagainst dehumanization of African people, brought to the American continent as cheap labor. The AMEC grew out of the Free African Society (FAS) which Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and others established in Philadelphia in 1787. The church was organized by African-American members of St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church. The incident that led to this was the removal of Absalom Jones (1746-1818) from St. George's by the trustees while he was in the act of prayer. The congregation supported the act of the trustees, and Allen and Jones led the African-American members to form the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1793. In general, they adopted the doctrines and form of government of the Methodist Episcopal Church. When officials at St. Georges MEC pulled blacks off their knees while praying, FAS members discovered just how far American Methodists would go to enforce racial discrimination against African Americans. Hence, these members of St. Georges made plans to transform their mutual aid society into an African congregation. Although most wanted to affiliate with the Protestant Episcopal Church, Allen led a small group who resolved to remain Methodists. In 1794 Bethel AME was dedicated with Allen as pastor. To establish Bethels independence from interfering white Methodists, Allen, a former Delaware slave, successfully sued in the Pennsylvania courts in 1807 and 1815 for the right of his congregation to exist as an independent institution. Because black Methodists in other middle Atlantic communities encountered racism and desired religious autonomy, Allen called them to meet in Philadelphia to form a new Wesleyan denomination, the AME. The geographical spread of the AMEC prior to the Civil War was mainly restricted to the Northeast and Midwest. Major congregations were established in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Cincinnati, Chicago, Detroit, and other large cities. Numerous northern communities also gained a substantial AME presence. Remarkably, the slave states of Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, Louisiana, and, for a few years, South Carolina, became additional locations for AME congregations. The denomination reached the Pacific Coast in the early 1850s with churches in Stockton, Sacramento, San Francisco, and other places in California. Moreover, Bishop Morris Brown established the Canada Annual Conference. The most significant era of denominational development occurred during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Oftentimes, with the permission of Union army officials AME clergy moved into the states of the collapsing Confederacy to pull newly freed slaves into their denomination. I Seek My Brethren, the title of an often repeated sermon that Theophilus G. Steward preached in South Carolina, became a clarion call to evangelize fellow blacks in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Texas, and many other parts of the south. Hence, in 1880 AME membership reached 400,000 because of its rapid spread below the Mason-Dixon line . When Bishop Henry M. Turner pushed African Methodism across the Atlantic into Liberia and Sierra Leone in 1891 and into South Africa in 1896, the AME now laid claim to adherents on two continents. While the AME is doctrinally Methodist, clergy, scholars, and lay persons have written important works which demonstrate the distinctive theology and praxis which have defined this Wesleyan body. Bishop Benjamin W. Arnett, in an address to the 1893 Worlds Parliament of Religions, reminded the audience of the presence of blacks in the formation of Christianity. Bishop Benjamin T. Tanner wrote in 1895 in The Color of Solomon What? that biblical scholars wrongly portrayed the son of David as a white man. In the post civil rights era theologians James H. Cone, Cecil W. Cone, and Jacqueline Grant who came out of the AME tradition critiqued Euro-centric Christianity and African American churches for their shortcomings in fully impacting the plight of those oppressed by racism, sexism, and economic disadvantage. The AME church estimates around 5,000,000 members, 9000 ministers, and 7000 congregations in more than 30 nations in North and South America, Africa, and Europe . Twenty bishops and 12 general officers comprised the leadership of the denomination It is not the same as the U.A.M.E. Church founded in Delaware by Peter Spencer in 1813, or the AME Zion Church, founded in New York. See also: Methodist External link Reference - Encyclopedia of Religion in the South, Samuel S. Hill, editor
Bishops
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