What Helped to Encourage Richard Allen to Establish the African Methodist Episcopal Church?

American educator, author, author, and black leader (1760–1831)

The Correct Reverend Richard Allen
Church building	African Methodist Episcopal Church
Installed	Apr ten, 1816
Term ended	March 26, 1831
Predecessor	Formed denomination
Successor	Morris Chocolate-brown
Orders
Ordination	1799 past Francis Asbury
Personal details
Born	(1760-02-14)February fourteen, 1760 Colony of Delaware
Died	March 26, 1831(1831-03-26) (aged 71) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, The states
Buried	Female parent Bethel AME Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Denomination	African Methodist Episcopal Church
Spouse	Flora, Sarah Bass
Children	Richard Jr., James, John, Peter, Sara, and Ann
Occupation	Founder of the African Methodist Episcopal church, minister, abolitionist, educator, author, and one of America's most active and influential black leaders
Sainthood
Feast twenty-four hours	March 26
Beatified	past Episcopal Church

Richard Allen (February 14, 1760 – March 26, 1831)^[ane] was a minister, educator, author, and 1 of America's most active and influential Black leaders. In 1794, he founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church building (AME), the first contained Black denomination in the Us. He opened his first AME church building in 1794 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.^[2]

Elected the showtime bishop of the AME Church in 1816, Allen focused on organizing a denomination in which free Black people could worship without racial oppression and enslaved people could discover a measure of dignity. He worked to upgrade the social status of the Blackness customs, organizing Sabbath schools to teach literacy and promoting national organizations to develop political strategies.^[3]

Early life and liberty [edit]

He was born into slavery on February 14, 1760, on the Delaware property of Benjamin Chew. When he was a kid, Allen and his family were sold to Stokley Sturgis, who had a plantation. Because of financial problems he sold Richard'southward mother and two of his five siblings. Allen had an older blood brother and sister left with him and the three began to attend meetings of the local Methodist Gild, which was welcoming to enslaved and free Black people. They were encouraged by their principal Sturgis although he was unconverted. Richard taught himself to read and write. He joined the Methodists at 17. He began evangelizing and attracted criticism from local slave owners. The slave owners were angered by his actions.

Allen and his brother redoubled their efforts for Sturgis and so that no 1 could say enslaved people did non practice well because of faith.^[4]

The Reverend Freeborn Garrettson, who had freed his own slaves in 1775, began to preach in Delaware. He was among many Methodist and Baptist ministers subsequently the American Revolutionary War who encouraged slaveholders to emancipate their people. When Garrettson visited the Sturgis plantation to preach, Allen's principal was touched by this annunciation and began to give consideration to the idea that property slaves was sinful.^[v] Sturgis was before long convinced that slavery was wrong and offered enslaved people an opportunity to buy their freedom. Allen performed extra work to earn the coin and bought his freedom in 1780 when he changed his name from "Negro Richard" to "Richard Allen."^[6]

Marriage and family [edit]

Allen's first wife was named Flora. They were married on October 19, 1790. She worked very closely with him during the early years of establishing the church building, from 1787 to 1799. They attended church school and worked together purchasing state, which was eventually donated to the church building or rented out to families. Flora died on March 11, 1801, after a long disease. Scholars do not know if they had any children.^[seven] After moving to Philadelphia, Allen married Sarah Bass, a freed slave from Virginia. She had moved to Philadelphia as a kid and the couple met around 1800. Richard and Sarah Allen had six children. Sarah Allen was highly agile in what became the AME Church and is called the "Founding Female parent."^{[8] [9]}

Ministry [edit]

Allen was qualified as a preacher and admitted in December 1784 at the famous "Christmas Conference", the founding and considered to be the first Full general Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Northward America. Held at the old original Lovely Lane Chapel meeting house on the narrow lane off modern S Calvert and German language (now Redwood) Streets in old Baltimore Town, (at present Downtown Baltimore), largest boondocks/urban center and port in Maryland. He was one of the two Black attendees of the Conference along with legendary Harry ("Blackness Harry") Hosier, (c.1750-1806), but neither could vote during deliberations in Lovely Lane. Allen was then immune to pb services at 5 a.1000., which were attended mostly past Blackness people. But as preacher Allen had family responsibilities, eschewing time to come bishop Francis Asbury (1745-1816), Irishman Robert Strawbridge (c.1732-c.1781?) and "Black Harry" Hosier's practices of horseback circuit riding routes to rural country churches and "Bible stations", visiting far off parsons and "living in the saddle", and so he moved northeast to Philadelphia, a center of free Blackness people and the biggest metropolis in the new United States and second only to London in the English language-speaking world, of the at present fractured British Empire.

By ii years later in 1786, Allen became a preacher at St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania only was restricted to the early on-morning services. As he attracted more Black congregants, the church vestry ordered them to exist held in a dissever area for worship. Allen regularly preached on the commons (fundamental park) nearly the church, slowly gaining a congregation of nearly 50 and supporting himself with a variety of odd jobs.

Allen and Absalom Jones (1746-1818), too a Methodist preacher, resented the white congregants' leaders' segregation of blacks for worship and prayer. They decided to get out St. George's to create an contained cocky-reliant worship place for African Americans of the big cosmopolitan capital metropolis. Unfortunately that brought on some opposition from the white church likewise as the more than-established Blackness people of the community who wanted to merely "fit in" or not stir up whatever hard feelings.

In protest in 1787 (the same famous summertime with the Constitutional Convention holding locked-in sessions in the old Pennsylvania State House (now frequently called "Independence Hall" with delegates from the "xiii Original States"), Allen and Jones led the Black members out of the St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church. They formed the Free African Society (F.A.S.), a not-denominational common aid society that assisted fugitive enslaved people from the S and new migrants coming into the city of Philadelphia. Allen, along with Absalom Jones, William Grayness and William Wilcher, found an available lot on Sixth Street almost Lombard Street. Allen negotiated a price and purchased this lot in 1787 on which to build a church building, only it was several years earlier they had a building. Now currently occupied by Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, it is the oldest parcel of real estate in the United States that has been endemic continuously by African Americans.

Over time, about of the F.A.S. members chose to return to the spiritual dwelling house of their youth and forefathers and chapter with the neighborhood parishes of the former Church of England as it slowly recovered from the wartime bitterness of the Revolution after the British ministry government ending the War in the Treaty of Paris ratified in 1783 by the Confederation Congress in Annapolis.The Anglicans which had reorganized themselves in a newly independent America now after the Peace in 1785 with nine dioceses on the East Coast / Atlantic Body of water shores meeting and uniting in their first Full general Convention as renamed "The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United states of america" (after known merely today as "The Episcopal Church, The statesA."), with the quondam familiar Elizabethan era old English language texts in the "Volume of Common Prayer", with some minor revisions in the first American edition of 1789, replacing prayers for His Purple Majesty, the King and ministers to those for the new President, members of the Congress, Governors and lawful state Democracy officials. As many Black people and "Methodists" in Philadelphia had already been Anglicans since the 1740s. It was but during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and with the part-time occupation of Philadelphia every bit the "Patriots" / rebels' capital past the British Ground forces that drove out most of the old English language/British ministers of the sometime Anglican faith (priests)^[ten] They founded the African Church building with Absalom Jones leading services and preaching the Word. It was accepted as a parish congregation, and opened its doors on July 17, 1794, known equally the "African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas". The following twelvemonth of 1795, the at present Rev. Mr. Absalom Jones was ordained as a Deacon (one of the earliest in American Episcopal/Anglican Church history) and nine years afterward in 1804, he became the start Black person ordained in the United states equally a Priest / Presbyter (Pastor) of The Episcopal Church, U.S.A.

Allen and others wanted to go on in the more than simpler and evangelical Methodist practices inspired by George Whitefield, John Wesley and his brother Charles Wesley. Practices and traditions that had originally been brought from England by Francis Asbury, Robert Strawbridge and interpreted in America past Daniel Coke, Daniel Alexander Phelps. Allen chosen their congregation every bit the African Methodist Episcopal Church (A.M.Eastward.), and over time it became known as "Mother Bethel" Church. Converting a blacksmith shop on 6th Street, the leaders opened the doors of Bethel A.M.E. Church on July 29, 1794. At offset, information technology was affiliated with the larger Methodist Episcopal Church building, every bit organized in Baltimore in 1784, and the Philadelphia congregation had to rely on visiting white ministers for consecrating the bread and wine / sacred elements in the Sun worship service of Holy Communion / "Eucharist. Otherwise, as a Deacon, he could lead services reading the Scriptures, preaching sermons and leading the assembled prayers and intercessions, In recognition of his leadership and preaching, Allen was ordained every bit the get-go Black Methodist minister/elder by Bishop Francis Asbury of the M.E. Church building in 1799. He and the "Mother Bethel" congregation still had to continue to negotiate with white oversight and deal with white elders of the predominantly white Methodist Episcopal Church building denomination. A decade afterward its founding, the Bethel A.Chiliad.Due east. Church of Philadelphia had 457 members, and past 1813, information technology had risen amazingly to 1,272.^[10]

In Apr 1816, 22 years after the organizing of "Mother Bethel" congregation in 1794, Rev. Allen called for a full general conference meeting in Philadelphia and proposed the uniting of the five African-American congregations so existing in the eastern areas of the Methodist Episcopal Church building in Philadelphia; Langhorne/Attleborough, Pennsylvania; Salem, New Jersey; Delaware and Baltimore, Maryland. Together, they founded the independent denomination of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (A.Thou.E. Church), the first fully contained Blackness denomination in the U.s.. On Apr 10, 1816, the other ministers elected Allen as their first Bishop, which he served in the episcopal office for fifteen years until his passing, simply 37 years total ministering to "Mother Bethel" of Philadelphia. The African Methodist Episcopal Church is the oldest and largest formal institution in Blackness America.

From 1797 until his 1831 death, Bishop Allen and his wife Sarah operated a station in the "Urban center of Brotherly Beloved" on the Hugger-mugger Railroad on the E Coast line for fugitive enslaved people fleeing from farther south in the slave and border states of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Due north and South Carolina.

Preaching [edit]

The social themes of Bishop Allen's preaching were abolition, colonization, education, and temperance.^[11] The preaching style was almost never expository or written to be read, but the subject delivered in an evangelical and extemporized manner that demanded activeness, rather than meditation. The tone was persuasive, not didactic.^[12]

Negro Convention [edit]

In September 1830, Black representatives from seven states convened in Philadelphia at the Bethel AME church building for the beginning Negro Convention. A civic meeting, it was the first on such a scale organized by African-American leaders. Allen presided over the meeting, which addressed both regional and national topics. The convention occurred afterwards the 1826 and 1829 riots in Cincinnati, when whites had attacked Black people and destroyed their businesses. Later on the 1829 rioting, 1,200 Black people had left the city to go to Canada.^[xiii] As a result, the Negro Convention addressed organizing assist to such settlements in Canada, among other problems. The 1830 meeting was the beginning of an organizational endeavor known every bit the Negro Convention Motion, part of 19th-century institution edifice in the Blackness customs.^[14] Conventions were held regularly nationally.

Death and burial place [edit]

Allen died at home on Spruce Street on March 26, 1831.^[15] He was buried at the church that he founded. His grave remains on the lower level.^[16]

Legacy and honors [edit]

• Allen is honored with a banquet twenty-four hours, March 26, on the liturgical agenda of the Episcopal Church (USA).^[17]
• In 2001, the Richard Allen Preparatory School, a charter school, was opened in his name in southwestern Philadelphia.
• Richard Allen Schools, a charter school system in Ohio, is named later on him^[18]
• In 2002, Molefi Kete Asante named Allen as one of the 100 Greatest African Americans.^[xix]
• In 2010, a park in the Philadelphia suburb of Radnor Township was named for him.
• The Richard Allen Homes, a public housing project in Philadelphia, were named for him.
• A street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is named later him.
• Allen University, a historically Black academy in South Carolina, was renamed in Allen's accolade when it moved from Cokesbury to Columbia in 1880.
• A postage stamp honoring Allen was issued by the United States Postal Service in February 2016, with a showtime-twenty-four hour period ceremony in Philadelphia, equally part of the ongoing Blackness Heritage Series.^[20]
• A life-sized statue of Allen, by Fern Cunningham-Terry, was erected by Female parent Bethel Church July 10, 2016.
• A mural, The Legacy of Bishop Richard Allen and AME Church building Mural, was unveiled on July iv, 2016, at 38th and Market Streets in Due west Philadelphia.
• On February 14, 2022, Allens Lane in Philadelphia's Mt. Blusterous neighborhood was re-attributed to Richard Allen by resolution of the city's quango, facilitated by the efforts of Country Rep. Chris Rabb (PA House 200th). A re-attribution of Septa'due south Allen_Lane_station is also contemplated. ^[21]

See also [edit]

• 2d Swell Awakening
• Jarena Lee

References [edit]

1. ^ Bowden, Henry Warner (1993). Dictionary of American religious biography (2nd ed.). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. pp. 15–xvi. ISBN0-313-27825-3.
2. ^ "Richard Allen, Bishop, AME'southward first leader". Retrieved January 2, 2016.
3. ^ Suzanne Niemeyer, editor, Research Guide to American Historical Biography: vol. Iv (1990), pp. 1779–1782.
4. ^ Herb Boyd, ed., "Richard Allen, from 'The Life Experience and Gospel Labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen'", Autobiography of a People, Random House Digital, 2000
5. ^ Newman 2008, p. 43
6. ^ Wesley, Charles H. Richard Allen, Associated Publishers, 1935, pp. 15–18
7. ^ Newman 2008, p. 172
8. ^ "Sara Allen", Brotherly Beloved, PBS, retrieved Jan 14, 2009
9. ^ Nancy I. Sanders (2010). America'southward Black Founders: Revolutionary Heroes and Early Leaders with 21 Activities. Chicago Review Press. p. 120. ISBN978-1-61374-121-iv . Retrieved June 3, 2013.
10. ^ ^{a b} James Henretta, "Richard Allen & African-American Identity", Early America Review, Spring 1997, accessed May 16, 2012.
11. ^ George, Carol V. R. (1973). Segregated Sabbaths; Richard Allen and the emergence of independent Black churches 1760–1840. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 190–191.
12. ^ George, p. 162.
13. ^ Carter G. Woodson, Charles Harris Wesley, The Negro in Our History, Associated Publishers, 1922, pp. 98, 140 (digitized from original at Academy of Michigan Library, retrieved Jan 13, 2009).
14. ^ Wesley, Charles H., Richard Allen, Associated Publishers, 1935, pp. 234–238.
15. ^ "Bishop Richard Allen". Jones Tabernacle African Methodist Episcopal Church. 2005. Archived from the original on November 21, 2008. Retrieved March 26, 2009. Bishop Richard Allen died at his home, on 150 Bandbox Street, on March 26, 1831.
16. ^ Ebony
17. ^ Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints. Church Publishing, Inc., 2010. pp. 290–291
18. ^ "Our Namesake". Richard Allen Schools. Retrieved April 17, 2019.
19. ^ Asante, Molefi Kete (2002). 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. ISBN i-57392-963-8
20. ^ "Richard Allen, Forever Postage stamp". Ad. United States Postal service. 2012. Retrieved January 20, 2016.
21. ^ https://world wide web.iseptaphilly.com/blog/richardallenlanestation

Sources [edit]

• George, Carol 5. R. Segregated Sabbaths; Richard Allen and the Emergence of Contained Black Churches 1760–1840 (1973), scholarly biography
• Wesley, Charles H. Richard Allen: Apostle of freedom (1935)^{[ ISBN missing ]}
• Who Was Who in America: Historical Volume, 1607–1896. Chicago: Marquis Who's Who, 1967.
• Newman, Richard S. Liberty's prophet: bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the blackness founding fathers. NYU Printing, 2008.^{[ ISBN missing ]}

External links [edit]

• James Henretta, "Richard Allen & African-American Identity", Early America Review, Spring 1997.
• "Richard Allen", Africans in America, PBS
• "The African Methodist Episcopalians" at the Wayback Machine (archived August 28, 2006), Religious Movements, University of Virginia
• Richard Allen, The Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, Philadelphia: Martin & Boden, Printers, 1833, full text online at Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina.
• Scot McKnight, "Shame on the Philadelphia Methodists".

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Allen_%28bishop%29

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