The African Methodist Episcopal Church is one of  America’s most venerable African-American institutions. With 2.5 million members [1] in thirty-five countries on five continents [2] it is one of the most populous and oldest  black churches  founded in the United States.  When a young talented preacher and former slave named Richard Allen led a small group of African American worshipers out of a Philadelphia Methodist church in the late 1700s, the seeds were planted for what would become the AME Church—a refuge and spiritual home for millions in the United States and around the world.

Childhood and Conversion

“I was born in the year of the Lord 1760, on February 14^th, a slave to Benjamin Chew, of Philadelphia. My mother and father and four children of us were sold into Delaware State, near Dover, and I was a child and lived with him until I was upwards of twenty years of age, during which time I was awakened and brought to see myself poor, wretched, and undone, and without the mercy of God would be lost. Shortly after I obtained mercy through the blood of Christ and was constrained to exhort my old companions to seek the Lord.” [3] Continue reading Richard Allen and the AME Church, Part 1: Richard Allen →