African Methodist Episcopal Church
On a parallel path, Allen founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the first independent black church within the Methodist tradition. He and his followers converted a building and opened on July 29, 1794 as Bethel AME Church. In 1799, Allen was ordained as the first black minister in the Methodist Church by Bishop Francis Asbury. In 1816, Allen gathered other black congregations in the region to create a new and fully independent denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1816, he was elected the AME's first bishop.
Read more about this topic: Absalom Jones
Famous quotes containing the words african, methodist and/or church:
“The sacrifice to Legba was completed; the Master of the Crossroads had taken the loas’ mysterious routes back to his native Guinea.
Meanwhile, the feast continued. The peasants were forgetting their misery: dance and alcohol numbed them, carrying away their shipwrecked conscience in the unreal and shady regions where the savage madness of the African gods lay waiting.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“When Methodist preachers come down
A-preaching that drinking is sinful,
I’ll wager the rascals a crown
They always preach best with a skinful.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)
“Combativeness was, I suppose, the dominant trait in my grandmother’s nature. An aggressive churchgoer, she was quite without Christian feeling; the mercy of the Lord Jesus had never entered her heart. Her piety was an act of war against Protestant ascendancy. ...The teachings of the Church did not interest her, except as they were a rebuke to others ...”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)