Dates: 1760–1831
Quote: If Richard Allen could transform a blacksmith’s shop into a church that changed history, then surely—surely—we can get our communities more engaged in our democracy.
Quote credit: Michelle Obama, First Lady, 2012
Image credit: The New York Public Library Digital Collections
Synopsis copy: Richard Allen was a formerly enslaved person turned Methodist minister, abolitionist, and civil rights leader who founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first African American religious denomination in America. [211]
Image credit: Library Company of Philadelphia [31]
Body copy: Faith played a crucial role in Allen’s lifelong fight for freedom—first his own, then that of others.
Date: Feb. 14, 1760
Title: Born into Slavery
Description: Allen was born enslaved to Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Benjamin Chew, who later sold Allen, his parents, and siblings to the Delaware farmer Stokely Sturgis. Financial circumstances eventually led to the sale of of Allen’s mother and younger siblings.
Image caption: A lithograph depicting former slaves of national prominence, ca. 1883
Image credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Date: 1780
Title: Purchases His Freedom
Description: Sturgis permitted Allen to attend Methodist meetings, and, inspired in part by the loss of his mother and siblings, he became a Christian in 1777. Through Methodist preaching, Sturgis also believed and was convinced of the wrongs of slavery. He later worked with Allen to help him purchase his freedom.
Image caption: Stokely Sturgis’s Bible
Image credit: Division of Cultural and Community Life, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Date: 1784
Title: Licensed to Preach the Bible
Description: In freedom Allen became a traveling lay preacher. Contact with Methodist leaders led him to ministry in Pennsylvania with Absalom Jones. They became the first African Americans licensed to preach by the Methodist Church, and they served as lay ministers at St. George’s Church in Philadelphia.
Image caption: Portrait of Absalom Jones; Allen and Jones met first in the fields of Delaware and again in Philadelphia.
Image credit: Delaware Art Museum
Date: 1787
Title: Founds the Free African Society
Description: Allen and Jones cofounded the Free African Society, Philadelphia’s first mutual aid and relief organization for “the free Africans and their descendants of the City of Philadelphia.” The Society fostered religious belief and literacy efforts and spurred the establishment of African American churches.
Image caption: Preamble to the Free African Society’s Constitution
Image credit: Wellesley College Library via Internet Archive
Date: ca. 1791–92
Title: Walks Out of St. George’s in Protest
Description: Allen and Jones led a walkout at St. George’s to protest racial discrimination. This act of protest was the first of its kind organized by African Americans in Philadelphia. The event led Jones to found St. Thomas Church, in 1792; Allen followed suit, founding Bethel Church in 1794.
Image caption: St. George’s Church
Image credit: Cyclopedia of Methodism; Embracing Sketches of Its Rise, Progress, and Present Condition, with Biographical Notices and Numerous Illustrations, edited by Matthew Simpson, 1882
Date: 1794
Title: Founds Mother Bethel Church
Description: Allen and other Bethel Church founders first met in a blacksmith’s shed. The church’s rapid growth and success made it the “mother” church of new congregations. This growth led to the organization of the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church in 1816, the first Black religious denomination in America.
Image caption: Mother Bethel Church
Image credit: Library of Congress
Date: April 10, 1816
Title: Consecrated Bishop
Description: Initially affiliated with the Methodist Church, Allen was ordained as its first African minister by Bishop Francis Asbury in 1799. Years later, after Allen and others had organized the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church, he was elected its first bishop.
Image caption: Early bishops of the A.M.E. Church
Image credit: Library of Congress
Bubble copy: Free Africans risked their lives to care for afflicted Philadelphians while others fled during the 1793 Yellow Fever epidemic. Allen and Jones detail their account in “A narrative of the proceedings of the black people … ”
Image credit: U.S. National Library of Medicine via Internet Archive
Bubble copy:We visited upwards of twenty families that day—they were scenes of woe indeed! The Lord was pleased to strengthen us, and remove all fear from us, and disposed our hearts to be as useful as possible.
Source: N/A
Image credit: U.S. National Library of Medicine via Internet Archive
Bubble copy: [T]wo thirds of the persons, who rendered these essential services, were people of color, who, on the application of the elders of the African church … were liberated on condition of their doing the duty of nurse at the hospital at Bushhill.
Source: N/A
Image credit: U.S. National Library of Medicine via Internet Archive
Bubble copy: When the sickness became general, and several of the physicians died, and most of the survivors were exhausted by sickness or fatigue; that good man, Dr. [Benjamin] Rush, called us more immediately to attend upon the sick.
Source: N/A
Image credit: U.S. National Library of Medicine via Internet Archive
Bubble copy: This have been no small satisfaction to us; for, we think, that when a physician was not attainable, we have been the instruments, in the hand of God, for saving the lives of some hundreds of our suffering fellow mortals.
Source: N/A
Image credit: U.S. National Library of Medicine via Internet Archive
Faith in Action
Body copy: Allen’s struggles continued, and he pursued independence from the Methodist Church through the Pennsylvania courts. This effort cleared the way for him and others to establish the A.M.E. Church in 1816.
Image caption: Mother Bethel Church commemorative program celebrating Richard Allen’s 150th birthday, 1910
Image credit: Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church
Body copy: Still active, Mother Bethel’s congregation is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal congregation in America. Their property is the oldest continuously owned land by African Americans in the United States.
Image caption: Congregants gather to worship in the modern-day Mother Bethel Church.
Image credit: R. Kennedy for Visit Philadelphia
Body copy: The civil rights activist Rosa Parks, a lifelong member and deaconess of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, visited Mother Bethel Church in 1995. She took inspiration from Allen’s life and considered him a hero.
Image caption: Rosa Parks visiting Mother Bethel Church
Image credit: Library of Congress, Visual Materials from the Rosa Parks Papers
Body copy: In 2009, congregants from Mother Bethel convened at St. George’s Church for the first combined worship service since the walkout led by Allen and Jones in 1792. It was a day of healing, unity, and hope.
Image caption: Congregants gather at St George’s Church.
Image credit: Jon Goldberg
Body copy: Richard Allen’s legacy is still celebrated, at Mother Bethel and around the globe. African Methodist Episcopal congregations commemorate Founder’s Day every year on or around February 14th, Allen’s birthday.
Image caption: Mother Bethel Church commemorative program celebrating Richard Allen’s 250th birthday, 2010
Image credit: Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church
Question/alignment statement: Do you think that faith can give people the courage to persevere in doing good in spite of opposition and ridicule?
Image credit: Michael Clemmons via Wikimedia
Scripture: I am the God who appeared to you at Bethel, where you dedicated a stone as a memorial by pouring olive oil on it and where you made a vow to me.
Scripture credit: Genesis 31:13a
Image credit: The New York Public Library Digital Collections
Related changemakers: Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, MLK