RICHARD ALLEN: Apostle of Freedom
1760 – 1831
The story of the life and times of Richard Allen, the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, is germane to our sense of history, because Allen and his contemporaries had their roots in the Methodist tradition, and were closely aligned with the history of John and Charles Wesley’s experience in the United States. Like Nazarenes, the members of the AME church relish the connection with John Wesley and seek to perpetuate the contribution that he made to the holiness and evangelical tributaries of American Protestantism.
The Black Church has held a unique place in the history of our nation, not only by its contribution to the religious fabric that has evolved, but by its integrative ethic that forged its place in the social, political, economic, educational, and civil rights activism on the American landscape. To be sure, the institution of slavery is a sad chapter in history, but what is often lost is the resilient power that resided in the hearts and psyches of a generation of liberators and newly freed slaves, who paved the way for the Black community as we know it today. The narrative of the final emancipation of a people must of necessity include the reality that survival in a post-slavery America was as untenable a condition as slavery itself. Yet, the story of individual and collective fortitude and resolve remain as a witness to the resilience of a people.
In the last issue of Cultural Expressions, the life of Howard Thurman was highlighted. His life is remembered as a model of perseverance and radical optimism, lived out in the midst of the intense odds of social deprivation and segregation.
In this issue, another member of the “Ethnic Cloud of Witnesses” will be highlighted.
Richard Allen was born into slavery in Philadelphia in 1760 as the subject of the estate of Benjamin Chew, a leading Quaker lawyer in Philadelphia. In 1767, when the Chew family fell upon hard financial times, they sold the Allen clan to the Stokeley’s in Dover, Delaware. While in this estate, Allen was converted under the ministry of a Methodist itinerant preacher, Freeborn Garretson, who would also bring about the conversion of the slaveholder Stokeley. Because of the softening of his master’s heart, Allen was allowed to purchase his freedom in 1777 for $2,000. Today, that amount would be the equivalent of $40,222 US.
Allen earned a living sawing cordwood and driving a wagon during the Revolutionary War. After the war, he was credentialed in the Methodist church as a "licensed exhorter," preaching to blacks and whites from New York to South Carolina. His efforts attracted the attention of Methodist leaders, including Francis Asbury, the first American bishop of the Methodist Church.
As Allen fought in the Revolutionary War, he struggled with his own involvement in such a war on behalf of America fighting the British for freedom, yet enslaving an entire population. By 1787, the year of the meeting of the Constitutional Methodist Convention in Philadelphia, Massachusetts and New Hampshire had abolished slavery, and Connecticut and Rhode Island had adopted similar actions. This inner struggle would mark his lifelong disapproval of the institution of slavery.
During these early years of Methodism, Blacks were freely admitted into the Methodist Church, but their membership was recorded in separate columns. The principles and practices of Methodism were very attractive to them. In 1785, the church membership recorded18, 791 whites and 1,290 Negroes; in 1790, 45,941 whites and 11,682 Negroes.
As early as 1786, Allen began to speak of the necessity for the erection of a separate place of worship for Blacks, because they were being officially asked to worship in the rear of the churches. The final break and a new chapter in Black history came on November 1786, when Allen and Absalom Jones encountered racism at St. George’s Methodist church. These two Methodist ministers were found praying in front of the altar. They were not aware of the injunction that Black members were not allowed to pray at the front altar. As they knelt in prayer, a white trustee came over and grabbed Absalom Jones, Allen's associate, and began pulling on him, saying, "You must get up—you must not kneel here." Allen and Absalom responded, “Wait until prayer is over and we will get up and trouble you no more.”
This incident marked the turning point in Methodist history. Allen had for some time thought of establishing an independent black congregation, and this incident pushed him over the edge. Nonetheless, he had no desire to leave Methodism or the local Conference: "I was confident," he later wrote, "that there was no religious sect or denomination would suit the capacity of the colored people as well as the Methodist; for the plain and simple gospel suits best for any people."
Allen's decision to found a black congregation was partly a response to white racism. Although most white Methodists in the 1790s favored emancipation, they did not treat free blacks as equals. They refused to allow African-Americans to be buried in the congregation’s cemetery.
Still, Allen recognized that blacks needed a place they could worship in freedom. Through strategic planning, he would lead the young group to become a vibrant worshipping community, owning property.
Though Methodist leaders resisted Allen and Jones, threatening them with expulsion from the Methodist Conference (while at the same time pleading for their help during the 1793 epidemic), Allen went ahead and, in 1794, purchased an old frame building, formerly a blacksmith's shop, and created the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Bishop Francis Asbury dedicated the building and, in 1799, ordained Allen as a deacon.
A denomination quickly came together. In April, delegates from several black Methodist churches convened in Philadelphia and drew up an "Ecclesiastical Compact" that united them in the independent African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). Allen was ordained an elder and then consecrated as bishop—the first black to hold such an office in America.
For the next 15 years, white Methodist leaders in Philadelphia tried to keep Allen's congregation and property under its jurisdiction. But on the first day of 1816, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the church belonged to Allen and his associates.
Allen's primary goals were always the moral, religious, and intellectual education of blacks in America. In pursuit of those goals, he founded a number of organizations dedicated to education, particularly for black children. He also opposed the efforts of some to return blacks to Africa for the purpose of colonization, fearing that such a project would be less voluntary and more mandatory than it appeared.
Allen remained a staunch Methodist throughout his life. In 1789, when the Free African Society adopted various Quaker practices, such as observing fifteen minutes of silence at its meetings, Allen led a withdrawal of those who preferred more enthusiastic Methodist practices. In 1794, he rejected an offer to become the pastor of the church the Free African Society had built, St. Thomas's African Episcopal Church, a position ultimately accepted by Absalom Jones. A large majority of the society had chosen to affiliate with the white Episcopal (formerly Anglican) Church, because much of the city's black community had been Anglican since the 1740s. "I informed them that I could not be anything else but a Methodist, as I was born and awakened under them," Allen recalled.
But Allen's action also reflected a desire among African-Americans to control their religious lives, to have the power, for example, "to call any brother that appears to us adequate to the task to preach or exhort as a local preacher, without the interference of the Conference." By 1795, the congregation of Allen's Bethel Church numbered 121; a decade later it had grown to 457 and by 1813 it had reached 1,272.
Bethel's rapid expansion reflected the growth of Philadelphia's black population, which numbered nearly 10,000 by 1810, and the appeal of Methodist practices. Newly freed blacks welcomed "love feasts," which allowed the full expression of emotions repressed under slavery. They were attracted as well by the church's strict system of discipline--its communal sanctions against drinking, gambling, and infidelity--that helped them bring order to their lives. Allen's preaching also played a role; the excellence of his sermons was recognized in 1799, when Bishop Asbury ordained him as the first black deacon of the Methodist Church.
Over the years, Allen and other blacks grew dissatisfied with Methodism, as white ministers retreated from their antislavery principles and attempted to curb the autonomy of African-American congregations. In 1807, the Bethel Church added an "African Supplement" to its articles of incorporation; in 1816 it won legal recognition as an independent church. In the same year, Allen and representatives from four other black Methodist congregations (in Baltimore; Wilmington, Delaware; Salem, New Jersey; and Attleboro, Pennsylvania) met after a serious communication of sentiments, that a society should be formed “without regard to religious tenets, provided the persons lived an orderly and sober life, in order to support one another in sickness and for the benefit of their widows and fatherless children.”1
The Heritage and Legacy of Richard Allen
As we reflect on Allen’s life, the question is often asked, what was it about him that causes his legacy to live on today through the thousands of AME churches worldwide? What was the secret of his power? These questions bear particular relevance, because the answers help us to more clearly appreciate the strength of the AME church today.
Here are a few thoughts about his character that might be instructive for today’s leaders:
• He was a good man of plain mind and simple heart. Allen had firm convictions from which he would not waver and exuded an intensity of concentration that centered on results.
• He was full of hope for the future. He is cited often as having said, “Whether I am comforted or left desolate; whether I enjoy peace or am afflicted with temptations; whether I am healthful or sickly, succored, or abandoned by the good things of this life I will always hope in Thee, O my chiefest infinite good.”
• His religion was more than a theological and speculative one. He practiced what he preached. While he reveled in his African-ness, Allen’s conviction led him to minister to all persons. This he preached, and this he practiced.
• He was concerned with the broader international questions that plagued the world, as well as the domestic ones.
• He met all the crises of life with the unbridled conviction, fortitude, and strength that God was not an illusion, but a real Person, acting on our behalf.
• He was an industrious and very thrifty person. At the time of his death, his property was valued at $40,000.2
• His ministry was characterized by a constant grounding in social uplift, education, business, and public life.
• To the youth, Allen stressed the importance of self-respect, Christian manhood and independent spirit, as well as advocacy on behalf of the oppressed and enslaved.
