Richard Allen founded and became the first Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816. The AMEC grew out of the Free African Society (FAS) which Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and others established in Philadelphia in 1787. Allen was one of the greatest religious leaders in Black history. His leadership and organizational skills were phenomenal. Born of slave parents on February 14th, 1760, in Philadelphia, Allen was a slave to Benjamin Chu. When he was seven years old, Chu then sold him to Stokley Sturgis of Dover, Delaware, separating him from his mother and two of his siblings. Richard, his older brother, and sister stayed together. As a slave, Allen had neither freedom nor a last name. He was known simply as "Negro Richard." At age 17, Allen converted to Methodism after hearing a White itinerant Methodist preacher. That was the foundational moment in his life when he hears these ministers.
With Sturgis's permission, Allen started going to meetings of the local Methodist Society and his life was changed. This group welcomed both enslaved and free Black people. They met in the woods around the Sturgis farm. The explanation of scriptures helped inform his understanding of who he was as a man. He felt God certainly didn't make him to be bound. Richard taught himself to read and write. Allen remembered slavery as difficult, but living in Delaware, where nearly half of the African American population was free, persuaded him that slavery was not his destiny. Some of their neighbors were saying that religion would make slaves worse servants. Allen and his brother worked even harder for Sturgis. They wanted to show that religion did not make enslaved people lazy.
Many Methodist and Baptist ministers after the Revolutionary War encouraged slaveholders to free their people. Sturgis began to think that holding people as slaves was wrong, so he proposed to sell Richard Allen his freedom. Sturgis allowed Richard to buy his freedom in 1783. At age 26, Richard bought his freedom for $2,000 over 5 years and received a bill of manumission. The paper detailing Allen's freedom would in fact become the first manumission document to be held as a public file. He gave himself a last name, "Allen." Richard Allen was a man of sublime courage and indestructible and passionate faith. Equipped with these two spiritual weapons he could not be beaten down. He embarked on a career as an itinerant preacher in Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Allen used Methodism as a tool to impeach the institution of slavery, even as the nascent United States was making it legally permanent.
In 1786, Allen accepted an invitation to preach at St. George's Church in Philadelphia, a mixed-race congregation of Methodists. His presence and message brought in many new members. As his following grew, White church leaders began segregating the Black members in the balcony during services. Allen's commitment to Methodism also compelled him to stay at St. George's despite the segregated seating arrangement. One Sunday morning, Allen and Absalom Jones, another Black Methodist preacher challenged St. George's segregated seating arrangement by sitting downstairs. Two White trustees forced Jones to leave in the middle of the opening prayer. Allen and Jones led the Black congregation out of St. George's Church. Allen then joined the Rev. Absalom Jones to found the Free African Society, a nondenominational religious association and mutual aid organization.
The Free African Society help Black people pool their resources and promote the interests of African Americans independent of Whites. It also helped new Black people moving to Philadelphia. Allen, Jones, and others found land on Sixth Street. Most F.A.S. members later decided to join the Church of England. This church had reorganized in America as "The Protestant Episcopal Church." On August 12, 1792, the Free African Society members founded The African Church of Philadelphia. Because of the Methodists' discriminatory treatment of Blacks, the church was consecrated as part of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and Jones became the denomination's first Black priest. Allen, however, remained faithful to Methodism and wanted to continue with the simpler Methodist ways. He used his savings to buy a former blacksmith's shop and transplant it onto a plot of land he had previously purchased in Philadelphia.
In 1793, Allen and Absalom Jones responded to prominent medical doctor and philanthropist, Benjamin Rush's call to mobilize the Black community to serve during Philadelphia's yellow fever epidemic. More than 10% of the city's people died, more than half left. When reports circulated of African Americans plundering and profiteering from the disease, the two ministers published "A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People, During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia in the Year 1793 and A Refutation of Some Censures Thrown upon them in some late Publications", a defense of the Black community and a documentation of their heroic efforts. Allen understood that you got to put things down in writing, and that if it isn't written, then it did not happen.
After renovations, Bethel African Church opened on February 4, 1794, and Allen was ordained its deacon. Allen would use his church to further the cause equality. Richard Allen felt that he had a special duty to spread the gospel among Africans and people of African descent as well as those of all ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds. These were the people, who, because of segregation and discrimination in church and state, were being dehumanized, ostracized, exploited, robbed, by-passed and otherwise mistreated. With these high goals and noble purposes in mind, he proceeded to take the ugly social situation which made his movement necessary, and stir up in the African a burning determination to be first class Christians and first class Americans.
Allen's first wife was named Flora. They married on October 19, 1790. Flora worked closely with him when he was starting the church. Flora died on March 11, 1801, after a long illness. Bethel Church was enormously successful. By 1810, membership rose from the original 40 members to almost 400. The church had become Black Philadelphia's most important institution. Allen's sermons often focused on important social issues. He preached about ending slavery, education, and temperance (avoiding alcohol). The success of Bethel angered and worried White Methodist preachers, who were incensed by Allen's refusal to allow them to control the church. They attempted to take over Bethel and install a White elder. Allen did not budged. Allen was incensed, but was determined not to lose. They went to court and in 1815 won a lawsuit that permitted them to sell the building and the land. Allen was incensed, but was determined not to lose. Good financial planning and enthusiasm for fundraising enabled him to quickly raise $10,125, and he bought back the very church that he had built.
Many Black Methodists formed African Methodist Churches in northeastern cities. Because all experienced similar challenges from White Methodists, Allen and other African American Methodist preachers organized a convention of Black Methodists in 1816 in Philadelphia to address their shared problems. They formed a new denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), and over time, it became known as "Mother Bethel" Church. Allen was elected bishop, and with his consecration became the first African American bishop in the United States. This was the first fully independent African American religious denomination in the United States. In major cities, both Northern and Southern, African Americans elected to form their own, separate denominations. Black clergy began speaking out against slavery and organizing voluntary organizations aimed at social reform and self-improvement.
The AME Church immediately became a center of Black institutional life. As its leader, Allen created the Bethel Benevolent Society and the African Society for the Education of Youth. By this time, powerful forces were trying to undermine Richard Allen. Slaveholding interests are trying to resettle free Blacks in African colonies. Allen began to publish articles in "Freedom's Journal" attacking slavery and organizations such as the American Colonization Society. Because Allen believed enslaved and free Black Americans could be best served through education and religious instruction, he opposed organizations that advocated the migration of Black Americans to Africa. From 1797 until his death in 1831, Bishop Allen and his wife Sarah, who had distinguished herself as a nurse during the yellow fever epidemic, helped enslaved people escape. Their home in Philadelphia was a station on the Underground Railroad.
Men did all of he preaching in the AME churches. Women did not lead. Jarena Lee was a young mother in Allen's congregation. She was inspired by Richard Allen. In 1807 Lee heard the voice of God commissioning her to preach the Gospel. She was initially reluctant to pursue ministry, given the male-dominated nature of the church. However, she decided to confide in Bishop Allen and revealed to him her call to preach. Allen told Lee that he could not grant her permission to preach because he was required to uphold the A.M.E. Church’s ban against female ministers. In 1819 during a worship service at Bethel Church, a guest preacher began struggling with his message and abruptly stopped preaching. Lee sprang to her feet and began preaching, picking up where the minister had left off. After Lee’s sermon, she was afraid that Bishop Allen would punish her for preaching without permission. On the contrary, Allen was so impressed by Lee that he officially gave her authorization to preach the Gospel. Allen asserted that God had called Lee to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Allen was a staunch supporter of the Anti-Slavery societies. He was president of the first Negro Convention and a contributing correspondent to the first Black newspaper, Freedom's Journal. One of Allen's major accomplishments was the organizing of the Society of Free People of Color for Promoting Instruction and School Education of Children of African descent in 1804. Despite the success of his church, Allen confronted many frustrations and disappointments. He was filled with doubts of American society, and did not see much future for his fellow African Americans in America. Ongoing racist attacks led Allen to consider a resettlement movement, in which African Americans would settle in newly independent Haiti, which he saw as a chance to build and enrich a nation that accepted Blacks as equal citizens. Allen even headed the Haitian Emigration Society of Philadelphia, helping hundreds of Blacks set sail for the Caribbean. They were never going to send slaves. Richard Allen still believed that the idea of some Blacks immigrating outside of the United States was worthy of discussion.
Another of Allen’s efforts came in 1830, when Allen, then seventy years of age, involved his church in the Free Produce Society in Philadelphia. This group raised money to buy goods grown only by non-slave labor to redistribute to poor African Americans. It also tried to organize active boycotts against the marketing and purchase of goods produced by slave-owning farmers, thus providing an early model for the grassroots organizations aimed at social and political goals that would become familiar to African Americans in the mid-twentieth century. He continued to work for inclusion within the United States, organizing and hosting a Black National Convention at Bethel Church in September, 1830, to protest a wave of laws that limited the rights of free African Americans in Ohio and Illinois. The next year Allen passed away at the age of 71 and was buried at Mother Bethel AME.