Our Beginning And History

 In 1787, Reverends Richard Allen and Absalom Jones withdrew from St. George Methodist Church because of "unkind treatment" and restrictions placed upon worshipers of African descent. They founded The Free African Society, which was the beginning of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

In 1816, Richard Allen called together sixteen representatives from Bethel African Church in Philadelphia, and African Churches in Baltimore, Maryland , Wilmington, Delaware, Attleboro, Pennsyvania, and Salem, New Jersey, to meet in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A church organization or "connection" was organized as the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Richard Allen was the founder and first Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Our church is a member of the family of Methodist Churches. Richard Allen, our founder and first active Bishop, felt that no religious group or denomination would suit the capacity of his people as well as did Methodism. He was impressed with its emphasis upon the plain and simple gospel which the under-developed needed. He felt that Methodism had what we needed to encourage us to make progress, to worship God freely, and to fill every office which was available in church and in our total community.