African Methodist Episcopal Church

African Methodist Episcopal Church, Protestant denomination organized in Philadelphia in 1816. On matters of doctrine and polity the denomination is in basic agreement with the Methodist church. A quadrennial General Conference is the chief policymaking body, and spiritual jurisdiction is exercised by a Council of Bishops. The church has 19 episcopal districts, including 5 in Africa.

In addition to missionary activity within the United States, the denomination maintains missions in Africa, South America, and the Virgin Islands. Its periodicals include the A.M.E. Review and the Voice of Missions.

The first congregation of what later became the African Methodist Episcopal Church was formed in 1787 by a group of black parishioners of Saint George’s Church in Philadelphia. Led by the itinerant preacher and former slave Richard Allen, they withdrew from the church in protest against racial prejudice. The seceding group held religious services in a rented storeroom. Similar congregations of blacks were subsequently formed in the city, and in 1816 Allen, who had become a prominent Methodist preacher, took the lead in organizing the groups into a separate denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Elected the first bishop, he was ordained by the Anglo-American bishop Francis Asbury of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Immediately after the American Civil War (1861-1865), the denomination sent missionaries into the South. Largely through their labors, the membership increased in ten years from 70,000 to 390,000.

The African Methodist Episcopal Church reported 2.5 million members and 6,200 separate congregations in 1999. It is the second largest Methodist denomination in the United States.