African Methodist Episcopal Church: Richard Allen's Emigrationist Methods - Case Study Example

Richard Allen, founder of the AME Church Richard Allen was the inventor of AME i.e. the African Methodist Episcopal. He was also an educationalist, author and a minister. African Methodist Episcopal was the earliest self-governing black denomination in USA in the year 1816. In 1794, Allen opened his first church in Philadelphia. African Methodist Episcopal church chose Allen as their first bishop. He initially began as a preacher in this church, but he wished to institute a black congregation that was free from white influence. Among all sovereign African-American dominations, African Methodist Episcopal is the oldest. Richard Allen has gone through many struggles as an African-American minister and he endured racism, discrimination and he also struggles for justice but he prevailed over those hardships. In the book “A Concise History-Combined volume 4th edition” Darlen Clark-William explains about African-Americans tribulations and the rich culture they have fostered all through their history and their search for freedom through which they sought to go up against racism and intimidation (William 94). The writers have also acknowledged the diversity that exists in the black American sphere thus providing a class coverage and sex category and also balancing existence of common men and women with accounts of African-American (Henry 95). Allen was born on 14th February 1760 as a slave and while he was working in his employer’s farm, he developed a strong interest for religion and that’s when he was converted and became a member of Methodist society. His master supported him in his religion endeavors and later joined him and he permitted Allen and his brother to struggle for their freedom. Richard educated himself and as a liberated black, he travelled to many places ministering to both blacks and whites. Allen preached successfully and was one of the two blacks who went to Methodist Episcopal Church organizing convention at Baltimore in the year 1784. Allen headship had solidified the developing denomination, giving it a nationwide status. AME church went on growing and became a constituent of anti-slavery movement. Richard Allen died on 26th March 1831 as a fighter for justice. In the book “Freedom's Prophet-Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers” the author Richard S. Newman, a history professor gives a long study of Richard Allen; the founder of AME church. African-American histories concerning religion and metropolitan community life taking place in the early Republic has been of great interest to many authors. Allen’s African-American ardent defense and his struggle as the founder of self-governing church portray his significance in the early Republic. Newman adeptly brings together the familiar details in the life of Richard Allen and other founding fathers. In the text, the reader learns of emigrationist thoughts, his frankness to the likelihood of securing liberation for African Americans beyond the shorelines of the U.S. Newman states that, the Allen that comes out, is only the founding father for African-American society in Philadelphia but also a visionary founder for the whole land. Newman talks of Allen’s great deeds as a founding father and argues why he ought to have a place at the throne of great and triumphant men. Newman’s description of an African-American founding father is more liberal compared to that, which many people are familiar with. This author tries to discover a founder within the black society, who is a race leader, as a society coordinator, and as an initiator of independent institutions and in the new American realm as a real “republican,” enthusiastic to take on the question of closure as an ethical individual instead of evading it just his white equals. The setbacks facing Allen, nonetheless, goes beyond the era, leading Newman to expand his theory of an African-American founder further. Richard’s great effort to be both African and American, that strength of being that rebound across American culture, made him the foremost African-American prophetic leader in the nation. Fearless when it came to criticizing the nation and by presenting his own idea of national rescue, Allen laid down the basis for black broadmindedness, Marxism, patriotism, and conservatism. He was not a naive onlooker; he was a strong-minded, occasionally intractable, and politically savoir-faire leader who made the way for prospect leaders as miscellaneous for instance Booker T. Washington, David Walker and Martin Luther King Jr. People know very little when it comes to Allen’s formative years because he opted to give little info, considering that public achievements make a man and not personal events. In the text, Newman has outstandingly synthesized what many people are familiar with, for instance; the origin of Allen as a slave, his accomplishments of religious and legal liberty through his own determination and, through the evangelical change of his master. His struggle for sovereignty and justice took place against the milieu of the colonies’ own resist; even though Newman tells very little regarding if, the period of war devotion of Methodists depicted Allen’s personal political thoughts. After the conflict came to an end, nevertheless, there is little uncertainty as to Allen’s faithfulness to both Methodist community and the land. As Allen went up from a traveling exhorter to the initial African American Methodist church bishop, he continued being dedicated to providing African-Americans with liberty for praising God and warning those who apprehended them in oppression that they jeopardized the inviolability of the land. In the course of 1790s, Richard became the religious and political head of African-American society in Philadelphia. To the ancient debate, concerning whether the storm out of African-American congregation from St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church signified the shove of white biasness or the draw of Africa-American autonomy, Newman includes an interpretive turn Richard precipitated the entire event to advance his objective of founding a self-directed African-American house of worship (Newman 104). As a zealous evangelical, Richard spread the gospel of ethical discipline that he thought would fight white chauvinism. Saving America for African-Americans, nevertheless, also needed political trigger and autonomist or supporter of independence view. The sudden occurrence of yellow fever in Philadelphia in the year 1793 guaranteed a chance for African-Americans to reveal their religious dedication, loyalty, and civic good value by looking after the sick; however, their attempts were repaid with allegations of mistreatment and transgression. Absalom Jones and Richard met-up with copier Matthew Carey and fortified the city’s liberated African-American populace published against white ungratefulness. They both published response, Newman’s book convincingly shows that, they went further, defending African-Americans to a full-blown public confront to the country’s support of the organization of slavery. After the outbreak of yellow fever, Richard Allen dedicated his civic life to saving America for African-Americans, even though we discover that he followed apparently opposing paths for realizing it. He capitalized on his new-fangled spot as a head of the African-American community to make a hybrid path of African-American patriotism that entailed backing up interracial endeavors at transform while structuring self-governing African-American foundations. Allen went on petitioning and publishing, writing tributes of renowned southerners whom he assumed to be supportive of obliteration and announcing the confession of condemned African-American assassins to assert that theirs was an ethical, not an ethnic, flaw. At first declining to confiscate Church of Bethel from the Methodist Episcopal assembly, in 1815, he gave in when white ruling elders for the Methodist put Bethel Church up for Dutch-auction. Purchasing the church did not end Richard Allen’s dilemmas, because later on he had to take the Methodists to the highest courtyard of Pennsylvania to protect his right of controlling Bethel’s platform. Triumph provided Allen with the consent to establish a new church, the African Methodist Episcopal, and initiate a thespian program of nation advancement. The course of ethnic support did not at all times run easily. One of Newman’s huge contributions is his upturn of Allen’s different emigrationist methods. As ethnic hostilities toughened in the 1810s and in 1820s, Richards’s anticipations for interracial unity lessened. Doubtful if the youthful nation could ever be saved for African-Americans, he started to look somewhere else, consecutively speculating f Africa, Haiti, or Canada may possibly provide the ethnic egalitarianism deprived from them in America. For all certainties of Richard, his cohorts remained incredulous and skeptical. In 1817, they thoroughly rejected his suggestion of African colonization; however, this could not be the ending of Allen’s endeavors. An invite from Jean-Pierre Boyer the leader of Haiti, ten years later to migrate, illustrated Richard’s views from the two sides; from whites, an influential republic of liberated slaves close to to American shoreline and from African-Americans, disenchanted that Haiti did not become the promise land they had expected. Regardless of the hold backs, Richard Allen continued believing that liberation might happen at another place, wherever, but in the USA. At the closing stages of his life, he thought of Canada. Works Cited Newman, Richard. Freedom's prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black founding fathers. USA: NYU Press, 2008. Print Darlen Clark-William C. and Hine-Stanley Harrold. African Americans: A Concise History, Combined Volume (4th Edition). NY: Prentice Hall; 4 edition, 2011. Print Gates, Henry. African American lives. USA: Oxford University Press, 2004. Print Read More