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| MISSION OF FRIENDSHIP A.M.E. CHURCH Friendship African Methodist Episcopal Church is a church whose foundation in Jesus Christ is dedicated to seeking the lost by proclaiming the gospel and ministering to the needs of the whole person. This message charges us to:
We pray you will decide to join us! Click here for more information about joining this body of Christians. HISTORY OF THE AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH (AMEC) The AMEC grew out of the Free African Society (FAS) which Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and others established in Philadelphia in 1787. When officials at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church pulled Blacks off their knees while praying, FAS members discovered just how far American Methodists would go to enforce racial discrimination against African Americans. Hence, these Black members of St. George’s made plans to transform their mutual aid society into an African congregation. Although most wanted to affiliate with the Protestant Episcopal Church, Allen led a small group who resolved to remain Methodists. In 1794, Bethel AME in Philadelphia was dedicated with Allen as pastor. To establish Bethel’s independence from interfering white Methodists, Allen, a former Delaware slave, successfully sued in the Pennsylvania courts in 1807 and 1815 for the right of his congregation to exist as an independent institution. Because Black Methodists in other middle Atlantic communities encountered racism and desired religious autonomy, Allen called them to meet in Philadelphia to form a new Wesleyan denomination, the AME. The geographical spread of the AMEC prior to the Civil War was mainly restricted to the Northeast and Midwest. Major congregations were established in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Washington DC, Cincinnati, Chicago, Detroit, and other large cities. Numerous northern communities also gained a substantial AME presence. Remarkably, the slave states of Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, Louisiana, and, for a few years, South Carolina, became additional locations for AME congregations. The denomination reached the Pacific Coast in the early 1850’s with churches in Stockton, Sacramento, San Francisco, and other places in California. Moreover, Bishop Morris Brown established the Canada Annual Conference. THE MISSION OF THE A.M.E. CHURCH The Mission of the African Methodist Episcopal Church is to minister to the spiritual, intellectual, physical, emotional, and environmental needs of all people by spreading Christ's liberating gospel through word and deed. At every level of the Connection and in every local church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church shall engage in carrying out the spirit of the original Free African Society, out of which the A.M.E. Church evolved: that is, to seek out and save the lost, and serve the needy through a continuing program of (1) preaching the gospel, (2) feeding the hungry, (3) clothing the naked, (4) housing the homeless, (5) cheering the fallen, (6) providing jobs for the jobless, (7) administering to the needs of those in prisons, hospitals, nursing homes, asylums and mental institutions, senior citizens' homes; caring for the sick, the shut-in, the mentally and socially disturbed, and (8) encouraging thrift and economic advancement. THE MEANING OF "AME" The word "African" means that the church was organized by people of African descent and heritage. It does not mean that the church was founded in Africa, or that it is for persons of African descent only. The church's roots are of the family of "Methodist" churches. "Methodism provides an orderly system of rules and regulations and places emphasis on a plain and simple gospel. "Episcopal" refers to the form of government under which the church operates. The chief executive and administrative officers of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination are the Bishops of the church. OUR BELIEFS The Motto "God Our Father, Christ Our Redeemer, Man Our Brother" is a great summary of what the African Methodist Episcopal Church believes. Also known as the A.M.E. Church for short, the denomination is Methodist in terms of its basic doctrine and order of worship. It was born, through adversity, of the Methodist church and to this day does not differ in any major way from what all Methodists believe. The split from the main branch of the Methodist Church was not a result of doctrinal differences but rather the result of a time period that was marked by man's intolerance of his fellow man, based on the color of his skin. It was a time of slavery, oppression and the dehumanization of people of African descent and many of these un-christian practices were brought into the church, forcing Richard Allen and a group of fellow worshippers of color to form a splinter denomination of the Methodist Church. To find the basic foundations of the beliefs of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, you need look no further than The Apostles' Creed and The Twenty Five Articles of Religion. THE AMEC STRUCTURE The African Methodist Episcopal Church is a connectional organization. Each local church is a part of the larger connection. Our Bishops are the Chief Officers of the Connectional Organization. They are elected for life by a majority vote of the General Conference which meets ever four years. Bishops are bound by the laws of the church to retire following their 75th birthday. Presiding Elders are the assistants, like middle management, whom the bishops appoint to supervise the preachers in a Presiding Elder's District. A Presiding Elder District is one portion of an Annual Conference, which in turn is one part of the Episcopal District over which a Bishop presides. In the Presiding Elder District, the appointed Presiding Elder meets with the local churches that comprise the District, at least once every three months for a Quarterly Conference. The Presiding Elder also presides over a District Conference and a Sunday School Convention in his or her District. At the end of an Annual Conference year, the Presiding Elder reports to the Bishop at the Annual Conference and makes recommendations for pastoral appointments. Ordained ministers receive a yearly appointment to pastor a charge (church) on the recommendation of the Presiding Elder and with the approval and final appointment of the Bishop. The pastor is in full charge of the Church and is an ex officio member of all boards, organizations and clubs of that Church. 1) The General Conference The General Conference is the supreme body of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. It is composed of the Bishops, as ex officio presidents, according to the rank of election, and an equal number of ministerial and lay delegates, elected by each of the Annual Conferences and the lay Electoral Colleges of the Annual Conferences. Other ex officio members are: the General Officers, College Presidents, Deans of Theological Seminaries; Chaplains in the Regular Armed Forces of the U.S.A. The General Conference meets every four years (quadrennially), but may have extra sessions in certain emergencies. 2) Council of Bishops The Council of Bishops is the Executive Branch of the Connectional Church. It maintains general oversight of the Church during the interim between General Conferences. The Council of Bishops shall meet annually at such time and place as the majority of the Council shall determine and also at such other times as may be deemed necessary in the discharging its responsibility as the Executive Branch of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The Council of Bishops shall hold at least two public sessions at each annual meeting. At the first, complaints and petitions against a bishop shall be heard; at the second, the decisions of the Council shall be made public. All decisions shall be in writing. 3) Board of Incorporators The Board of Incorporators, also known as the General Board of Trustees, has the supervision, in trust, of all of the Church's connectional property and is vested with authority to act on behalf of th Connectional Church wherever necessary. 4) The General Board The General Board is in many respects the administrative body and is comprised of various departmental commissions made up of the respective Secretary-Treasurer, the General Secretary of the A.M.E. Church the General Treasurer and the members of the various Commissions and one bishop as presiding officer with the other bishops associating. 5) Judicial Council The Judicial Council is the highest judicatory body of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. It is an appellate court, elected by the General Conference and is amenable to that body. AMEC PROPAGATION AND GROWTH The most significant eras of denominational development occurred during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Oftentimes, with the permission of Union Army officials, AME clergy moved into the states of the collapsing Confederacy to pull newly freed slaves into their denomination. “I Seek My Brethren”, the title of an often repeated sermon that Theophilus G. Steward preached in South Carolina, became a clarion call to evangelize fellow Blacks in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Texas, and many other parts of the south. Thus, AME membership reached 400,000 in 1880 because of its rapid spread below the Mason-Dixon line. When Bishop Henry M. Turner pushed African Methodism across the Atlantic into Liberia and Sierra Leone in 1891 and into South Africa in 1896, the AME laid claim to adherents on two continents. While the AME is doctrinally Methodist, clergy, scholars, and lay persons have written important works which demonstrate the distinctive theology and praxis which have defined this Wesleyan body. Bishop Benjamin W. Arnett, in an address to the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions, reminded the audience of the presence of Blacks in the formation of Christianity. Bishop Benjamin T. Tanner wrote in 1895 in The Color of Solomon – What? that biblical scholars wrongly portrayed the son of David as a white man. In the post Civil Rights era, theologians James H. Cone, Cecil W. Cone, and Jacqueline Grant, who came out of the AME tradition, criticized Eur-centric Christianity and African American churches for their shortcomings in fully impacting the plight of those oppressed by racism, sexism, and economic disadvantage. In the 1990s, the AMEC included over 2,000,000 members, 8000 ministers, and 7000 congregations in more than 30 nations in North and South America, Africa, and Europe . Twenty bishops and 12 general officers comprised the leadership of the denomination. The denomination continues to grow in the twenty first century. The A.M.E. Church membership is governed by "The Doctrine and Discipline of the African Methodist Church". This official publication is reviewed and republished every four years after the church's General Conference. Its tenets are sworn to by each active member. |
| Last Updated 11-26-2007 |