Life and times of Richard Allen

 

Richard Allen

Richard Allen is known as the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He was a minister, educator, writer, and one of America's most influential black leaders.

Richard Allen was born into slavery on February 14, 1760, on the property of Benjamin Chew. In 1768 Richard Allen and family were sold to Stokeley Sturgis. The family was subsequently separated when Sturgis sold Allen’s mother and 3 of his siblings. A brother and a sister remained with him.

Some unspecified time after the sale of his family, Allen converted to Christianity in 1777 after hearing a white itinerant Methodist preacher rail against slavery. According to Allen the Methodist preached enthusiastically and evangelized without regard to race, he and his two siblings were drawn to the Methodist fold. Allen was allowed by Sturgis to invite preachers to preach. As a result of one of these sermons, Sturgis rejected slavery. Sturgis thus permitted the Allen’s to work to earn $2,000 in Continental money to buy their freedom. He cut wood, worked in a brickyard, and hauled salt from Sussex County, Delaware. During this time, he sided with white Americans fighting for freedom from Great Britain.

With his earnings Richard Allen paid Sturgis in 1783 and thus bought his freedom. Now as a free-man Allen preached and worked as labourer to support himself. Richard Allen developed relationships with widening circles of Methodists as he encountered them in expanding venues between New York and the Carolinas. One of them was Francis Asbury, who came to America from England in 1771, and Bishop of the American Methodist Episcopal Church. Richard Allen attended in December 1784 the “Christmas” Conference, in Baltimore, which formally organized the Methodist denomination in the United States.

In 1786 Richard Allen accepted an assignment to preach at St George Methodist Church and other venues in and around Philadelphia. At St. George’s Allen continued to hold separate worship services, white Methodists remained opposed to a black church. On a Sunday morning in November 1787, however, “we went to church and the sexton stood at the door and told us to go in the gallery.” Allen, Absalom Jones, and others in their group sat in the place they normally occupied. As prayers began, a trustee pulled Jones from his knees. As he resisted, another trustee was summoned to enforce the new seating arrangements. After William White was similarly accosted, Allen observed that “prayer was over, and we all went out of the church in a body, and they were no more plagued with us.” This racial incident “filled” Allen and his followers “with fresh vigour” to build their own church.

Richard Allen and others had already organized on April 12, 1787 the Free African Society (FAS), which focused on mutual aid. Members paid dues out of which funds were disbursed to assist the needy. These FAS activities attached to Allen as a legacy of economic self-help that remained for subsequent centuries in African Methodism and that complemented his other emancipationist initiatives. The FAS, after the St. George incident, also became a venue through which Allen could start a church. Under the banner of the FAS Allen and Jones led an effort to bring relief to victims of a yellow fever outbreak.

A large majority voted that the affiliation be to the Church of England(Anglican). Out of this arose the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, under the leadership of Absolom Jones. Allan wished to remain Methodist. Richard Allen bought a piece of land on the corner of Sixth Street and Lombard Street in Philadelphia. A ramshackle former blacksmith shop was purchased and moved to the lot that had been purchased by Richard Allen. 

 

 

In 1794 Bethel AME Church was officially opened in Philadelphia. This was dedicated by Francis Asbury, bishop of the American Methodist Episcopal Church.

It was also in 1794 that Richard Allen married Flora Allen. She was born in Virginia and only received her freedom from slavery on 1795 through the actions of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. She died in early 1801 and Allen subsequently married Sarah Allen(Bass) in August 1801. Together they had six children. Together they also operated a station on the Underground Railroad.

After Bethel became an institutional reality, various Methodist clergy commenced efforts to control the church. Since the annual conference usually owned all congregational properties, Bethel, they argued, had no claim to autonomy. Hence, a succession of ministers considered Bethel to be an entity existing within St. George, the parent congregation, and subject to its authority. However, in 1796 Ezekiel Cooper, a ministerial associate at St. George, deceived Allen with an incorporation document that invalidated Bethel’s autonomy. After unwittingly signing it, the AME founder resorted to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to correct the error. Allen sought the guidance of an attorney who advised him to add an African Supplement to Bethel’s incorporation. This addendum stated that Bethel’s trustees, rather than the Methodist Conference, controlled the church’s property. Furthermore, the trustees, if the pastor at St. George was neglectful in fulfilling various preaching and sacramental duties, would engage someone else, of course this was Allen.

 In 1799, he became the first black deacon to be ordained in the Methodist church. Allen soon turned his attention to the issue of slavery and published three pamphlets expressing his concerns. In An Address to Those Who Keep Slaves and Approve the Practice, Allen rationally confronted some widely-believed myths about slavery and compared the plight of the American slave to the plight of the ancient Israelites in Egypt. Allen did more for the abolitionist movement than write pamphlets, however. For example, the basement of Bethel Church was used as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Allen also collected money to help slaves escape to the North and, in 1795, he helped 30 newly freed Jamaicans find housing. By 1805, Bethel Church had 456 registered

During this time Richard Allen encountered Daniel Coker, Coker was born a slave in the Maryland area from a white mother and black father. He was ordained a deacon in the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1814 Coker led the black Methodists in Baltimore to establish a separate congregation.

Richard Allen’s life centred around two main goals: the expansion of the AME Church and securing the rights of black people. To build on the foundation of Bethel’s success. Richard Allen and Coker called black Methodists to meet in Philadelphia on April 9, 1816. On that day Coker was elected the first bishop of this new Wesleyan body. On April 10, however, Coker either declined the episcopacy or resigned in favour of Allen. Accounts about the switch vary widely from Coker’s Caucasian features as a barrier to leading a black denomination to Allen’s insistence that a compromise making both of them bishops would tax the resources of the infant body.

In 1809 a female member of Bethel. Jarena Lee, informed Richard Allen that she had been called to preach. He initially rebuffed her. Allen after witnessing her preach changed his mind.  He wrote testimonials attesting to her legitimacy as a preacher throughout the Northeast and invited her to exhort in AME annual conferences. She “was called to that work,” Allen observed, “as any of the (other) preachers (whom he) sent.” Though it was not Allen’s original design, the AME Church in the Atlantic World gestured toward making gender equity as important as pan-Africanist inclusion as a part of the mission of African Methodism. Though the full ordination of women eluded Lee and several generations of AME women, the definition of full freedom for persons of African descent belatedly included gender as a component of the church’s liberationist ethos.

Richard Allen, even after his election as bishop, served as Bethel’s treasurer up until 1820, but never relinquished his pastorate of the “mother” congregation. Although he took no salary from the congregation, except when the trustees compelled him, he was officially both bishop and pastor. Allen cared passionately about education and opened a day school for African American children. He abhorred slavery, worked actively for abolition, and maintained his home as a stop on the Underground Railroad. He was committed to self-determination for African Americans in the United States, and eventually opposed all colonization plans for African Americans in other countries.

 Richard Allen died on Spruce Street  on March 26, 1831. His funeral was widely attended by free blacks from throughout the United States. William Lloyd Garrison wrote in the abolitionist newspaper The Genius of Universal Emancipation that Allen was “one of the purest friends and patriots that ever exerted his energies in favour of civil and religious liberty. His noble deeds will remain cherished in the memory of mankind as imperishable monuments of eternal glory. “

He is buried in the lower level of Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia. A lengthy inscription on the tomb includes the following: "He was instrumental in the hands of the lord in enlightening many thousands of his brethren, the descendants of Africa, and was the founder of the first African Church in America."

 

 Legacy and honours

·       Allen is honoured with a feast day, March 26, on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA)

·       In 2001, the Richard Allen Preparatory School, a charter school, was opened in his name in southwestern Philadelphia.

·       Richard Allen Schools, a charter school system in Ohio, is named after him[18]

·       In 2002, Molefi Kete Asante named Allen as one of the 100 Greatest African Americans.[19]

·       In 2010, a park in the Philadelphia suburb of Radnor Township was named for him.

·       The Richard Allen Homes, a public housing project in Philadelphia, were named for him.

·       A street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is named after him.

·       Allen University, a historically Black university in South Carolina, was renamed in Allen's honour when it moved from Cokesbury to Columbia in 1880.

·       A stamp honouring Allen was issued by the United States Postal Service in February 2016, with a first-day ceremony in Philadelphia, as part of the ongoing Black Heritage Series.

      A life-sized statue of Allen, by Fern Cunningham-Terry, was erected by Mother Bethel Church July 10, 2016.

A mural, The Legacy of Bishop Richard Allen and AME Church Mural, was unveiled on July 4, 2016 at 38th and Market Streets in West Philadelphia.

 The Richard Allen Museum

On the lower level of Mother Bethel is an inspirational three-room museum.

The first room of the museum contains sketches and photographs of all the AME bishops. Also, in the first room are platters and pieces from a tea set that belonged to Allen.

It is in the museum's middle room that the power and grace of Richard Allen is most keenly felt. There one finds an unpolished wooden pulpit which was used in the original blacksmith's-shop-turned-church and several pews used in that structure as well. The unadorned pews seem more like benches in a one-room schoolhouse; the pulpit rises above the pews like a teacher's rostrum. The effect is one of intimacy, immediacy, and family.

Allen used his carpentry skills to fashion the pulpit (which was once the centrepiece of a Smithsonian exhibition) himself. Next to the pulpit are Allen's own pulpit chair (originally held together with wooden pegs) and his prayer stools. On the opposite side of the room are the pews which were in the second church as well. Along one wall is a "moaner's bench," used by those in the congregation who sat on it until they felt the spirit enter them. Penitents praying for salvation also used the moaner's bench.

 Displayed on a wall is Richard Allen's own Bible which is believed to have been printed in the 1600s. This Bible is so worn from use and time that the age and beauty of its binding is equalled by its conspicuous use. Above the Bible are tickets from an 1818 "love feast" - a prayer and praise service - which was held at Mother Bethel every Tuesday night. Only those who went to the Tuesday love feast and received tickets were allowed to receive communion on the following Sunday. Above the tickets is a "License to Exhorte." Signed by Richard Allen in 1819, it permitted Noah Cannon the right to preach in the African Methodist Church for one year.

Also, in the middle room is a "Proclamation to all the Good People of Massachusetts!" dated April 4, 1851. In effect, the proclamation was a wanted poster used to warn Bay State residents that slave hunters were among them, attempting to steal free blacks and sell them into slavery. Vividly described are three slave hunters, among them one John Bacon, who had a "red, intemperate looking face and a retreating forehead. His hair is dark and a little grey. He wears a black coat, mixed pants, and a purplish vest. He looks sleepy and yet malicious at the same time." Another, a man just called Davis, was "an unusually ill-looking fellow...He has a Roman nose, one of his eyes has been knocked out. He looks like a Pirate and knows how to be a Stealer of Men."

On another wall of the second room are three muskets believed to have been used by a militia raised by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones for the defence of Philadelphia during the War of 1812. Asked by the mayor to form a black regiment, the preaching pair mustered 2,500 troops whose barracks were in Southwest Philadelphia. They saw no action in the war, however.

Of great interest in the museum's third room is a ballot box in which marbles were used to cast votes. In the church's early years many members were unable to read or write. To elect church trustees, a box with pictures of the candidates was used. Underneath each picture was a hole drilled into the box. Marbles were dropped into these holes under the picture of the office-seeker being voted for.

Drawings and pictures of the four Bethel churches located at this site are seen on the wall. The first, as you recall, was the blacksmith shop hauled to this site by horses. The second church, the first built on the site, was called Roughcast because it was built from crude cinder blocks. The Roughcast church saw the organization of the AME denomination. It was used between 1805 and 1841. The third church, built in 1841, bears more than a passing similarity to St. George's. The fourth and present church was dedicated on October 2, 1889; the chief architect was Edward Hazlehurst.

Also, in the third room of the museum is a poster bearing suggested rules of behaviour. One of the rules urged gentleman not to spit on the floor but to use spittoons instead. Another rule asked gentleman to leave church by the north door and not to crowd the ladies' passageway.

Bibliography for Founder's month