St. John A.M.E. Zion Church


	James Varick	HISTORY OF THE AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL ZION CHURCH

	The African Methodist Episcopal Zion (Zion was officially added to the name in 1848) Church was founded in New York City in October 1796, when James Varick and about 30 other African-American Methodists withdrew from John Street Methodist Episcopal Church and formed their own congregation. At this point, the African-American congregation was still related to the Methodist Episcopal Church. Its organization was a direct result of the dissatisfaction of African-American Methodists over the treatment they were receiving in the Methodist Episcopal Church. J.W. Hood, an AME Zion bishop, described the state of the church at the time of the split:

	[The Negro] was wanted in the church for the support he gave it, for the numbers he enabled sectarians to claim in exhibiting their strength, and with the minority, who were truly pious, he was wanted there for the good of his soul. For these and other reasons he was not kept entirely out of the church. But in the church he was hampered and regulated. His privileges were proscribed and limited; every possible effort was made to impress him with a sense of inferiority. Preachers were selected who delighted in discoursing to him upon such texts as "Servants obey your masters," and who were adept at impressing the Negro with inferiority in the most ingenious and least offensive way... ¹

	However,

	The fathers [of the AME Zion Church] agreed that they had no fault to find with doctrines, form of government, and evangelistic and soul-saving emphases of Methodism, but they could not endure the constant humiliation and restriction imposed by the people into whose hands Methodism had fallen. The founders were opposed to slavery and inhumane treatment of slaves, so that they could logically remain Methodists because of the spirit of the originators and the meaning of the first-born movement in England and America. ²

	By 1820, the AMEZ Church was ready to break its organizational ties to the Methodist Episcopal Church, which still refused to ordain African-American elders. Bishop William Walls continues with the story:

	We come now to the most dangerous period of the effort to form the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.... There were those who wanted to be a Negro unit in the Methodist Church. There were others who wanted nothing less than separation and independence from the Mother Methodist Church. There were still others who felt a sympathy with the black groups in other areas, such as the AME Bethel Church and the African Union Church of Wilmington, De., and preferred to see a unity of them all.... Those who had definitely decided on withdrawing from the white church and forming a denomination of freedom and self-assertion began a part of their action by appointing a committee of five to form a Discipline for the new church group. In a church meeting held at the Rose Street Academy on September 18, 1820, they appointed James Varick, chairman, George Collins, secretary, Charles Anderson, Christopher Rush, and William Miller the committee to draw up the Discipline of the independent church movement. It was to conform with the Methodist Church Discipline, as relating to doctrines, polity, and spiritual government. ³

	The AME Zion Church was known from the beginning as an anti-slavery church, in part because of its strong itineration of preachers for abolition. Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Katherine Harris, and Frederick Douglass are some of its well-known members. Historian Bishop William J. Walls extolled the strong, influential women in this tradition. "A sort of pertinacity was bred into these women who stood by the side of the men, fought the battles of freedom, and expanded the church across the continent and across the seas," he wrote. It should be noted that while the A.M.E. Zion Church was taking form in New York City, a similar movement was going on in Philadelphia, PA at about the same time. Under the leadership of Richard Allen, African members of the St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church broke away and formed what is known today as the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church. Although the A.M.E. and the A.M.E. Zion Church shared the same name for a period of time, they were always separate movements. They both serve as a testimony of the greater things God had in store for a people that was being deprived of all the blessings He had for them.



	FOOTNOTES: 1 Hood, J. W., One Hundred Years of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, (New York: African Methodist Episcopal Zion Book Concern, 1895), p. 3. 2 Walls, William J., The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church: Reality of the Black Church, (Charlotte, N.C.: AME Zion Publishing House, 1974), p. 45. 3 Ibid., 71.

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