African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church

African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is a Church in the Methodist tradition whose members are predominantly African American .

The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is not to be confused with the African Methodist Episcopal Church .

history

The AME Zion Church emerged from the Methodist Episcopal Church . In the early years of the New York Methodist Church there was no racial problem, but as the church grew racial prejudice began to show. Although some blacks had been ordained lay preachers, they were seldom allowed to preach to blacks and never to whites in the Church. In 1796 these four black preachers asked Bishop Francis Asbury to hold his own meetings, which the bishop approved.

These preachers set up an old stable with pulpit and benches as a meeting room and held prayer meetings there on Sunday afternoons between the official services of the Methodist Church and on Wednesday and Friday evenings, which were conducted by the lay preachers, and also gave lessons. In 1799 the preachers decided, together with respected blacks from New York, to form their own religious community under the direction of the Episcopal Methodist Church. In 1801 the African Methodist Episcopal Church was officially founded according to the confessions and constitution of the Episcopal Methodist Church in unity with it and under the direction of its bishops. The new church should only include "colored people" as members. The church was also called Zion Church after the name of its church building. This church was still cared for by white clergymen as the African Americans were only lay ministers.

Since there was a split in the white Episcopal Methodist Church in 1820 due to administrative questions, in which the clergy who looked after Zion Church also resigned from the Episcopal Methodist Church, the Zion Church, which suddenly found itself without a clergyman, decided to form an independent church. A constitution was drawn up that was closely based on that of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

In 1821 there was a provisional annual conference (Methodist diocese ), chaired by James Varick. In 1822 Varick was ordained elders (pastors) with two others, not by a bishop, but by a clergyman, which was justified biblically. Thereupon the conditions for an ordinary annual conference were met, which also met and elected Varick as superintendent.

The Church grew rapidly, first in the north: the Philadelphia annual conference was organized in 1832, New England in 1845, Allegheny in 1849, and Genesee in 1851. The Church grew very rapidly in the northern United States until the Civil War . Churches and individual members were involved in the anti- slavery escape aid organization Underground Railroad during this time . For example, the former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass was a lay preacher at the AME Zion Church in New York, the congregations along the Mason-Dixon Line were important starting points for slaves who had fled, and the congregation in Jamestown (New York) successfully enabled many fugitives to escape the Lake Erie to Canada .

During the Reconstruction (after the Civil War) the Church expanded particularly strongly in the south, with annual conferences in North Carolina in 1863, Louisiana in 1865, Kentucky in 1866, Alabama in 1867, Virginia in 1868, South Carolina, and in Florida in 1869. Most of this growth was through converts from the exempted Slaves from the Episcopal Methodist Church, South , which subsequently became a predominantly white church. The Church also found its first followers in the West, who formed an annual conference in California. The church grew from 4,600 members in 1856 to 250,000 members in 1871.

The AME Zion Church was one of the first churches in the USA to allow women to serve as pastors; After there had been various ordinations of women since 1880 , an internal church controversy ended in 1898–1900 with the decision that women and men were completely equal in church life.

Church structure

General conference is the highest decision-making body in the Church. Between meetings of the conference, the Church is presided over by the Board of Bishops.

present

Today the church is represented in all states of the USA and has around 1.2 million church members in over 6,000 congregations worldwide, around 85,000 of them in Ghana . The church administration is in Charlotte, North Carolina . The lead bishop is George Walker .

In doctrine and everyday church life, the church is very similar to the equally black Methodist churches African Methodist Episcopal Church and Christian Methodist Episcopal Church .

The denomination runs Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina and two junior colleges . Church missionaries have served in North and South America, Africa, and since 1988 the Caribbean.

Ecumenism

The AME Zion Church is a member of the World Council of Methodist Churches and the World Council of Churches . Communion exists with the churches of the Churches Uniting in Christ . The church is also represented on the US National Council of Churches .

There have been merger negotiations with the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church for many years . The church merger was originally supposed to take place in 2004, but was postponed because the AME Zion Church did not want to do without the addition of "African" and it was not possible to agree on a common church name.

literature

• Sandy Dwayne Martin: For God and Race. The religious and political leadership of AMEZ Bishop James Walker Hood . University of South Carolina Press, Columbia SC 1999, ISBN 1-57003-261-0 .

Web links

• Historical Catechism of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
• Moore, John Jamison: History of the AME Zion Church in America
• Hood, JW: Sketch of the Early History of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
• Rush, Christopher: A Short Account of the Rise and Progress of the African ME Church in America

swell

1. ↑ History of St. James Church, Ithaka ( Memento of the original from May 22, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ - Short biography Frederick Douglass.
3. ^ Gayrard S. Williams: Black Religion and Black Radicalism. An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans. 3rd edition . Maryknoll 1999, pp. 113-115.
4. ↑ adherents.com: African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
5. ^ Sandy Dwayne Martin: For God and Race. The religious and political leadership of AMEZ Bishop James Walker Hood . Columbia / South Carolina 1999, pp. 163-175
6. ↑ Worldwide Faith News archives: Two black Methodist denominations moving toward union ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.