African Methodist Episcopal Churches

African Methodist Episcopal worship is grounded in the traditions of John Wesley and Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1797. Worship is African, liturgical, kerygmatic, charismatic, and democratic. Its special emphases are on preaching and participation, with focus on the altar call.

Transplanted Africans in America, under the leadership of Richard Allen, shaped Wesleyan worship with the ardor of their African tradition. Like their African forebears, they worship with body, mind, and soul. The genius of the black church is worship. Worship is the heart of the black church. The black church was born out of the need to commune with God. African Methodism is a part of the larger Methodist tradition, and Richard Allen, founding the African Methodist Church in 1797, preserved many of the elements of the Wesleyan tradition. Thus one aspect of African Methodist worship is the liturgical. The Book of Discipline of the AME Church states that the order of service must have such unity as to insure that all members of their church will feel at home in an AME church. The consequent emphasis upon maintaining standards of liturgical orthodoxy has been strengthened by the order of service for African Methodists found in the Hymnal, the Book of Discipline, and the Book of Worship. The Centrality of Proclamation. The kerygmatic dimension of AME worship stresses the proclamation of the Word as the basis of worship. In the beginning, Allen turned to Methodism in part because of the exciting preaching that was understandable to the common person. Allen states,

I was confident that there was no religious sect or denomination that would suit the capacity of the colored people as well as the Methodist; for the plain and simple gospel, [so that] the unlearned can understand, and the learned are sure to understand; for all other denominations preach so high-flown that [many] were not able to comprehend their doctrine. (Life Experience and Gospel Labors [Nashville: African Methodist Episcopal Church Publishing House, 1990], 19.)

When this kerygma is combined with black self-expression, then Pentecost occurs within the black worship context.

The Pentecostal Influence. Yet another quality of African Methodist worship is its charismatic nature. In this form of worship, the release of the spirit brings the liturgy to life and gives it power. The older Pentecostal movement of the late nineteenth century emerged out of John Wesley's search for spiritual perfection, which was carried a step further by contemporary Pentecostals with their stress on glossolalia.

The charismatic style of worship is much more emotion-oriented than the liturgical emphasis upon order and decorum. C. Eric Lincoln points out that AME neo-Pentecostalism combines deep Pentecostal spiritual piety and the AME tradition (C. Eric and Lawrence Lincoln, The Black Church in the African American Experience [Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990], 385). This form of worship has brought forth an emerging tension in the denomination as African Methodists seek to understand the proper role of the Holy Spirit in worship and ministry. The Altar Call. Amidst this diversity, there is one common thread running through all African Methodist worship traditions, a thread that traces back to an incident at Saint George's Methodist Church in 1787. There two worshipers, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, were pulled off their knees while praying—an act that so outraged Allen that he and the other African-Americans "all went out of the church in a body, and they were no more plagued with us in the church" (Allen, Life Experiences and Gospel Labors, 16). Since then, when African Methodists gather for prayer at the altar, they reestablish a connection with the past in the midst of the contemporary worship experience. The altar call is a liturgical re-creation of that event at Saint George's Methodist Church and a means of democratizing the worship experience. It is a form of active participation that signifies that all Christians have the obligation to pray, and that congregants do not need the minister to pray on their behalf. African Methodist ministers generally call the congregants to prayer by exhorting them to consider the importance and necessity of prayer. Due to the incident at St. George's there is an almost mystical significance surrounding the altar and altar call within African Methodism. Individuals come and kneel at the altar, praying as long as they please. Usually, they line up along the walls, or down the middle of the aisle, waiting for their turn to kneel at the mercy seat. There is no rush placed on this part of the service, and it lasts as long as necessary. Everyone must be given the opportunity to pray, an opportunity denied Allen by his fellow Christians. When one prays at the altar, one joins millions of African Methodists who kneel every Sunday, all over the world. And when one prays at the altar, one joins millions of African Methodists who have prayed at this and other altars for more than two hundred years. For it is through worship that blacks are able to achieve true self-consciousness, wholeness, and liberation.