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Study guide · Race, Faith & Identity

How Did the Black Church in America Begin?

Reviewed by Jude 3 Project·2 min read

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A standalone study on a 1787 walkout and the institutions it built.

The big question

Every movement has an origin story. Dr. Charlie Dates tells the Black church’s, and it does not begin in triumph. It begins with men pulled off their knees in a segregated church and walking out to build something new. This study traces that beginning and the wave of colleges, seminaries, and preachers that followed, and asks what it means that the church built so much when the world shut its doors.

Key takeaways

  • Black Christianity predates America, but the Black church as an institution has a 1787 origin.
  • Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and others walked out of St. George’s in Philadelphia and founded the AME.
  • Denied access elsewhere, the Black church built its own institutions.
  • It founded colleges and seminaries: Wilberforce, Morris Brown, Paul Quinn, Payne, Allen, and more.
  • Schools like Bishop College shaped the genius of Black preaching for a century.

Scripture to sit with

Galatians 3:28. There is neither Jew nor Greek; all are one in Christ. The truth the segregated balcony denied.

James 2:1-4. Do not show favoritism, seating the rich up front and the poor aside. Scripture names the very sin of St. George’s.

Psalm 118:22. The stone the builders rejected became the cornerstone. A pattern for a rejected people.

Genesis 50:20. What was meant for evil, God meant for good. The walkout became a wellspring.

Quotes worth discussing

Dates says, “In 1787 at St. George’s, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones… began what we come to know as the African Methodist Episcopal Church.”

On what followed, Dates says, “When we were denied access to so many other institutions, the black church opened its own institutions and changed the world.”

Discussion questions

  • What does it mean that the Black church was born from an act of exclusion?
  • Have you ever had to build something new because a door was closed to you?
  • Why does it matter that the church founded colleges and seminaries, not just congregations?
  • How does this origin story change your view of the AME church?
  • What is God building today out of a rejection you have faced?

Go deeper

This study comes from the Jude 3 Project’s Contributions of the Black Church course with Dr. Charlie Dates. For a related conversation, see the Jude 3 work on the history and witness of the Black church.

A closing reflection

Read the story of Richard Allen this week. Then ask where God might be calling you to build rather than to wait for permission. The Black church began with people who refused to accept a balcony as their place.

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