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Bethel A.M.E. Church - Iowa City, Iowa
Application Information from National Register of Historic Places Form
Northern Origins of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
The
African Methodist Episcopal Church has its origins in Philadelphia in
the late 1700s. Richard Allen was an ex-slave who purchased his freedom
from his Delaware master in 1777. That same year he converted to
Methodism and began preaching.11 By 1786 Allen was in Philadelphia where he was a shoemaker with a traditional craft shop that included
journeymen
and apprentices. He also owned a chimney sweep operation with several
employees. With the profits from these businesses, Allen was able to
amass a small fortune in cash and property.12 As a
faithful adherent to John Wesley's Methodism, Allen also held regular
prayer meetings in which he preached to increasing numbers of the
city's free black
population. The formation of the first Bethel
African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia--still known
affectionately as the "Mother Church"--was prompted by an extreme
humiliation heaped on Allen and another black leader named Absalom
Jones when they attempted to pray one Sunday at St. George Methodist
Episcopal Church. Until their numbers became uncomfortably large black
church members had been permitted to sit on the main floor of St.
George's for Sunday services. Knowing officials wanted to change that
policy and have them now sit in the balcony, Allen and Jones initially
took seats at the front of the balcony. "But the church authorities had
actually reserved an even less conspicuous place for their Negro
worshippers in the rear of the gallery." Allen and the others were
ejected when they refused to cut short their prayers and relocate to
the rear of the balcony.13
Allen and members of
the mutual aid association, the Free Africa Society, began to raise the
funds for construction of their own Methodist church free and
independent of the white church authorities. "Actually, Allen had
previously favored separate facilities to accommodate the large number
of Negro worshippers; however opposition from both races had compelled
him to abandon the idea."14 Several years after leaving St. George's,
the new church building was completed and dedicated in 1794 as Bethel
African Methodist Episcopal Church.15 "The house was called Bethel, after the example, and...in the spirit of
"John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1967), 162.
12Walker, 6-7. When he died in 1830, Allen's estate was valued at approximately $44,000 (Ibid.).
nLeon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States. 1790-1860, (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1961), 191.
"Tbid., 192.
Jacob."16
Richard Allen's Methodism was northern and separatist in nature,
missionary in its goals, and valued education as a necessity for both
its members and its clergy. Historian Clarence E. Walker argued that
"the founders of the A.M.E. Church believed that Methodism's discipline
would transform the lives of their people and make them useful and
productive members of American society" by, in effect, adopting the
"Yankee virtues of industry, thrift, and selfreliance." 17
Much
of the missionary zeal of the Bethelites focused on the South both
before and after the Civil War where there were so many souls to
convert but also stiff competition for them.18 Little has been written
about missionary treks that headed west yet there were several A.M.E.
churches established in Iowa during or following the Civil War. In
1865, an A.M.E. church was established in Des Moines, in 1867 churches
commenced in Burlington and Muscatine,19 and a year later in 1868 the Iowa City A.M.E. church was built.20
The initial congregations of these churches likely included both
newly-arrived northern blacks and southern freedpersons, and African
Americans who arrived in Iowa prior to the Civil War.
"Ibid., 194.
"Daniel A. Payne. History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. (Nashville, Term: 1891, reprinted by
Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1968), 5. "The white Methodists of New York had much the same attitude toward
their Negro fellows as those of Philadelphia. The result was a withdrawal of Negroes from the John Street
Methodist Episcopal Church and the establishment of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in 1796."
(Franklin, 163).
"Walker 3, 7. According to Walker, "John Wesley, the father of Methodism, preached a simple
doctrine...and outlined a guide to Christian ethics [which prohibited] swearing, fighting, drinking, sabbath
breaking, gossiping, failing to pay debts...Methodists were also required to be plain in speech and dress..." (Ibid,
5).
18The northern-based Bethel A.M.E. Church found itself in the South in competition for new black members
with the Methodist Church, North, the Zion A.M.E. Church, and the Methodist Church, South. Beyond
Methodism, the Bethelites also encountered the strength of the Baptists in the South during Reconstruction. See
Clarence Walker's study of the Bethel Church's missionary efforts, A Rock in A Weary Land.
"Another sources puts the founding of the Muscatine church in 1849. See Marilyn Jackson, "Alexander
Clark, A Rediscovered Black Leader," Iowan 23 (Spring 1975): 43-52.
20 Hazel Smith, "The Negro Church in Iowa," (unpubl. MA. thesis, State University of Iowa, 1926).
During
the antebellum period, when Iowa's black population grew from 188 in
1840, to 333 in 1849, to 1069 in 1860,21 many of Iowa's earliest black
residents worked in the lead mining region around Dubuque and the river
towns along the Mississippi. During the 1850s especially, Iowa City was
a backdrop for nearby abolitionist activities and became the home of
African American residents, one family of which still persists in town
today (see footnote 37).
(Source: U.S. Dept of Interior, National Register of Historic Places registration form)
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