The African Methodist Episcopal Church: A History [Paperback]

Explores the emergence of African Methodism within the black Atlantic and how it struggled to sustain its liberationist identity.This book examines the long history of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and its intersection with abolitionism, the Civil War and Reconstruction, two world wars, the civil rights movement, women's empowerment, and the denomination's increased global presence.This book examines the long history of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and its intersection with abolitionism, the Civil War and Reconstruction, two world wars, the civil rights movement, women's empowerment, and the denomination's increased global presence.In this book, Dennis C. Dickerson examines the long history of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and its intersection with major social movements over more than two centuries. Beginning as a religious movement in the late eighteenth?century, the African Methodist Episcopal Church developed as a freedom advocate for blacks in the Atlantic World. Governance of a proud black ecclesia often clashed with its commitment to and resources for fighting slavery, segregation, and colonialism, thus limiting the full realization of the church's emancipationist ethos. Dickerson recounts how this black institution nonetheless weathered the inexorable demands produced by the Civil War, two world wars, the civil rights movement, African decolonization, and women's empowerment, resulting in its global prominence in the contemporary world. His book also integrates the history of African Methodism within the broader historical landscape of American and African-American history.Introduction; 1. Richard Allen and the rise of African Methodism in the Atlantic World, 17601831; 2. The freedom church, 18311861; 3. 'Welcomed and ransomed', 18611880; 4. A denomination in the diaspora, 18801916; 5. Into the second century; 6. Freedom now!; 7. Becoming a global church, 19762018; Epilogue.Grateful thanks are due to Dennis Dickerson for thiló%