Revolutionary Love in the AME Church
Recap – Last week we talked about the AME Church coming out of two roots - The Abolition Movement & The Methodist Movement. And leaning into three key ideas -
1. God loves all of us with particular concern for those most outcast.
2. God’s love is about liberation on Earth - on Earth as it is in Heaven.
3. No one is free until everyone is free - if my neighbor is not free then the fullness of God’s plan is not yet come to pass
Today we will look at the Methodist Movement
Exegesis
Both movements were built on a revolutionary reading of Scripture that is tied to larger conversation threads in America as well as an understanding of the life and mission of Jesus embodied by all the ways he pushed back on the status quo.
- When John Wesley and his friends created the first small group they were so blown away by the deep connection to God and each other, the sense of spiritual clarity, and the transformative feeling of mission and vision was something they wanted for everyone.
- What if every Christian felt close to God and each other? What revolutionary change is possible in people’s hearts and in the world?
- The notion that you didn’t need a fancy education or an ornate building to connect with God was revolutionary
- Most of the early leaders in the Methodist tradition saw the inclusion of Black peoples as an important part of the movement. In 1758 John Wesley baptizes two “Negro slaves” who return to their home country of Antigua to establish a Methodist society
- In 1774 John Wesley publishes his thoughts on slavery - merely tolerating the existence of a system of enslavement was an accommodation with evil.
- The American Revolution starts in 1776 and ends in September 1783.
- On Christmas Day in 1784 the very first Methodist Conference meets in Baltimore, Maryland.
- In 1785, the first Book of Discipline published by the Methodists included a piece of church legislation that any church member who buys or sells slaves is “immediately to be expelled” from membership, “unless they buy them on purpose to free them.”
- The Methodist Movement grows especially powerfully among enslaved and formerly enslaved people. By 1790, drawn by the Methodist Episcopal Church's anti-slavery stand, blacks (slave and free) make up 20 percent of the 57,631 American Methodists (= about 11,500 Black people)
- In 1791, John Wesley dies. His last letter is one written to anti-slavery crusader William Wilberforce, urging him to "Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it."
- In 1800, the General Conference issued a “Pastoral Letter on Slavery,” which declared the enslavement of Black people “the great national evil” of the United States. It said “the whole spirit of the New Testament militates in the strongest manner against the practice of slavery.”
- By 1844 the Methodist Church splits largely over slavery and don’t come back together until 1939 to form The United Methodist Church.
- Many Black Methodists saw the way that racism was moving and they decided to leave.
In 1816 the African Methodist Episcopal Church is formed
In 1821 the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is formed
In 1870 the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church breaks away from the
- Each of these denominations has a legacy of holding to the revolutionary teachings of Methodism while also recognizing that love is not real if it keeps a neighbor in bondage
We are descendants of this rich tradition and next week we are going to focus on the way that the AME Church in particular shows up to demonstrate revolutionary love through its engagement in the underground railroad.
- Our foreparents were clear that it was because of God’s revolutionary love that they were entitled to freedom AND required to participate in the liberation of others.
- They didn’t worship freedom or justice. They worshipped the God who called them to the work of spiritual and physical liberation. They didn’t just push back on their fellow Christians for social reasons but for deeply spiritual reasons that could not be separated.
- They didn’t see those as separate struggles and I am challenging us to see these as inextricably linked and to commit to deepening our practice in a way that will facilitate the kind of courage and connection that this moment demands of us.
Reflections Questions
1. As we discuss the AME legacy - where do you see yourself in that story. Do you feel the blessing and/or weight of that inheritance? Why or why not?
2. Our fore parents were clear that they couldn’t do this work without the saving power of Jesus? As we move into a season of testing - get real about the relationship between your spiritual life and your living into the call of this moment. What is the relationship? What do you think it should be?
3. We are called not only to resist injustice but to embrace Jubilee (building on Earth as it is in Heaven) where are you helping to envision and live into God’s plan for humanity?