Saint Paul AME Church
The African Methodist Episcopal Church was born of racial discrimination following the American Revolution, when African-Americans struggled to establish their own houses of worship. Today the African Methodist Episcopal Church has congregations on four continents. The church was organized in America by people of African descent, its beliefs are Methodist, and its form of government is episcopal (governed by bishops). In 1794, Bethel AME was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as an independent black church, to escape the rascism prevalent in New England at the time. Richard Allen, the pastor, later called a convention in Philadelphia of other persecuted blacks throughout the region. The AME Church, a Wesleyan denomination, was formed in 1816 as a result.