Richard Allen

14 February 1760—26 March 1831

RICHARD ALLEN was born 14 February 1760 into slavery in the household of Benjamin Chew, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His family was later sold to Stokeley Sturgis of Dover, Delaware, where Allen would become acquainted with Methodism. Allen and one of his brothers purchased their freedom from Sturgis in 1783. Also around that time, Allen was licensed to preach as a Methodist, and he became part of a circuit of traveling preachers, preaching to whites and blacks alike. He was mentored in part by Bishop Francis Asbury (1745–1816). Allen and Harry Hosier were the only black preachers to attend the formal organization of the Methodist Episcopal Church (as independent from the Church of England) in Baltimore, Maryland, December 1784.

Allen and a group of blacks including Absalom Jones contributed toward the expansion of St. George’s M.E. Church in Philadelphia, and Allen was appointed as an assistant preacher there, but they became disenfranchised from the church when they were unceremoniously accosted by a white trustee during a service in 1787. A group of like-minded believers then formed the Free African Society, many of whom were inclined to join the Protestant Episcopal Church. Allen felt compelled to keep his ties with Methodism, so he worked toward purchasing a building and had it renovated, he called it Bethel M.E. Church, and he had it formally dedicated on 29 June 1794 by Bishop Asbury. Nonetheless, St. George’s claimed authority over the new church, and a protracted legal battle ensued until the Pennsylvania Supreme Court confirmed the church’s independent status. After the court victory, with the help of his colleague Daniel Coker, Allen and a group of delegates from five cities met in Philadelphia, 9–11 April 1816, and agreed to form the African Methodist Episcopal Church with Allen as its presiding bishop. In 1817, Allen contributed to The Doctrines and Discipline of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and in 1818 he and Coker and James Champion gathered the denomination’s first official hymnal, The African Methodist Pocket Hymn Book, containing 314 hymns, words only, modeled after The Methodist Pocket Hymn Book.

In his later years, Allen was instrumental in the organization of the Free Produce Society of Philadelphia, the American Society of Free Persons of Color, and the abolitionist National Negro Convention Movement. Allen died in Philadelphia on 26 March 1831.

Allen’s ventures as a hymn writer can be traced to 1794, when he and Absalom Jones printed A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia in the Year 1793, which described their ministry during a yellow fever epidemic. The pamphlet included essays toward the abolition of slavery, and it ended with a hymn, “Ye ministers that are call’d to preaching.” Another hymn/poem beginning “Good morning, brother pilgrim,” called “Spiritual Song,” was printed as a broadside ca. 1800.

In 1801, Allen compiled two editions of a words-only hymnal, A Collection of Spiritual Songs and Hymns (54 hymns), and A Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs (64 hymns). These collections borrowed from standard English writers such as Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, and John Newton, plus texts from American writers like John Leland and Sarah Jones. Since none of the hymns carried attributions, some difficulty is involved in establishing which ones are by Allen. “See! how the nations rage together” is often credited to him, as it has lines in common with the 1794 hymn, but it had been printed at least twice elsewhere before 1801. “Behold that great and awful day” is possibly his because it was first printed in his 1801 collections. “A solemn march we make,” probably Allen’s, was repeated in the 1818 and 1836 A.M.E. hymnals, as was “Oh! how I have long’d for the coming of God,” and “Wake up, my muse, condole the loss.” “Wake up, my muse” was adopted into Peter Spencer’s African Union Hymn Book (1822). “Hail the gospel jubilee,” possibly by Allen, is a Christianized version of the patriotic song “Hail Columbia, a happy land.” Some other hymns are more difficult to judge, having been printed in earlier collections. The presence of a hymn printed elsewhere before 1801 does not automatically negate Allen’s authorship, because he is known to have circulated materials on broadsides, but it casts doubt on any proprietary claim on his behalf.

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
12 January 2021
rev. 19 February 2021

Featured Hymns:

A solemn march we make
See! how the nations rage together

Collections of Hymns:

A Collection of Spiritual Songs and Hymns (1801): PDF
A Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1801): PDF
African Methodist Pocket Hymn Book (1818): PDF [partial]

see also:

A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia in the Year 1793 (1794): PDF
“Spiritual Song,” broadside (Philadelphia: R. Allen, ca. 1800) [William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor]: PDF
The Life, Experience, and Gospel Labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen (1833)

Editions:

A Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs from Various Authors, ed. J. Roland Braithwaite (Philadelphia: Mother Bethel A.M.EC., 1987): WorldCat

A.M.E.C. Hymnals:

The African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymn Book (1836): HathiTrust
The Hymn Book of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1876): Archive.org
Hymnal Adapted to the Doctrines and Usages of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1892): Archive.org [1899]
African Methodist Episcopal Hymn and Tune Book (1898): Archive.org
A.M.E. Hymnal (1946) [completed in 1941 but not printed until 1946]
A.M.E.C. Hymnal (1954)
A.M.E.C. Bicentennial Hymnal (1984, rev. 1986).

Related Resources:

The Life, Experience, and Gospel Labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen (Philadelphia: Martin & Boden, 1833): Archive.org [1880]

“African Methodist Episcopal Church,” The Methodist Year-Book for 1881, ed. W.H. de Puy (NY: Phillips & Hunt, 1880), p. 59: HathiTrust

“Richard Allen,” Cyclopaedia of African Methodism, ed. Alexander W. Wayman (Baltimore: Methodist Episcopal Book Depository, 1882): Google Books

Daniel A. Payne, History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (Nashville: A.M.E., 1891): Archive.org

Charles H. Wesley, Richard Allen: Apostle of Freedom (Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1935): WorldCat

Langston Hughes, “Richard Allen, Founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church,” Famous American Negroes (NY: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1954), pp. 11–18.

Carol V.R. George, Segregated Sabbaths: Richard Allen and the Emergence of Independent Black Churches, 1760–1840 (Oxford: University Press, 1973): WorldCat

Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720–1840 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1988): WorldCat

Albert J. Raboteau, “Richard Allen and the African church movement,” Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century, ed. Leon Litwack & August Meier (1988): WorldCat

Melva Wilson Costen, “Published hymnals in the Afro-American Tradition,” The Hymn, vol. 40, no. 1 (Jan. 1989), pp. 7–13: HathiTrust

Jon Michael Spencer, “The African Methodist Episcopal Church,” Black Hymnody: A Hymnological History (Knoxville, TN: Univ. of Tennessee, 1992), pp. 3–24: WorldCat

J. Roland Braithwaite, “Originality in the 1801 hymnals of Richard Allen,” New Perspectives on Music: Essays in Honor of Eileen Southern (Warren, MI: Harmonie Park, 1992), pp. 71–99: WorldCat

Kenneth L. Waters, Sr., “Liturgy, spirituality, and polemic in the hymnody of Richard Allen,” The North Star: A Journal of African American Religious History, vol. 2, no. 2 (Spring 1999): PDF

Frederick V. Mills, “Richard Allen (1760–1831),” American National Biography, vol. 1 (Oxford: University Press, 1999), pp. 341–342: https://doi.org/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.0800031

Dennis C. Dickerson, “Heritage and hymnody: Richard Allen and the making of African Methodism,” Sing Them Over Again to Me: Hymns and Hymnbooks in America, ed. Mark A. Noll & Edith L. Blumhofer (Tuscaloosa, AL: Univ. Alabama, 2006), pp. 175–193: Amazon

Richard S. Newman, Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers (NY: NY University Press, 2008): Amazon

Dennis C. Dickerson, The African Methodist Episcopal Church: A History (Cambridge: University Press, 2020): Amazon