The AME Zion Church celebrates its bicentennial

Ebony, Oct, 1996 by Lisa Jones Townsel

Although the denomination's membership is on the rise, due in part to assemblies like Full Gospel, church officials concede that there is still room for growth. Therefore, the AME Zion Church has not abandoned plans to merge with the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, another historically Black Methodist organization. The two denominations began discussing such a merger in the late 1800s. During the AME Zion's recent general conference, a study commission was reactivated to review the issue. Many are hopeful. "It would greatly strengthen our ability to serve our people, and it would complement both denominations because in areas of the country where we are weak, the CME Church is strong and vice versa," says Bishop Bishop, the 78th bishop of the AME Zion Church. "It would be a beautiful thing if we could really pull that off."

As the AME Zion Church continues to expand and diversify its ministry, it must also prepare to lead an increasingly youthful church body into the next century. During the 10-day general conference this past July, church officers said they were confident that the denomination was ready to meet the challenge. "Young people are looking to be included and to have a feeling of belonging in the church and in the operation of the church," the new senior bishop says. "They do not want to feel that they are the church of tomorrow; they want to feel that they are the church of today, and rightly so."

Like an increasing number of youths in the AME Zion Church, women members also are demanding a greater stake in the operation of the church. Although no women currently hold the highest rank of bishop, at least one, the Rev. Ocie Brown, a presiding elder, was considered a serious contender during this year's election proceedings.

Historically, the AME Zion Church has been credited with being the first Methodist body--Black or White--ever to ordain women in ministry. But it has been a slow and sometimes laborious process. Though the abolitionist movement was partly directed by Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and Catherine Harris, who used her home as an Underground Railroad station, the power most women wielded in the early AME Zion Church was not as leaders but as loyal supporters and followers of the faith. They were the chief fund-raisers in missionary departments and the chief exhorters in worship services. Among those early leaders who paved the way for greater church participation were Mary Roberts, who founded the Daughters of Conference in 1821, and Eliza Ann Gardner, who headed the group in New England and was credited by some as being the mother of the AME Zion's home missionary movement. Another influential force of that era was Mary Talbert Jones, the founding president of the Ladies Home and Foreign Missionary Society (later called the Woman's Home and Overseas Missionary Society).

During the second half of the 19th century, the women of the AME Zion Church experienced many firsts. In 1876, for instance, women were allowed to vote for trustees in local churches for the first time. One of the first elected delegates to occupy a seat in the general conference was Fannie Van Bronk, a member of Mother AME Zion Church, the denomination's first church, in New York. In 1894, Julia A.J. Foote became the AME Zion's first woman to be ordained a deacon. And, in 1898, Mary Small became the first woman in the denomination to become an ordained elder.