Wesley John Gaines | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | October 4, 1840 |
| Died | January 12, 1912 |
| Nationality | American |
Bishop Wesley John Gaines (October 4, 1840 – January 12, 1912) was an African-American church and community leader in Georgia. [1] He was vice president of Payne Theological Seminary and co-founder of Morris Brown College.
Gaines was born in Wilkes County, Georgia, one of fourteen children of his enslaved parents, Louisa and William Gaines. He was named for John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, the religion of his father. His mother was a Baptist. [1] [2] He grew up on a plantation as a slave. He learned the alphabet when he was eleven and then learned to write using a copy book. [3] Sick as a child, he taught himself to read while in bed. [1] [2]
He took to religion at a young age, reading the bible and experiencing conversion when he was nine years of age. By the time he was fifteen or sixteen years of age, he became interested in becoming a preacher. In 1855, he was moved to Stewart County, Georgia and the following year to Muskogee County, Georgia. At more than 300 pounds and 6'2" tall, he said he was sold at one point for $1,000. [2] His brother William Gaines also became a minister and community leader. [2]
Bishop Gaines is one of the shining lights of the African Methodist Episcopal church. He is a pious, well-educated and eloquent preacher, fine looking, of imposing presence and of blended politeness and dignity. He possesses both administrative and creative capacity of high order, and adds to his energy firmness and ability, excellent tact and discretion. He has done some remarkable work in getting money and building churches.
—The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography [3]
In 1865, he was licensed to preach, first for the Methodist Episcopal Church. [2] Beginning in 1867, Gaines studied theology and served at African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME Church) pastorates in Wilmington, North Carolina, Atlanta, Macon and Athens, Georgia for 20 years beginning. [2] [3] Under his leadership, the Bethel AME Church in Atlanta became the largest African American church in the south. [2] He received his Doctor of Divinity degree in 1883 from Wilberforce University. [3]
Gaines became a bishop of the AME Church, and was a co-founder, treasurer and superintendent of Morris Brown College in Atlanta. [4] He was vice president of Payne Theological Seminary in 1891. [1] Gaines was involved in the foundation of Jackson Chapel. His great-niece Rev. Patricia Downs Wilder served as the pastor of the chapel by September 2017. [4]
He published African Methodism in the South in 1890 and The Negro and the White Man in 1897. [4]
On the 20th [2] or 30 August 1863, [5] he married fellow slave, Julia A. Camper. [2] In 1872, they had a daughter, Mary Louisa. [3] Gaines died on January 12, 1912. [1]
In 1893, the Providence AME Church at Elkridge Landing was rebuilt and named Gaines Chapel AME Church in recognition of the bishop's contribution to the movement. [6] Nine other churches were named for him. [2]
Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother Charles Wesley were also significant early leaders in the movement. They were named Methodists for "the methodical way in which they carried out their Christian faith". Methodism originated as a revival movement within the 18th-century Church of England and became a separate denomination after Wesley's death. The movement spread throughout the British Empire, the United States, and beyond because of vigorous missionary work, today claiming approximately 80 million adherents worldwide.
John Wesley was an English cleric, theologian, and evangelist, who was a leader of a revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism. The societies he founded became the dominant form of the independent Methodist movement that continues to this day.
The Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) was the oldest and largest Methodist denomination in the United States from its founding in 1784 until 1939. It was also the first religious denomination in the US to organize itself on a national basis. In 1939, the MEC reunited with two breakaway Methodist denominations to form the Methodist Church. In 1968, the Methodist Church merged with the Evangelical United Brethren Church to form the United Methodist Church.
The Methodist Episcopal Church, South was the Methodist denomination resulting from the 19th-century split over the issue of slavery in the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC). Disagreement on this issue had been increasing in strength for decades between churches of the North and South; in 1845 it resulted in a schism at the General Conference of the MEC held in Louisville, Kentucky.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church, usually called the AME Church or AME, is a predominantly African-American Methodist denomination. It adheres to Wesleyan-Arminian theology and has a connexional polity. The African Methodist Episcopal Church is the first independent Protestant denomination to be founded by black people, though it welcomes and has members of all ethnicities. It was founded by Richard Allen (1760–1831) - later elected and ordained first bishop in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1816 from calling together of five black congregations of the earlier established Methodist Episcopal Church on the East Coast / Middle-Atlantic states area in the first General Conference, who wanted to escape the discrimination that was commonplace in society. It was among the first denominations in the United States to be founded for this reason, rather than for theological distinctions, and has persistently advocated for the civil and human rights of African Americans through social improvement, religious autonomy, and political engagement, while always being open to people of all racial backgrounds. Allen, an previously ordained Deacon in the Methodist Episcopal Church, was elected by the gathered ministers and ordained / consecrated as its first bishop in 1816 by the first General Conference of the five churches - extending from the three in the Philadelphia area in Pennsylvania to one in Delaware and one in Maryland of Baltimore. The denomination then expanded west and through the South, particularly after the American Civil War (1861–1865). By 1906, the AME had a membership of about 500,000, more than the combined total of the two other predominantly Black American denominations - the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in America and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, making it the largest major African-American denomination of the Methodist traditions.
The Christian Methodist Episcopal (C.M.E.) Church is a historically black denomination within the broader context of Wesleyan Methodism founded and organized by John Wesley in England in 1744 and established in America as the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1784. It is considered to be a mainline denomination. The CME Church was organized on December 16, 1870 in Jackson, Tennessee by 41 former slave members with the full support of their white sponsors in their former Methodist Episcopal Church, South who met to form an organization that would allow them to establish and maintain their own polity. They ordained their own bishops and ministers without their being officially endorsed or appointed by the white-dominated body. They called this fellowship the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in America, which it remained until their successors adopted the current name in 1954. The Christian Methodist Episcopal today has a church membership of people from all racial backgrounds. It adheres to Wesleyan-Arminian theology.
The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, or the AME Zion Church (AMEZ) is a historically African-American Christian denomination based in the United States. It was officially formed in 1821 in New York City, but operated for a number of years before then. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church adheres to Wesleyan-Arminian theology.
The black church is the faith and body of Christian congregations and denominations in the United States that minister predominantly to African Americans, as well as their collective traditions and members. The term "black church" can also refer to individual congregations.
Warren Akin Candler was an American bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, elected in 1898. He was the tenth president of Emory University.
Boston University School of Theology (BUSTH) is the oldest theological seminary of American Methodism and the founding school of Boston University, the largest private research university in New England. It is one of thirteen theological schools maintained by the United Methodist Church. BUSTH is a member of the Boston Theological Institute consortium.
The Vanderbilt Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion is an interdenominational divinity school at Vanderbilt University, a major research university located in Nashville, Tennessee. It is one of only six university-based schools of religion in the United States without a denominational affiliation that service primarily mainline Protestantism.
Daniel Alexander Payne was an American bishop, educator, college administrator and author. A major shaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (A.M.E.), Payne stressed education and preparation of ministers and introduced more order in the church, becoming its sixth bishop and serving for more than four decades (1852–1893) as well as becoming one of the founders of Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1856. In 1863 the AME Church bought the college and chose Payne to lead it; he became the first African-American president of a college in the United States and served in that position until 1877.
The Allen Temple AME Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, US, is the mother church of the Third Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Founded in 1824, it is the oldest operating black church in Cincinnati and the largest church of the Third Episcopal District of the AME Church.
Wesleyan theology, otherwise known as Wesleyan–Arminian theology, or Methodist theology, is a theological tradition in Protestant Christianity based upon the ministry of the 18th-century evangelical reformer brothers John Wesley and Charles Wesley. More broadly it refers to the theological system inferred from the various sermons, theological treatises, letters, journals, diaries, hymns, and other spiritual writings of the Wesleys and their contemporary coadjutors such as John William Fletcher.
Henry McNeal Turner was an American minister, politician, and the 12th elected and consecrated bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). After the American Civil War, he worked to establish new A.M.E. congregations among African Americans in Georgia. Born free in South Carolina, Turner had learned to read and write and became a Methodist preacher. He joined the AME Church in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1858, where he became a minister. Founded by free blacks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the early 19th century, the A.M.E. Church was the first independent black denomination in the United States. Later Turner had pastorates in Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, DC.
Jordan Winston Early was an American Methodist preacher, he is considered to have been one of the pioneers of African American Methodism spread in the West and South of the United States. In 1868, he married Sarah Jane Woodson Early, and the couple were prominent in spreading Methodism and black nationalism, and his wife taught wherever he preached.
The history of Methodism in the United States dates back to the mid-18th century with the ministries of early Methodist preachers such as Laurence Coughlan and Robert Strawbridge. Following the American Revolution most of the Anglican clergy who had been in America came back to England. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, sent Thomas Coke to America where he and Francis Asbury founded the Methodist Episcopal Church, which was to later establish itself as the largest denomination in America during the 19th century.
Benjamin Franklin Lee was a religious leader and educator in the United States. He was the president of Wilberforce University from 1876 to 1884. He was editor of the Christian Recorder from 1884 to 1892. He was then elected a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, serving from 1892 until his resignation in 1921, becoming senior bishop in the church in 1915.
Payne Theological Seminary is an African Methodist Episcopal seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio. It is the oldest free-standing African-American seminary in the United States. Incorporated in 1894 by the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, it was named after Daniel Alexander Payne, the founder of Wilberforce University. Payne was Senior Bishop of the AME Church at the time of the Seminary’s founding and served as its first dean. He was the first African-American college president.
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