Few books carry as much history in so few pages as Richard Allen’s The Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen. It is the autobiography of a man born into slavery in 1760 who bought his own freedom, was converted under Methodist preaching, and went on to found the African Methodist Episcopal Church — the first fully independent Black denomination in America — becoming its first bishop. This guide is a companion for reading it: a summary of what the book is, a map of its story, its central themes, and questions to sit with. You can read the whole text free on Ochorus at The Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours.

What the book is, and who Richard Allen was

Allen wrote his story himself — the title page says Written by Himself — and that fact alone makes the book precious. Here is a first-hand testimony from a man who lived through American slavery, the birth of a nation, the deadly yellow-fever epidemic of 1793, and the founding of a church that still stands. It is at once a spiritual autobiography and a landmark document of early Black American Christianity.

He was born a slave in Philadelphia to Benjamin Chew, then sold with his family to a farmer near Dover, Delaware. As a young man he was, in his own words, awakened and brought to see myself poor, wretched and undone, and he found mercy through the gospel preached in Methodist meetings. What follows in the book is not the story of a career but of a call — a converted heart that could not stay quiet. The short chapters gather his life, an African Supplement on the young church’s discipline, meditations he titled Acts of Faith, Acts of Hope, and Acts of Love, his narrative of the 1793 epidemic, and two pointed addresses: one to those who kept slaves, and one to the free people of colour. You can meet the man behind them on his author page.

The arc of the story

The book moves in a few decisive turns. The first is conversion. Allen tells of nights when he believed there was no mercy for him, when he thought hell would be my portion, and then of the moment grace broke in:

I cried unto Him who delighteth to hear the prayers of a poor sinner; and all of a sudden my dungeon shook, my chains flew off, and glory to God, I cried. My soul was filled. I cried, enough for me — the Saviour died.

Richard Allen

The image is unforgettable in the mouth of a slave: chains flying off. It echoes the angel’s deliverance of Peter in Acts 12:7, and it names a freedom no master could grant or take. The second turn is his freedom in the flesh. His owner, convicted under a sermon on the text Thou art weighed in the balance, and art found wanting, came to believe slaveholding was wrong and let Allen and his brother buy their time. Allen then worked as a wood-cutter, a wagon-driver, and a day-labourer, praying as he laboured, never forgetting the freedom of soul that had come first. Yet he never softened the wrong of bondage:

I had it often impressed upon my mind that I should one day enjoy my freedom; for slavery is a bitter pill, notwithstanding we had a good master.

Richard Allen

The third turn is the walkout. Called to Philadelphia to preach, Allen saw a great field of forgotten people and began gathering his African brethren into worship. As their numbers grew at St George’s Methodist Church, the white leaders moved them to the wall and then to the gallery. One Sunday, while the congregation knelt to pray, trustees seized Absalom Jones and Allen’s companions and tried to pull them up off their knees. Allen records the moment with terrible restraint:

By this time prayer was over, and we all went out of the church in a body, and they were no more plagued with us in the church.

Richard Allen

The fourth turn is the building. Out of that indignity grew a store-room congregation, then Bethel Church, and at last, in April 1816, a general conference resolved that the people of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and beyond should become one body, under the name of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Woven through the later chapters is the 1793 epidemic, when Allen and Absalom Jones organized the Black community to nurse the sick and bury the dead as much of the city fled. It is one of the book’s most striking sections: at real risk to their own lives, a despised people served the very city that had degraded them, only to be accused afterward of profiteering. Allen answered the charges in print, point by point, and his narrative both records the community’s sacrifice and clears its name — a defense that reads as calmly and firmly as everything else he writes. The addresses that close the book carry the same double note: a prophet against slavery, a pastor to his own, refusing both flattery and despair.

Central themes

Conversion that becomes a call

Allen’s Christianity begins in personal rescue and immediately turns outward. Freed from his own dungeon, he was constrained to go from house to house, exhorting my old companions. The gospel he received he spent — the very meaning of the gospel labours in the title. Readers who know Isaiah 61:1, the promise to proclaim liberty to the captives, will hear it lived out here.

Dignity and justice

Allen insists on the full humanity of the enslaved against a world that denied it. In his address to slaveholders he presses the Christian conscience directly:

I do not wish to make you angry, but excite attention to consider how hateful slavery is, in the sight of that God who hath destroyed kings and princes, for their oppression of the poor slaves.

Richard Allen

He grounds the argument in Scripture — that God was the first pleader of the cause of slaves (Exodus 3:7), that his law commanded Thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian (Deuteronomy 23:7), that it is folly to look for grapes from thorns (Matthew 7:16) when the enslaved are denied the schooling given to others. It is the logic of Micah 6:8 — to do justly and love mercy — pressed on a church that had forgotten it.

Perseverance under wrong

What steadies the book is patience. To the free people of colour Allen offers his own hard-won hope, that God does not forget the lowly:

as a merciful father pitieth his children, so doth God pity them that love him.

Richard Allen

The line leans on Psalm 103:13, and it is offered not as sentiment but as survival — a confidence that outlasts a slandered reputation and a locked gallery. Allen even urges love toward enemies, echoing Matthew 5:44, refusing to let bitterness have the last word.

Building the church

Finally, this is a builder’s book. Allen raised societies, hired store-rooms, drew subscriptions, framed a discipline. He wanted a people gathered in the fear of God, in the unity of the Spirit, and in the bonds of peace — and he warned against lording it over God’s heritage, choosing instead to bear one another’s burdens, in the spirit of Galatians 6:2. The AME Church he founded is the fruit of that patient, practical faith.

Who should read it

Read this book if you want to understand where Black American Christianity comes from, and how the church in America both failed and was reformed from within. Read it if you are drawn to conversion narratives — Allen belongs beside Bunyan and the early Methodists in the vividness of his testimony. Read it if you care about the relationship between the gospel and justice, and want to see the two held together by someone who had every reason to separate them and refused. And read it if you simply want the company of a steadfast soul: a man who kept praying while his hands blistered, who forgave much, and who built something that has outlived him by two centuries.

How to read it today

Begin at the beginning, with Allen’s early life and conversion; everything else rests on it. Let the plainness of his prose slow you down — he is not dramatizing, he is remembering, and the understatement is part of the witness. When you reach the walkout from St George’s, resist the urge to read it only as history; ask what it cost, and what courage it took to rise and leave in a body. Read the two addresses slowly, with a Bible near, tracing the texts he cites. And read the history of slavery here as Allen himself does — with honesty about its cruelty and without letting cruelty define the enslaved, whose dignity, faith, and industry fill these pages. For a fuller picture of this world, pair Allen with a woman he authorized to preach, Jarena Lee, in her Religious Experience and Journal, and with Julia Foote’s A Brand Plucked from the Fire. Together they let you hear more than one voice from the same struggle, and see how the freedom Allen preached kept spreading. That freedom is, at bottom, what John 8:36 promises — the liberty the Son gives — and Galatians 3:28 declares, that in Christ there is neither slave nor free.

For reflection

  • Allen describes conversion as chains flying off. Where have you known a freedom of soul that no outward circumstance could give or take away — and what would it mean to be constrained, as he was, to tell others of it?
  • The believers at St George’s were pulled from their knees and chose to walk out and build anew. When have you had to leave something in order to be faithful, and how do you tell the difference between wounded pride and holy refusal?
  • Allen answered slander not with revenge but with a defense of his people’s honour and a call to love enemies (Matthew 5:44). How do you respond when your integrity is questioned publicly?
  • He held personal salvation and public justice together without letting go of either. Which of the two do you find easier to hold — and what would it take to keep both?
  • Allen ends by pointing the powerless to a God who pitieth his children (Psalm 103:13). Where do you most need that assurance now, and whom might you carry it to?