This week in Christian history: GK Chesterton converts to Catholicism, Robert Morrison dies, AME Zion Church gets first bishop

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Sunday, July 30, 2023

James Varick becomes bishop of AME Zion Church – July 30, 1822

James Varick (1750-1827), the first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. | Wikimedia Commons

This week marks the anniversary of when James Varick became the first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, a historically African American denomination.

Born into slavery but freed as a child, Varick had been part of the predominantly white Methodist Episcopal Church, but eventually left to form his own Methodist church due to experiences of prejudice.

“The church was often known as the ‘Freedom Church’ because of its insistence on emancipation from spiritual, economic and social chains. Among prominent blacks who attended at one time or another were Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth,” wrote Dan Graves of Christianity.com in 2010.

“Hardworking James was the first chaplain of the New York African Society for Mutual Relief, a vice president of the New York African Bible Society and a co-founder of the first black newspaper in the United States, Freedom's Journal.”