St. Andrew’s African Methodist Episcopal Church marked its 175th anniversary last weekend, celebrating a legacy that began in 1850 and continues today as the oldest continuous AME congregation on the West Coast.
The church started with a small group of early Black settlers who gathered at the Sacramento home of Daniel Blue, an ex-slave who made his money in California’s gold fields. Its first pastor was John Fitzgerald. Originally known as Bethel AME Church, the Philadelphia-based congregation provided lodging to slaves who were heading north from Maryland’s eastern shore before it eventually became St. Andrew’s AME Church.
As part of the anniversary celebration, young congregants portrayed early AME leaders who shaped the denomination. Their short presentations introduced the founders’ work, the challenges they faced, and their role in establishing an independent Black religious movement.
Sixteen-year-old Elise Young portrayed Richard Allen, who founded the church in 1794. Young’s performance summarized Allen’s rise from enslavement to ministry, his organizing efforts, and his creation of the AME Church as a safe place for Black worshippers to gather freely and claim dignity.
Preparing for the role over several weeks, he said, helped him understand “how hard he worked to build AME.”
Sydney Toure, 9, portrayed Sarah Bass-Allen, Richard Allen’s wife and partner in the early movement. Her performance highlighted Bass-Allen’s work caring for the sick, feeding the poor, supporting church members and sustaining their early community during difficult times. Toure said she enjoyed being part of the program. “I was asked to do this,” she said, adding that she had practiced for about two weeks.
Pastor Jason Thompson said seeing the youth embody early AME leaders gave him a deeper appreciation for the church’s history. “I think it’s just amazing. I have stopped and read a few things, but somehow hearing the kids embody these characters… Well, it was interesting for me to see that people are still people,” he said. “That at whatever time that was, they were still doing something too, at their stage of life they were still involved doing work for God.”
Thompson said leading St. Andrew’s at this historic moment “is exciting. It feels as if I’m part of something bigger than me. The congregation reminds me of my family . … [I’m from] North Carolina originally, so to see people who seem like my aunts and my grandparents, it’s just an honor that they would trust me to be their leader.”
Speaking about today’s political climate, Thompson said the denomination, founded as a response to institutional injustice, remains guided by that mission. “And so we still have that sense of action and being involved in social justice and making sure that those who are the least of us have a voice,” he said. “So, I feel good about that. That’s part of our liturgy … what we say, what we do. So, it’s still very current.”
Inside the church, that history is visible on what Thompson calls the “history wall,” a set of displays that document the congregation’s early years and the people who built it. “They have curated this, what I call the history wall, but there’s so much history on the walls of the church,” he said. “We’re really trying to incorporate this notion that people before us have really probably had it harder than we had it, and yet they were able to let their faith guide them into what they were doing. So we’re doing the same thing now.”
Thompson said the church’s work continues in that same tradition through its many donations to food banks and clothing banks. The church also carries its own small supply of clothing and food. “We make it available for people to come,” he said. Volunteers sometimes place items outside on the curb for anyone who needs them.
“Whatever we have,” Thompson said.
He noted that the need within the community has remained steady, and the church responds however it can. The congregation recently collected money, he said, to help federal workers who were furloughed due to the shutdown, and that St. Andrew’s maintains a benevolence fund for people facing financial strain. “And there’s a lot of people,” Thompson said.