Before this weeks reading, I had never really heard of the Colored Methodist Episcopal church or now what is know as the Christian Methodist Episcopal church (CME). While I have heard of other majority African American congregations, CME’s were not in my area so I decided to look more into  them. According to the churches website, The CME church was founded on December 16, 1870 in Jackson, Tennessee. Previously members of the Methodist Episcopal church, some of the slave members from their congregation broke away from their denomination to create their own.  This follows the other churches we have been learning about in our readings like AME and AME Zion and how their first congregations were formed. The church came to be after the trauma of the civil war and  the reconstruction period when the divisions between whites and African Americans were at an all time high. I thought it was really interesting to learn more of the background of the church especially since we read the piece by Lucius H. Holsey so learning more about the foundation of the church itself helped also make that reading understandable as well. I also am a Methodist so it was very interesting to learn about what the difference between the denominations was and why the split occurred.

You can learn more about the CME Church here.

http://www.thecmechurch.org/cme-logo.html