The church's roots are of the family of Methodist churches. Methodism provides an orderly system of rules and regulations and places emphasis on a plain and simple gospel.

Episcopal refers to the form of government under which the church operates. The chief executive and administrative officers of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination are the Bishops of the church.

The African Methodist Episcopal is an offspring of the Methodist which was founded by John Wesley in England and America in the eighteenth entury.The Methodist movement itself began in 1739 when John Wesley,an Anglican started within the Church of England a movement to improve the spiritual life of his Church. The movement became widespread. Many of the followers of the movement emigrated to America. Wesley,realizing the future for the spread of Methodism in the Colonies, ordained Dr. Thomas Coke, an Anglican priest, and sent him to organize the Church in America. Dr. Coke arrived and called a General Conference in Baltimore, Maryland in December 1784. At this "Christmas Conference, Richard Allen (founder of the American Methodist Episcopal Church),was present as an observer only, and was not a delegate or a voter. Methodism grew as the Methodist riders went from point to point, from settlement to settlement,and from plantation to plantation. The African Methodist Episcopal Church sprang from the American counterpart of the Methodist Church.

In February of 1786, Richard Allen, an African-American Methodist preacher, went to Philadelphia and began evangelizing to blacks there. He was accompanied in this endeavor by Absalom Jones and some other black members of Philadelphia's St. George's Methodist Church. The white congregation there was directly opposed to black assemblies; and accordingly, as before, they restricted the gatherings and also segregated worship service. At this time, Allen began to entertain the idea of forming a separate congregation for blacks, but his intentions met with considerable resistance -- in equal amounts from both blacks and whites.