For those of us old enough to remember half a century ago, there was absolutely nothing so spiritually uplifting as driving by an old A.M.E. church, remote on some rural road, and hearing the praise of the choir as those old-time hymns and spirituals wafted through the summer night air. Can't you hear it now, "Get you ready, there's a meeting here tonight. Camp meeting in the wilderness. There's a meeting here tonight. I know it's among the Methodists. There's a meeting here tonight."

Sweet, soul-searching music it was, sung as only an A.M.E. gospel choir can sing. Well, brothers and sisters of the old time faith, there's a meeting here in Mount Pleasant this week, and it's the old-time A.M.E. religion borne from the struggles of freedmen making a go of life during reconstruction times. Drive six miles up the old King's Highway, U.S. 17, to the intersection of S.C. Highway 41, and you'll see that the rustic little church in the wildwood has blossomed into a glorious, modern house of worship known to all of us in the community as Greater Goodwill African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Under the leadership of the Reverend Herbert L. Temoney, B.A., M. Div., the congregation of Greater Goodwill is hosting the 100th anniversary meeting of the Palmetto Annual Conference with pastors, delegates, and observers coming from Lake City to Little River to lower Charleston county. Bishop Preston Warren Williams, II, shepherds this vast flock of believers as they wrestle with weighty issues such as how the church should respond to inequities in healthcare and the shortage of jobs. On Wednesday, Aug. 25, there will be the divine service of ordination--of ministers, elders, and deacons, followed by the charge of the Great Commission--"Go ye therefore into all the lands and proclaim the gospel."

Since John Wesley preached in this area more than 220 years ago, adherents to Methodism have united their hands and their feet with their faith. "Be ye doers of the Word, not hearers only" is more than scripture; it's a creed of sorts.

Greater Goodwill A.M.E. Church, located at 2818 Highway 17 North, has been a refuge for believers as far back as the 1880s, and perhaps a lot longer than that. When that dual-lane thoroughfare was still a graded dirt road in the 1930s, a white frame sanctuary, no more than 25 x 40 feet, stood on this site. Back then it was the Reverend C.S.J. Molette who ministered to these congregants who live between mile five and mile 10, now known as Awendaw.

Though the African Methodist Episcopal denomination owes much of its doctrine and governing structure to the Methodists who formed in the years following the Great Awakening, there's a distinct African heritage that unites its members which dates to 1787 when Richard Allen and Absalom Jones led a walkout of the African contingent from the Philadelphia Methodist Conference. This brazen move was a response to an ugly incident where kneeling black men were bodily dragged by white members away from an area of the church designated as all white.

Realizing then that the type of equality that the framers of the Constitution were cobbling together up the street in Independence Hall would not likely be extended to persons of color, Allen and Jones broke away from Methodism per se and formed the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) denomination. The singing and the preaching were powerful instruments for conversion. By the 1850s, the A.M.E. had reached the Pacific coast and included members of all races, as it does to this day.

The eminent North Carolina jurist, Augustus White Long, writes of the 19th century Methodists, "Next to the Roman Catholic, the Methodist is probably the best organized church in the world. Its machinery runs smoothly and effectively. Its government is rather aristocratic and its discipline rigid--more rigid perhaps than the discipline of the Roman Catholic Church."

Long goes on to say, "If the government of the latter [Catholic] was modeled after that of the Romam Empire, it may be said that the machinery of the Methodist Church took its form from the ideas of government prevailing in England in the time of the [Hanoverian] Georges. If so, both churches are a living proof that new wine may be put into old bottles, provided the bottles are of good quality."

Both the Methodist and the African Methodist Episcopal denominations have come a long way from when Bishop Francis Asbury rode circuit in the Carolinas with Reverend Harry Hoosier, "Black Harry," as his minister to the free blacks and slaves.

The apostolic structure of the A.M.E. church is evident in the succession of bishops descending from Bishop Allen and his renowned Bethel A.M.E. Church dating to 1794 in Philadelphia. Richard Allen was a man suited to his times. He'd been a slave in Delaware prior to the Revolution, and as a free man in Philadelphia at the time of the Constitution's implementation throughout the seaboard states, Allen boldly petitioned the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for the right of his black Methodist congregation to co-exist with the various all-white churches in Philadelphia. The decision of the Pennsylvania court is one of the early landmark cases for civil rights in America. In this week's Palmetto Conference, one of the men's choirs is known as the "Sons of Richard Allen."

If you look closely at the emblem of the A.M.E. Church you'll notice an anvil placed on top of a cross. Of course, it symbolizes Richard Allen's blacksmith shop in Philadelphia where he and Deacon Absalom Jones organized the A.M.E. denomination. It's quite possible, and it would be ironic if proved, that Allen's blacksmith shop shod the horses of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention.

By the 1850s the religious movement begun by Allen and Absalom Jones had spread into Canada under the dynamic leadership of A.M.E. Bishop Morris Brown. By 1891, Bishop Henry Turner carried the A.M.E.'s unique Christian worship into Liberia, where former slaves from Virginia and Maryland had been liberated and resettled by the James Monroe administration seven decades previously. Today you'll find the A.M.E. Church functioning amidst the strife in Sierra Leone and all the way into old Swaziland and to some extent even in Zimbabwe--all from the original efforts of Henry Turner, whom some theological scholars refer to as the "Black Apostle Paul."

When so many of the old-line denominations in the U.S. are declining in membership and diminishing in the exercise of moral and spiritual authority, it's refreshing to witness the filled-to-capacity edifices of the A.M.E. denomination. From Friendship to Greater Zion to Greater Goodwill, the faith is alive; the hymns of praise are sung with enthusiasm and passion. Preaching is still that old-time gospel and you'll hear many an "Amen" and "Thank you, Jesus."

That old spiritual, "There's A Meeting Here Tonight," could easily be rephrased to close with this refrain appropriate to the conference that Bishop Williams and Reverend Temoney are conducting here this week: "There's fire in the East, there's fire in the West. There's a meeting here tonight. I know it's among the A.M.E. There's a meeting here tonight!"

(Author's Note: I owe a special debt of gratitude to Emma Williams of Greater Zion A.M.E. Church for her help in acquiring information for this column.)

(Dr. Thomas B. Horton is a history teacher at Porter-Gaud H.S. He lives in the Old Village of Mount Pleasant).