supervision within the Methodist Church. In 1816 Allen gathered four other black congregations together in the mid-Atlantic region to establish the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church as an independent denomination, the first fully independent black denomination. The ministers consecrated Allen as their first bishop. African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church The African Methodist Episcopal Zion or AME Zion Church, like the AME Church, is an offshoot of the Methodist Episcopal Church. black members of the John Street Methodist Church of New York City left to form their own church after several acts of overt discrimination by white members. In 1796, black Methodists asked the permission of the bishop of the ME Church to meet independently, though still to be part of the ME Church and led by white preachers. This AME Church group built Zion chapel in 1800 and became incorporated in 1801, still subordinate to the ME Church. In 1820, AME Zion Church members began further separation from the ME Church. By seeking to install black preachers and elders, they created a debate over whether blacks could be ministers. This debate ended in 1822 with the ordination of Abraham Thompson, Leven Smith, and James Varick, the first superintendent (bishop) of the AME Zion church. After the Civil War, the denomination sent missionaries to the South and attracted thousands of new members, who shaped the church. Other Methodist connexions African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church and Connection Christian Methodist Episcopal Church Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A. Lumber River Conference of the Holiness Methodist Church Baptists National Baptist Convention The National Baptist Convention was first organized in 1880 as the Foreign Mission Baptist Convention in Montgomery, Alabama. Its founders, including Elias Camp Morris, stressed the preaching of the gospel as an answer to the shortcomings of a segregated church. In 1895, Morris moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and founded the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., as a merger of the Foreign Mission Convention, the American National Baptist Convention, and the Baptist National Education Convention. The National Baptist Convention USA, Inc. reported to have 8,415,100 members around the globe from 21,145 congregations by 2020, thus making it the largest black religious organization in the United States. Other Baptist denominations Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship National Baptist Convention of America International, Inc. National Missionary Baptist Convention of America Progressive National Baptist Convention Pentecostalism Church of God in Christ In 1907, Charles Harrison Mason formed