About The Family Room
The Family Room is a new conversation series, which marries our past with our future. Hosted at the historic Metropolitan A.M.E. Church in downtown Washington, DC, The Family Room is a familial space where ideas are ignited and healing happens through action-oriented, thought-provoking dialogue.
We are grateful that each purchased ticket is a donation to Metropolitan A.M.E. Church and will help with the preservation of this important, historic institution. It will also support the continued growth of The Family Room conversation series.
Convening important conversations since the 1850’s.
Founded at Metropolitan A.M.E. Church in the 1850’s by Rev. Daniel A. Payne, the Bethel Literary Society created space for this institution to be in the forefront of the civic, cultural, and intellectual life among African Americans.
Rev. Payne, one of the most prominent AME ministers in the nation at the time, worked tirelessly to increase literacy and introduce literary luminaries to Washington’s black community.
Featured speakers over the years have included Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Mary McLeod Bethune, Eleanor Roosevelt, Joel Elias Spingarn, E.E. Just, Alain Locke, Mordecai W. Johnson, Hubert H. Humphrey, Charles H. Wesley, James E. Clyburn, Jesse Jackson and Bishop Desmond Tutu.
About Metropolitan A.M.E. Church
Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church is known as "The National Cathedral of African Methodism." Our ancestors thoughtfully bequeathed our ministry and location to us at the intersection of the history and future of African Americans with the power corridors of the nation. We have been bearing witness to the sovereign God through praiseful worship, spreading the power of the gospel message to liberate the oppressed, and serving humanity since 1838. Ours is a Sankofa ministry with a theology of location—we are looking to our ancestral past while joyfully embracing the possibilities and challenges of the future.
Metropolitan was formed by two existing churches: Israel Bethel A.M.E., founded in 1821, and Union Bethel A.M.E., founded in 1838. The parent A.M.E. Church movement grew out of an anti-segregation protest in Philadelphia in 1787. Similarly, both Israel Bethel and Union Bethel began as a result of dissatisfaction among African Americans over racial segregation here in Washington at Ebenezer Methodist Episcopal Church.
Each Annual Conference (in a meeting of the Episcopal districts in the continental USA), was requested to donate at least $100 for the building project. In gratitude, the church recognized this generosity by dedicating a stained-glass window to each contributing Annual Conference. Construction began in 1880, and the cornerstone was laid in 1881.