This debate ended on July 30, 1822, when James Varick was ordained as the first bishop of the AME Zion church, a newly independent denomination.

[3] Two years later, it claimed 164,000 members, as it sent missionaries to the South after the American Civil War to plant new churches with the newly emancipated freedmen.

[8] The Methodist Wesleyan-Holiness movement came to the AME Zion Church, with Julia A. J. Foote among others preaching the doctrine of entire sanctification throughout pulpits of the connexion.

"The Book of Discipline is the instrument for setting forth the laws, plan, polity, and process by which the AME Zion Church governs itself.

In 1906 the religious studies department of Livingstone College was renamed Hood Theological Seminary, in honor of the influential bishop.

[citation needed] The AME Zion missionaries are active in North and South America, Africa, and the Caribbean region.

In 1998, the AME Zion Church commissioned the Reverend Dwight B. and BeLinda P. Cannon as the first family missionaries to South Africa in recent memory.

Dr. Cannon was Administrative Assistant to the late Bishop Richard K. Thompson, who oversaw the work of South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland.

[citation needed] The AME Zion Church has performed mission work in the countries of Nigeria, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Angola, Côte d'Ivoire, and Ghana in Africa; England, India, and Jamaica, St. Croix-Virgin Islands, Trinidad, and Tobago in the Caribbean; and others.