PHILADELPHIA – The two historic churches are less than a mile apart in Philadelphia. Christ Church is where some of the Founding Fathers worshipped, and where colonial America made its break with the Church of England. Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is located on the oldest parcel of land continuously owned by Black Americans.
Generations after their birth in this nation first envisioned in Philadelphia, both churches continue to serve as the spiritual home for hundreds in the city.
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Church members see the role of their congregation as crucial, a beacon ahead of a contentious presidential election in Pennsylvania — the most pivotal of swing states. But they also express concerns about political division that the Founding Fathers once feared could tear the nation apart.
Christ Church congregation included foes and supporters of independence
Christ Church was founded in 1695 by a group of Philadelphia colonists as the first parish of the Church of England in Pennsylvania. Congregants later included slaves and their owners, loyalists and patriots. They listened to sermons favoring and opposing independence.
Anglican clergy loyal to the British king led weekly prayers for the monarch. But on July 4, 1776, Christ Church’s vestry crossed out the king’s name from the Book of Common Prayer — a defiant act of potential treason. The book is preserved today in an underground museum, a testament of the church’s revolutionary spirit on Independence Day.
During the 1780s, debate raged about how to apply revolutionary-era principles such as liberty or freedom to all Americans. From the pulpit, the Rev. Jacob Duché, the church’s rector, was seen as a moderate and led prayers as the first chaplain of the Continental Congress. But then he sided with the loyalists.
When the British occupied Philadelphia in 1777, the rector wrote a letter to Washington urging him to surrender and reach a deal with the British. After the letter became public, Duché traveled to England. Pennsylvania officials later labeled him a traitor and banned his reentry. His successor, the Rev. William White, became the first presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. He’s praised for keeping the unity of his congregation during times of turmoil.
Christ Church’s current senior pastor is the Rev. Samantha Vincent-Alexander, the first woman to serve as rector in its more than 300-year history.
The church's complex history in regard to slavery
Congregants remain proud of Christ Church’s crucial role in America’s freedom. But they also grapple with contradictions. Some church members traded slaves and are buried in the church yard near signers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin’s tomb is in the nearby Christ Church burial ground.
One church member, Absalom Jones, attended services at a sister congregation while enslaved to a man serving in the church leadership. Jones bought his freedom and eventually became ordained by the Christ Church rector as the first Black priest of the Episcopal Church. He also went on to co-create the Free African Society of Philadelphia, which Fea says “sought to apply the rights secured from the American Revolution to the 2,000 or so free Black men and women living in the city at the time.”
Methodism was the fastest growing denomination in America in the 1790s. But some Methodist Episcopal Churches still segregated Black worshippers during services to the upstairs galleries. This prompted free Black Americans to start their own congregation.
Mother Bethel AME fought for freedom from the start
The African Methodist Episcopal Church has been involved in the struggle for freedom and equality from its roots.
Its founder, the Rev. Richard Allen, was born into slavery in Philadelphia in 1760 before buying his freedom in Delaware before he was 20. He returned to the city in the 1780s and became a minister.
After white leaders at a Methodist church segregated Allen, Jones and other Black worshippers to the upstairs galleries for a prayer service, the group left the church and formed what would eventually become Mother Bethel AME. The church became a place of refuge for Black people fleeing slavery along the Underground Railroad and later a major gathering point for the Civil Rights Movement.
What lies ahead for Mother Bethel and the AME?
Today, the AME Church has more than 2.5 million members and thousands of congregations in dozens of nations worldwide.
“Certainly, we’ve made progress,” says its pastor, the Rev. Mark Tyler, citing Kamala Harris’ campaign to become the country’s first Black female president. But he also believes that much more needs to be done to bridge America’s racial inequality and he worries about the potential of another Trump presidency. The AME Church, he says, has not “outlived its usefulness.”
“The fact that we have a person who openly embraces white supremacists, who has been president once and potentially could be president again in the 21st century, is all the evidence that you need to know that we still need places for Black people to come together and organize like the Black Church,” he says.
During a recent Sunday service, Tyler encouraged his congregation to vote. Some members later reflected on America’s beginnings and its progress and shortcomings.
At the end of the service, parishioner Tayza Hill, 25, led groups on a tour of the church’s museum. It preserves an original wooden pulpit used by the Rev. Allen and Black leaders including abolitionist Frederick Douglass and civil rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois when they addressed the congregation.
“Seeing that there’s still a building that has the history and is continuously being told is important because it’s refusing to be erased from history,” Hill says. “As a nation and as a church, it’s really up to us to defend the rights and the respectability of those who are withheld the full opportunity of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”
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