PHILADELPHIA (AP) — George Washington. Benjamin Franklin. Betsy Ross. The two Founding Fathers and the seamstress of the American flag all once worshiped on the now centuries-old wooden pews of Christ Church.
It’s the site of colonial America’s break with the Church of England — and where the U.S. Episcopal Church was born.
Less than a mile south, past Independence Hall, Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church stands on the oldest parcel of land continuously owned by Black Americans. It’s the mother church of the nation’s first Black denomination.
Two churches, across the centuries. 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.
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. They also express concerns about political division that the Founding Fathers once feared could tear the nation apart.
“We’ve grown as a nation, but I think at this point, we’re at a standstill. We’re terribly divided,” said Christ Church parishioner Jeanette Morris. A registered Republican, she previously voted for former President Donald Trump, but plans to back Vice President Kamala Harris on Nov. 5 because of her support for reproductive rights. Morris is concerned about health issues following the repeal of Roe v. Wade.
Today’s list of divisive issues is long: from abortion and immigration to taxes, climate change and the wars abroad. It’s also the first presidential election since an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, an act of political violence steeped in the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
“I think things have changed: Slavery is abolished. The Civil Rights Act was put in place. But still, deep down, the denizens of the United States haven’t really come together,” said Keith Matthews, 61, a Mother Bethel AME parishioner. “There’s still a lot of hatred and misunderstanding among the races.”
The nation’s church was at the center of it all
At its infancy, the United States of America also was deeply divided. And some members of Christ Church — from Washington to the parish rector — seemed to be at the center of it all.
“What we’re going through right now is certainly unprecedented politically. And there’s a huge amount of potential instability and concern that a lot of people have in this church and the United States,” says Zack Biro, executive director of the Christ Church Preservation Trust. “And Christ Church is a perfect example of kind of weathering that storm.”
The 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 to the church’s revolutionary spirit on Independence Day.
“We tend to think that the early American republic was a time of great unity, but, like today, the political culture was deeply polarized,” said John Fea, a professor of American history at Messiah University in Pennsylvania.
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 idea of what do we do in this political environment right now and how do we deal with that is an incredible challenge,” she said. “Most of our congregations are not a unified voting bloc. They represent different people much like at the time of the American Revolution.”
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.
By creating Mother Bethel, Allen “carved out a space where Black people could resist … at a time where during slavery in the Deep South, Black people could not even congregate without the presence of a white man in between them,” said Bethel AME’s pastor, the Rev. Mark Tyler.
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,” said Tyler, citing Kamala Harris’s 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 said, 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 said.
During a recent Sunday service, Tyler encouraged his congregation to vote. Some members later reflected on America’s beginnings and its progress and shortcomings.
“Two things can be said at the same time: They were brilliant in the development of this nation. But they still carried slavery ideas, women were not allowed to vote, and that needed to be changed,” parishioner Donna Matthews said about the Founding Fathers.
“Who are ‘We the people’? I think people need to ask themselves that,” said Matthews, 63, who attended the service with her husband, Keith, and their young grandson, Ezekiel. “It’s everyone. And it’s the essence of why this church was started.”
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.
Hill says she has been hearing the same question in radio shows as the election approaches: “Is the sun rising, or is the sun setting on democracy?” She remains hopeful and believes the continuity of her church is vital.