SubscribeChurches let go of past hurts
In the City of Brotherly Love recently, two Methodist congregations came together to worship and to put aside more than 200 years of a painful shared history. What happened when the members of Historic St. George’s Methodist Church and Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church celebrated together in a Sunday service signals hope in a time when racism seems to be ramping up across the country.
Photo credit Historic St. George's Methodist Church
As the story goes, in the late 1780s blacks were on their knees praying in St. George’s when white church officers roused two prominent members and told then they could no longer pray in that part of the church. A scuffle ensued, according to a history recorded by Mother Bethel AME Church. Richard Allen, who was among the prayers, ” looked up to find a church trustee trying to wrench Absalom Jones to his feet.”
“It seemed that blacks were not to sit in the old gallery but to be relegated to the new gallery. An astonished Jones said to the trustee, “Wait until the prayer is over.” The martinet replied, “No, you must get now, or I will call for aid and force you away.” The devout Jones replied, “Wait until the prayer is over, and I will get up and trouble you no more.” Then another trustee came and tried to pull William White from his knees. Allen recalled, “By this time the prayer was over, and we all went out of the church in a body, and they were no more plagued by us in the church.”
Allen went on to found and become bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination, which today has more than 2.5 million members. 
Mother Bethel AME Church’s history is also deep and shows the good that can come out of adversity. The church, which is thriving today at Sixth and Richard Allen Avenue in Philly, was a stop on the Underground Railroad. It also stands on the oldest parcel of real estate continuously owned by African-Americans in the United States.
Over the years, Mother Bethel and St. George’s, which is the country’s oldest Methodist congregation, have exchanged pastors ceremonially but had not worshiped together on a Sunday morning. When that service was held on Oct. 25, tears flowed as the St. George’s pastor, Rev. Fred Day presented Mother Bethel pastor’s, the Rev. Mark Kelly Tyler, with a cross made with the nails from St. George’s balcony. ”Our ancestors built the balcony to separate black and white, ” Rev. Day said.
Later, according to a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Rev. Tyler raised the cross above his head as he finished his sermon on the importance of not holding on to hatred.
Photo credit St. George's Methodist Church
Rev. Tyler is looking forward to the day when reconciliation services such the one held between Mother Bethel and St. George’s will not be necessary. They “will not even be newsworthy,” he said, “because we have overcome issues of racism, sexism, classism, and all other -isms that separate us from one another and God.”
I pray so.
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