• Home
  • MAP
  • TOUR STOPS
  • BOOKLET
  • Intro
  • Contact
Menu

Philadelphia Methodist History Walking Tour

235 N 4th St
Philadelphia, PA 19106
215-925-7788

Your Custom Text Here

Philadelphia Methodist History Walking Tour

  • Home
  • MAP
  • TOUR STOPS
    • 1. Historic St. George's UMC
    • 2. Loxley Court
    • 3. Arch Street Meeting House
    • 4. George Whitefield's Preaching House
    • 5. Union Church and the Growth of Methodist Episcopal Bureaucracy
    • 6. Ben Franklin’s grave: A Memorial to an Unlikely Friendship
    • 7. Home of James Dexter and the formation of The Free African Society
    • 8. President's House
    • 9. Independence Hall and Wesley’s attitude toward the Colonists
    • 10. St. Thomas African Episcopal Church
    • 11. Benjamin Rush’s home and African Methodists’ role in the Yellow Fever Epidemic
    • 12. Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” – A bestseller “Methodist” pamphlet?
    • 13. St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church and Joseph Pilmore
    • 14. Bishop Richard Allen's Home
    • 15. Mother Bethel AME
    • 16. W. E. B. DuBois’s Home during His Research Study
    • 17. Bedford Street Mission
    • 18. Fighting Methodist: Lewis C. Levin
    • 19. Home of Absalom Jones
    • 20. Methodist Sailors Home
    • 21. Korean War Memorial: The Methodist Connection
    • 22. Dock Street Location of first Methodist meeting
  • BOOKLET
  • Intro
  • Contact
bethel.jpg

15. Mother Bethel AME

As is the case with our first stop on this tour, St. George’s UMC, Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is deserving of a special visit of its own.  Members of this congregation still provide tours of their church building upon request.  The church’s museum is one of the best of any church in the city.  
Rather than recount the stories of Mother Bethel’s founding years in the 1790s which is featured in the church museum, we will instead talk a bit about how the African Methodist Episcopal denomination grew after its establishment as a distinct denomination in 1816.  In its first decade, the AME denomination grew from just a handful of churches in the region and a thousand members to one of 10,000 people spread across the Mid-Atlantic region.  In 1822 the second largest AME congregation in the world was even in the heart of the slave South, in Charleston, South Carolina.  By the mid-1820s an AME church was getting established in Canada and Bishop Allen was looking across the ocean for possibilities.  
Although too old to go there himself, Bishop Allen encouraged African Americans to emigrate to Haiti as president of the Haitian Emigration Society of Philadelphia.  He also carried on a lively correspondence with the president of independent Haiti, Jean-Pierre Boyer.  His motivation for doing so was not solely out of a desire for church growth; white hostility toward blacks in Philadelphia was growing in the 1820s and the black republic of Haiti was a place where Bishop Allen believed freedom could be attained more fully.  
In the summer of 1824 Bishop Allen agreed to permit fifty members of Mother Bethel AME to go to Haiti.  His own son, Richard Jr., also traveled to Haiti and lived there for a number of years.  It didn’t take long for AME churches to be established in Haiti with missionaries approved by Bishop Allen to care for them. 

Visit Mother Bethel's website for more information.

15. Mother Bethel AME

As is the case with our first stop on this tour, St. George’s UMC, Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is deserving of a special visit of its own.  Members of this congregation still provide tours of their church building upon request.  The church’s museum is one of the best of any church in the city.  
Rather than recount the stories of Mother Bethel’s founding years in the 1790s which is featured in the church museum, we will instead talk a bit about how the African Methodist Episcopal denomination grew after its establishment as a distinct denomination in 1816.  In its first decade, the AME denomination grew from just a handful of churches in the region and a thousand members to one of 10,000 people spread across the Mid-Atlantic region.  In 1822 the second largest AME congregation in the world was even in the heart of the slave South, in Charleston, South Carolina.  By the mid-1820s an AME church was getting established in Canada and Bishop Allen was looking across the ocean for possibilities.  
Although too old to go there himself, Bishop Allen encouraged African Americans to emigrate to Haiti as president of the Haitian Emigration Society of Philadelphia.  He also carried on a lively correspondence with the president of independent Haiti, Jean-Pierre Boyer.  His motivation for doing so was not solely out of a desire for church growth; white hostility toward blacks in Philadelphia was growing in the 1820s and the black republic of Haiti was a place where Bishop Allen believed freedom could be attained more fully.  
In the summer of 1824 Bishop Allen agreed to permit fifty members of Mother Bethel AME to go to Haiti.  His own son, Richard Jr., also traveled to Haiti and lived there for a number of years.  It didn’t take long for AME churches to be established in Haiti with missionaries approved by Bishop Allen to care for them. 

Visit Mother Bethel's website for more information.

bethel.jpg
bethel2a.jpg

Powered by Squarespace