Two historic Philadelphia churches offer lessons for an America divided today and in its infancy

PHILADELPHIA — George Washington. Benjamin Franklin. Betsy Ross. The two Founding Fathers and the seamstress of the American flag all once worshipped 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.

“Nothing is getting done in Washington because nobody can agree on anything,” she said after a recent service. “I pray every Sunday that we can get past this all.”

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,” says Keith Matthews, 61, a Mother Bethel AME parishioner. “There’s still a lot of hatred and misunderstanding amongst 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,” says John Fea, a professor of American history at Messiah University in Pennsylvania.

During the 1780s, Fea said via email, 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 idea of what do we do in this political environment right now and how do we deal with that is an incredible challenge," she says. “Most of our congregations are not a unified voting bloc. They represent different people much like at the time of the American revolution."

“We had people who were loyalists and people who supported independence, and the clergy at the time had to find a way to keep the congregation together.”

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.

“While we’re very proud of our history, these people were not perfect. Sometimes we tend to think of them that way, but they weren’t,” says Harvey Bartle, a congregant for more than 30 years. “What they were doing is trying to promote democracy. … At least they advanced the ball beyond the divine right of kings, so that the society, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, could advance the system.”

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.

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,” says 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," says 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.

“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.

“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.”