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

Luis Andres Henao
| Associated Press

Philadelphia — George Washington. Benjamin Franklin. Betsy Ross. Two Founding Fathers and an American flag seamstress once worshiped on Christchurch’s centuries-old wooden pews.

It is the site of Colonial America’s break with the Church of England and the birthplace of the Episcopal Church USA.

Less than a mile south, behind Independence Hall, Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church stands on the oldest piece of land continuously owned by black Americans. It is the mother church of the country’s first black denomination.

Two churches, through the centuries. Generations after their birth in this country, first conceived in Philadelphia, both churches continue to serve as a spiritual home for hundreds of city residents.

Church members see their congregation’s role as crucial, a beacon ahead of the disputed presidential election in Pennsylvania, the most important swing state. They also express concern about the political division that the Founding Fathers once feared could split the nation.

“We have grown as a nation, but I think we are at a standstill at the moment. We are terribly divided,” said Christchurch parishioner Jeanette Morris. A registered Republican, she previously voted for former President Donald Trump but plans to support Vice President Kamala Harris on Nov. 5 because of her support for reproductive rights. Morris is concerned about health issues since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

“Nothing gets done in Washington because no one can agree on anything,” she said after a recent service. “I pray every Sunday that we can get through this.”

Today’s list of controversial issues is long, from abortion and immigration to taxes, climate change and foreign wars. It is also the first presidential election since the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, an act of political violence based on lies that the 2020 election was stolen.

“I think everything has changed: slavery has been abolished. The Civil Rights Act was passed. But still, deep down, the people of the United States are not truly united,” said Keith Matthews, 61, a member of Mother Bethel AME. “There is still a lot of hatred and misunderstanding between the races.”

The national church was at the center of it all

In its infancy, the United States of America was also deeply divided. And some members of Christchurch – from Washington to the rector of the parish – seemed to be at the center of it all.

“What we are experiencing now is certainly unprecedented from a political point of view. And there is enormous potential instability and anxiety that many people are experiencing in this church and in the United States,” says Zach Biro, executive director of the Christ Church Preservation Foundation. “And Christ Church is a great example of how to weather this storm.”

The church was founded in 1695 by a group of colonists from Philadelphia as the first parish of the Anglican Church in Pennsylvania. Later congregants included slaves and their owners, loyalists and patriots. They listened to sermons in favor and against independence.

Anglican clergy loyal to the British king prayed for the monarch weekly. But on July 4, 1776, the vestry of Christ Church struck the king’s name from the Book of Common Prayer—a brazen act of potential treason. The book is today kept in an underground museum, a testament to the revolutionary spirit of the church on Independence Day.

“We tend to think of the early American republic as a time of great unity, but, like today, the political culture was deeply polarized,” says John Fee, a professor of American history at Messiah University in Pennsylvania.

In the 1780s, Fea said by email, debate raged over how to apply Revolutionary-era principles such as liberty or liberty to all Americans. From the pulpit, the Rev. Jacob Duchet, rector of the church, was considered a moderate and led the prayers as the first chaplain of the Continental Congress. But then he sided with the loyalists.

When the British occupied Philadelphia in 1777, Rector wrote a letter to Washington urging him to surrender and make a deal with the British. After the letter became public, Duchet went to England. Pennsylvania authorities later called him a traitor and banned him from returning to the country. His successor, Reverend William White, became the first presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. He is praised for keeping his community united during times of unrest.

Christchurch’s current senior pastor is the Rev. Samantha Vincent-Alexander, the first woman to serve as rector in the church’s more than 300-year history.

“Imagining what we should do in this political environment right now and how we deal with it is an incredible challenge,” she says. “Most of our communities are not a single voting bloc. They represent different people, just as they did during the American Revolution.”

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

Members remain proud of Christ Church’s critical role in securing American freedom. But they also struggle with contradictions. Some church members traded slaves and are buried in the church yard near the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin’s grave is in nearby Christ Church Cemetery.

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

One church member, Absalom Jones, attended sisterhood services while an enslaved man serving in the church leadership. Jones purchased his freedom and was eventually ordained by the rector of Christ Church as the first black priest of the Episcopal Church. He also co-founded the Free African Society of Philadelphia, which, according to Fea, “sought to apply the rights secured by the American Revolution to the approximately 2,000 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 segregate black parishioners during services in the upstairs galleries. This encouraged free black Americans to found their own community.

Mother Bethel AME fought for freedom from the very beginning

The African Methodist Episcopal Church has been involved in the struggle for freedom and equality since its beginnings.

Its founder, the Rev. Richard Allen, was born into slavery in Philadelphia in 1760 and then purchased his freedom in Delaware before he was 20 years old. He returned to the city in the 1780s and became a minister.

After white Methodist church leaders sequestered Allen, Jones and other black congregants into the upper galleries for a prayer service, the group left the church and formed what eventually became Mother Bethel AME. The church became a place of refuge for black people escaping slavery via the Underground Railroad and then a major rallying point for the Civil Rights Movement.

By creating Mother Bethel, Allen “carved out a space where black people could resist…at a time when, during slavery in the Deep South, black people couldn’t even gather without a white man in between,” says Bethel AME’s pastor. , Rev. Mark Tyler.

Today, the AME Church has more than 2.5 million members and thousands of congregations in dozens of countries around the world.

“We’ve certainly made progress,” Tyler says, citing Kamala Harris’ campaign to become the country’s first black woman president. But he also believes much more needs to be done to overcome racial inequality in America, and he worries about the potential for another Trump presidency. The AME Church, he said, “has not outlived its usefulness.”

“The fact that we have a man who openly supports white supremacists, who was once president and could potentially become president again in the 21st century, is all the proof you need to know that we still need places where black people can come together. and organize as a Black church,” he says.

During a recent Sunday service, Tyler encouraged his congregation to vote. Some members later reflected on America’s beginnings, its progress, and its shortcomings.

“Two things can be said at the same time: they have contributed brilliantly to the development of this nation. But they still carried the message of slavery, women were not allowed to vote, and that needed to change,” parishioner Donna Matthews said of the Founding Fathers.

“Who are “We the People”? I think people need to ask themselves that question,” said Matthews, 63, who attended the service with her husband, Keith, and their young grandson, Ezekiel. “This is all. And that’s the essence of why this church was founded.”

After the service, parishioner Taiza Hill, 25, led the group on a tour of the church museum. It retains the original wooden pulpit used by Reverend Allen and Black leaders, including abolitionist Frederick Douglass and civil rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois, when they addressed parishioners.

Hill says that as the election approached, she heard the same question on radio broadcasts: “Does the sun rise or set on democracy?” She remains hopeful and believes the continuity of her church is vital.

“It’s important to see that there is still a building that has history and is constantly being talked about because it refuses to be erased from history,” Hill says. “As a nation and as a church, we must indeed defend the rights and respectability of those who are deprived of all opportunities of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”