A formerly enslaved man was thrown out of an Old City church. He then founded America’s first African Methodist Episcopal church
Mother Bethel is the oldest independent Christian denomination founded by Black people and it was founded at 6th and Lombard Streets as a reaction to white supremacy.
Mark Tyler, historiographer and executive director of research and scholarship of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, often wonders: What if Christians stood up in the 1780s and challenged the articles of the U.S. Constitution that said Black people were not whole human beings?
What if the American branch of the Methodist church followed the teachings of its founder, John Wesley, who taught that slavery was a violation of Christian mercy? What if the ushers of Old City’s St. George’s Methodist Church didn’t kick formerly enslaved congregants Richard Allen and Absalom Jones out of the general congregation and force them to worship in segregated pews?
“We would have avoided the Civil War,” Tyler said. “We would have avoided Jim Crow. We would have avoided the moment in history we are in now.”
Instead, American Methodists sided with southern landholders who relied on free Black labor to build their empires. Evangelical churches, Tyler said, were among the first institutions to practice segregation.
Allen and Jones went on to start their own churches.
Jones founded the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas at 5th and Adelphi Streets. (Today the church is at 6361 Lancaster Avenue in West Philly.)
Allen established Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, regarded as America’s and the world’s — first AME congregation.
Mother Bethel will celebrate this history at the Philadelphia Historical Society’s weekly “firstival,” part of a yearlong celebration of America’s 250th birthday. Each Saturday in 2026, the historic district is hosting a daytime shindig honoring an event that happened in Philadelphia before anywhere else in America and often the world.
Allen was born into slavery in Philadelphia. In 1760, he bought his freedom from his enslaver, a devout Methodist who converted many of the people he enslaved. Allen answered the call to preach and traveled the mid-Atlantic for a few years evangelizing freed and enslaved people.
In 1786, he returned to Philadelphia, joined St. George’s, and started a 5 a.m. worship service. He led the service for a year and half before walking out in November of 1787.
“Certainly there had been moments of resistance in colonial Black communities,” Tyler said. “But this walkout was significant because it led to the emergence of the first American institutions by and for Black people,” Tyler said.
Allen bought land at 6th and Lombard Streets — where Mother Bethel sits now — on Oct. 10, 1791. Mother Bethel’s first building, a repurposed blacksmith shop was dedicated on July 29, 1794 by Bishop Francis Asbury.
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A second building was erected in 1805, a third in 1841, and the current building was completed in 1890.
“We are the oldest independent denomination founded by people of color in the United States,” said Rev. Carolyn C. Cavaness, pastor of Mother Bethel, “Our church sits on the oldest parcel of land continuously owned by African Americans.”
In 1816, 30 years after Allen established Mother Bethel, he invited delegates of Black Methodist churches in Pennsylvania, Baltimore, Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey to a conference, establishing the AME Church as its own denomination.
Mother Bethel has stood at the center of Civil Rights for centuries, from serving as a station on the Underground Railroad to uniting interfaith clergy who questioned $50 million of community benefits slated to go to the Sixers Arena in 2024.
“We are the Mother Church,” Cavaness said. “ … the foundation of so much Philadelphia history, so much American history. It’s an honor to be the sacred caretaker of this history.”
This week’s Firstival is Saturday, Feb. 7, 11 a.m. — 1 p.m., at Mother Bethel, 419 S 6th St, The Inquirer will highlight a “first” from Philadelphia Historic District’s 52 Weeks of Firsts program every week. A “52 Weeks of Firsts” podcast, produced by All That’s Good Productions, drops every Tuesday.