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Sunday, November 1, 2009

The most segregated hour in America
For the first time in centuries, two congregations torn apart by race - St. George's Methodist Church and Mother Bethel AME - united in joint worship. Laticia Stauffer (left) and Paultett Dunker-Jenkins take up the collection (TOM GRALISH / Staff photographer).

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once referred to 11 a.m. Sunday as “the most segregated hour in this nation,” but two Philadelphia congregations have shown it doesn’t need to be that way.

White members of St. George’s Methodist Church and black congregants from Mother Bethel A.M.E. gathered last Sunday to worship together under the same roof at St. George’s in Old City. Not only was their union inspirational, it had historical significance.
 
The forerunners of these two congregations split, black from white, more than 220 years ago. They had been separated ever since.
 
Two central figures back then were Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, both born into slavery, who had become free men and settled in Philadelphia. They joined the congregation of St. George’s, one of the few churches in the city at the time that opened its doors to blacks. Allen even preached from its pulpit.
 
But one Sunday in 1787, Allen, Jones and several other African Americans were praying when white church leaders tried to pull them off their knees and move them to the balcony, where they’d be segregated.
 
Offended, Jones and Allen left, never to return. They formed the Free African Society, and eventually founded what became Mother Bethel at Sixth and Lombard streets. It was an important Underground Railroad stop before the Civil War.
 
But enmity between the two churches lingered. In fact, some of today’s Mother Bethel members still recall family who expressed animosity toward St. George’s.
 
The current pastors of both churches deserve credit for working to overcome that sad legacy. As St. George’s prepared to celebrate its 240th anniversary this year, its pastor, Rev. Fred Day, invited Rev. Mark Kelly Tyler of Mother Bethel to preach as part of the commemoration. Tyler suggested bringing Mother Bethel’s congregation with him. And last Sunday, black and white worshippers filled St. George’s, 222 years after the schism.
 
Day presented Tyler with a wooden cross, fashioned with nails from the church’s balcony. Some hurts are never too old to try to heal.
 
Perhaps this gesture will lead to future examples of cooperation and understanding, among these and other congregations. To paraphrase a good book, love keeps no record of wrongs.
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