New funding to preserve Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church

The 134-year-old structure in Society Hill will get $90,000 to rehab its intricately designed stained-glass windows.

By Meir Rinde

Mother Bethel is famously one of the nation’s oldest Black churches and the first African Methodist Episcopal Church. It was [established by] Richard Allen, who was formerly enslaved in 1794, so Black Methodists could worship without having to sit in segregated sections of local white churches.

That makes it the oldest parcel in the country continuously owned by African Americans. The current building, built in 1890, is the fourth Mother Bethel erected on the property.

Designed by the architectural firm of Hazlehurst and Huckel in the 19th-century Romanesque Revival style, it has a three-story limestone entrance and a four-story tower.

“With this great beauty comes a lot of responsibility,” Tyler said. “There are huge and numerous stained glass windows all around the building, and there’s a lot of intricate work around the metalwork and the wood. This is going to help keep those windows beautiful and keep the building more energy efficient.”

He said the work is costly and time-consuming because it requires planning and handiwork by experts in historic preservation, as well as the erection of scaffolding for months.

The work will benefit not just the church’s 700 members, but thousands of AME members and others who visit from around the world every year to admire the denomination’s mother church, Tyler said.

In addition to its historical and architectural significance, the church is the “cradle” of a larger Black church movement that gave rise to renowned social justice leaders like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he said.

King’s daughter, Dr. Bernice L. King, visited the church last year for a Black History Month event to talk with Tyler and discuss her work with the King Center in Atlanta, advancing nonviolent social change.