The two historic churches are less than a mile apart in Philadelphia. Christ Church is where some of the Founding Fathers worshipped, and where colonial America made its break with the Church of England. Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is located on the oldest parcel of land continuously owned by Black Americans.
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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. But they also express concerns about political division that the Founding Fathers once feared could tear the nation apart.Christ 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.
One church member, Absalom Jones, attended services while enslaved to a man serving in the church leadership. Jones bought his freedom and eventually became ordained 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.
“Certainly, we’ve made progress,” says its pastor, the Rev. Mark 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.”
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