A Glimpse of the Kingdom

Great story today from Suzy Keenan and United Methodist News Service, about a remarkable worship service last weekend in Philadelphia. You can read the full story here.

The story is about how two churches that split over segregation more than 220 years ago came together in worship for the first time since then. And the split changed the face of America.

As Keenan writes, "In the 1780’s, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones became the first African-American lay preachers at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church, licensed by Francis Asbury, Methodism’s first bishop in America. The growing number of African members brought in by Allen and Jones led to the building of a balcony, completed in 1792. With the balcony came segregated seating. One Sunday when Jones was forcibly moved by a church trustee from where he was praying, Allen and Jones led a walk out of the African-American members. Allen began Mother Bethel Church, whose struggles with the overseeing church, St. George’s, continued with a “long, distressing and expensive lawsuit” over rights to self-determination. In 1816, the Supreme Court decided in favor of Mother Bethel, and Allen founded the African Methodist Episcopal denomination."

You know, in the society and culture that we live in--often divided by race, politics, etc.,--it just does my heart good to get a glimpse of the Kingdom every now and then.