The Glad Procession to Mother Bethel

In 1794, Richard Allen — a formerly enslaved man who had purchased his own freedom — opened the doors of a converted blacksmith shop on Sixth Street in Philadelphia. It was Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and for the Black community of Philadelphia, it became their Jerusalem.

Allen knew what it meant to be unwelcome in God's house. Years earlier, he and other Black worshippers had been physically pulled from their knees during prayer at St. George's Methodist Church, told they were praying in the wrong section. They walked out that day and never returned.

But Allen did not abandon worship. He built a new home for it. And when Mother Bethel opened its doors, the congregation did not trickle in quietly. Families walked together through the streets of Philadelphia on Sunday mornings with a gladness that startled their neighbors. They were not merely attending a service. They were claiming a sacred space where their prayers would not be interrupted and their praise would not be silenced.

The psalmist wrote, "I was glad when they said to me, 'Let us go to the house of the Lord.'" That gladness is never deeper than when the journey to worship has cost you something. Every pilgrim who has walked a long road to reach God's house understands — the joy of arrival is sweetened by the memory of the road that tried to keep you away.