Our Genesis
Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Carlisle began with a small group of Christians holding prayer meetings from house to house in the year 1820. As the number of participants grew and their spiritual strength increased, they were able to purchase a plot of East Pomfret Street in 1826, on which they planned to erect a meeting house. Although the task was not an easy undertaking, the spirit, patience and zeal of the members saw the first building completed. It was a low brick structure, consisting of an audience room and a finished basement. The cornerstone for the church was laid in 1828. “Bethel” was first known as the Pomfret Street AME Church, and for a number of years was connected with Bethel AME Church, Harrisburg and the mission at West Harrisburg. Together they formed what was then known as the Harrisburg Circuit of the Baltimore Annual Conference.
The Heroic Years
In its history, Bethel AME Church has served the community in more ways than as a house of worship. Like other AME churches along the corridor between Maryland and Harrisburg corresponding to today’s I-81, Bethel Carlisle was a station on the Underground Railroad, developed to aid fugitive slaves on their escape to freedom. Prominent abolitionists John B. Vashon and John C. Peck were members during the earlier days of the church.
The Negro Public School (or Colored Public School), taught for a half-century by Miss Sarah Bell, a white woman, used the basement of Bethel church as a school room. The church served as a temporary shelter and hospital during the Civil War. Reverend Wills Nazrey, who served as Bethel’s first pastor, was elected the fifth bishop of the AME Church in 1852.
Bishop Daniel A. Payne, one of the foremost Black scholars and educators of his day, enjoyed a close association with Bethel AME Church in Carlisle. While a student at the Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg, Daniel Payne rode his horse every Sunday from Gettysburg to Carlisle to enjoy the AME fellowship established at Bethel. Considered the second most important AME bishop only to founder Richard Allen, Bishop Payne later founded Wilberforce University in Zena, Ohio, the oldest historically black university in the United States.
Courtesy of Cumberland County Historical Society
Maturity and Setback
In 1867 the present structure was erected. Bihsop A.W. Wayman laid the cornerstone during the pastorate of Reverend Amos Wilson. The church parsonage was built in 1888 during the pastorate of Reverend J.T. Hammond. A pipe organ was among the early acquisitions of the church during the pastorate of Reverend J.H. Bell in 1895. The original stained glass windows were added during the pastorate of Reverend R. H. Shirley in 1908.
Two of our parishioners from long ago were honored locally in 2021. Noah and Carrie Pinkney, born in slavery in Virginia and Maryland, became popular food vendors on the Dickinson College campus. They were active members of our church and are commemorated on one of our windows. When Dickinson college decided to remove names tainted by a history of slave ownership from its campus landmarks, one of these names was replaced with the name Pinkney. We are grateful and moved by this profound gesture on Dickinson College’s part.
By the late 1920s, when Reverend A.N. Clark was assigned the pastorate of Bethel Church, both the church and the parsonage were badly in need of repair inside and out. there were some outstanding debts, including a short-term note at the bank. After much discussion, a mortgage for $15,000 was negotiated and signed in January of 1930. Numerous badly-needed renovations were subsequently carried out.
In 1947 an electrical fire badly damaged the interior of Bethel. The church’s early records, the pipe organ and many important artifacts were destroyed. The congregation embarked on an energetic renovation program under the capable leadership of Reverend Joseph R. Fortune, and the sanctuary was fully restored – minus the pipe organ – within a year.
Modern Era
Rev. Lawrence C. Henryhand, today’s Presiding Elder of the Harrisburg District within the Philadelphia Conference, was our sixty-fourth pastor from 1990 to 2002. Numerous renovations to the church and to the parsonage were carried out, along with several new church programs. Rev. Marilyn A. Hubbard was Bethel’s pastor from 2012 to 2021. One of her significant achievements was to encourage communication and partnership with other historically Black churches in Carlisle, as well as with mainstream congregations and with community leaders. Our 69th and most recent pastor, Rev. Jerald W. Crummy, was assigned at Bethel from 2021 to 2024 and established a partnership with Carlisle United Methodist Church that has been most valuable in practical and spiritual terms.
The historical marker outside Bethel was dedicated in May 2009, one of three PA markers celebrating individual Bethel AME churches (the other two stand in Pittsburgh and Reading). The marker near AME, Meadville commemorates Underground Railroad activist Richard Henderson.
