5. Union Church and the Growth of Methodist Episcopal Bureaucracy
In addition to being the site of Whitefield’s preaching house, this block, in 1801, became the site of a new Methodist Episcopal Church. Ironically, it was called Union Church even though it began because of congregational disunion at St. George’s Church a few blocks north. The fifty members who left St. George’s rented space in Whitefield’s Academy which, by 1801, was occupied by the University of Pennsylvania. A few years later they built a church of their own on this block (pictured here).
Perhaps the most famous pastor Union Methodist Episcopal Church ever had was John Price Durbin (1800-1876), but he was not famous for pastoring. He was famous for being Chaplain of the United States’ Senate in 1831 and later led the mission agency for the Methodist Episcopal denomination from 1850 to 1872. Durbin transformed the mission society from being little more than a voluntary society to being an integral part of the Methodist Episcopal Church’s growing organizational machine. Support for home and foreign mission under Durbin was encouraged at every level of the denomination’s structure. Regional ministry areas Methodists call “Conferences” outlined multi-pronged strategies for promoting the work of mission which included monthly missionary prayer meetings in each church, promotion of the denomination’s mission newspaper, twice-a-year offerings to support mission, and the list went on. For a number of years, the Philadelphia Conference led the Methodist Episcopal Church denomination in giving to the Mission Society. Durbin accomplished a great deal in the eyes of fellow clergy even if today Methodists might wonder about the transition Durbin presided over of a denomination that became less a mission itself than a large denomination that had missions organized from a strong central structure.
Let’s pause for a moment and reflect on the story of Durbin and the growth of the Methodist Episcopal bureaucracy in the 1850s. We tell this story less than a block from where Methodists first met in Loxley Court. Nearly a hundred years went by between our stories in these two places, but like layers of sediment in the Grand Canyon, stories in a city walking tour can be found lying close together even if the contexts of these stories historically are far apart.