On the second Sabbath of February, (Feb. 14), 1858, a Sabbath School was opened in two second-story rooms of the house 2135 South Street, with twenty-seven scholars and two teachers. It was not long before the rooms, halls and stairways were crowded with scholars, and the question what to do with the children became a […]

Bethany was founded in February 1858 as an American Sunday School Union Mission by a 19 year old evangelist who was a Sunday School teacher at the First Independent Presbyterian Church. Bethany Church began in a tent 5 months later as a mission church, Bethany Chapel, under the pastoral leadership of Rev. John Chambers.

It is a dangerous thing to praise one man’s work over and above God’s handiwork. With that in mind, I mention John Wanamaker as a great man but only because he was convicted by God and acted on that conviction to reach out to the people of South Philly. At the age of 19, he […]