The History of New Bethel Church

Methodists have always been a people with a passion to share their faith. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that early Methodist preachers were among the first to move west and establish new places of worship. In our area, Joseph Lillard and Hosea Riggs, Methodist lay preachers, were organizing settlers into Methodist small groups as early as 1793. Benjamin Young was sent to our area from the conference in Kentucky in 1803 as the first Methodist circuit rider officially appointed to our state. Although he had responsibility for the entire state, his work was concentrated in the areas now known at St. Clair and Madison Counties. A sturdy man, Young was said to have recovered his stolen horse from fierce Kickapoo Indians who confronted him on his way to his new Illinois assignment..

As was the early Methodist custom, circuit riders were usually only appointed to an area for one year at a time. In 1804, Joseph Oglesby was appointed to serve Illinois. It was his successor, Charles Matheny, who oversaw the building of the first meetinghouse in Illinois in 1805. On land donated by Thomas and Polly (Gillham) Good, faithful Methodists who had moved to the area from Georgia, the "Bethel Meetinghouse" was constructed to serve the people of the Goshen settlement. Named after the place of Jacob's heavenly vision in Genesis 28 ("Bethel" means "House of God."), the meetinghouse was a small cabin built of un-hewn logs, with a clapboard roof, puncheon floor, and rudely constructed windows. There were no panes in the windows and the chimney was made of logs chinked with clay. This meetinghouse was built less than a mile from New Bethel's present site.

In 1807, the meetinghouse was the site of two camp meetings. Presiding Elder William McKendree, later a bishop, and pioneer preacher Jesse Walker, the circuit rider then appointed to the area, preached and reported the conversion of many sinners. This was in spite of the fact that Walker had to still an angry mob that threatened to disrupt the services.

In 1817 and 1818, the meetinghouse was the site of the Missouri Annual Conference, of which Illinois was a part. The Bethel Meetinghouse, rurally located, began to decline as a center of worship as Edwardsville was founded and activity shifted to the new town. The log cabin was later lost to fire and not rebuilt. A monument to the meetinghouse was erected in 1939 and still stands along Glen Carbon Road today.

B. A Struggling Coal Mine Community Church

When the Madison Coal Company established mines in the area in 1894, an instant "company town" sprang up where once there was none. The town was named Glen Carbon in reference to the coal that gave it birth. Although the Methodist Church had split in 1844 over the slavery issue, both the Methodist Episcopal Church North and the Methodist Episcopal Church South were both acutely attuned to shifts in population and the need for new communities of faith. In 1894 Rev. Richard Crowder was appointed by the Methodist Episcopal Church North to start a new congregation in Glen Carbon. He labored faithfully, taking subscriptions for the construction of a church to serve the community. Soon after beginning the work, however, Rev. Crowder's health failed and progress was halted.

Sensing an opportunity, the Methodist Episcopal Church South sent 22 year old W.A. Swift to Glen Carbon. In a letter written near the end of his life, Rev. Swift recalled being told about "a town of 1500 people, 13 saloons, [and] no church, not even a church organization." Rev. Swift passed up the opportunity to go to a church that paid a salary to come to Glen Carbon, which offered no compensation. His first service was in the school building with seven people in attendance. The next two weeks he preached on Main Street where he estimates 100 people heard him. The following week, in a small rented room above one of the town saloons, Rev. Swift held a well-attended revival meeting and several people were converted. Twenty-five people joined together to form a Methodist Church. Under his leadership, the church building was begun in 1895 and construction was completed in 1896. The Methodist message, which supported holiness of heart and life and absolute abstinence from vices such as alcohol, gambling, and desecration of the Sabbath, was challenging to the predominantly Bohemian population. All of the members of the board of aldermen were saloon owners. Nevertheless, the first sermon preached in the new church building was on "the evils of the saloon" and through the church's witness, a petition was circulated and all the saloonkeepers were removed from the town board. There was some resistance to the change the church was affecting. At one point, shots were fired outside the church while Rev. Swift was preaching. Although the church had 110 enrolled in Sunday School, the fledgling congregation found itself unable to support a pastor or pay its building debt. The church was sold to the Madison Coal Company for $500 and the creditors agreed to receive a portion of what was owed them. Rev. Swift moved on to other opportunities in 1901.