The Oldest Church In Philadelphia Is Swedish, Anti-Racist And Holds Together Brick By Historical Brick
Gloria Dei Episcopal Church, South Philadelphia. Photo by Paul Glader
PHILADELPHIA — Inside the oldest church building in Pennsylvania, Jeanette Woehr stands next to a wooden church pew painted white — sixth from the front on the right side — the pew where her grandmother, her mother and she worshipped their entire lives.
“We were here way before William Penn was born,” says Woehr, the church historian at Gloria Dei Episcopal Church in South Philadelphia — a church often called “Old Swedes“ for good reason.
Swedish Lutherans built the church between 1698 and 1700 and worshipped along the Delaware River for several generations before Gloria Dei became part of the Episcopal Church in 1845. Woehr explains that the Swedish Lutheran services have many similarities to the Episcopal Church and are different from German Lutheran services. The church’s story and presence symbolize a unique chapter in American religious history and valuable contributions that Swedes made to religious freedom and racial tolerance in America.
In the United States, this is the oldest church building now standing as built and in use for worship for more than 320 years. This is the church where Woehr married her husband, Rich — the church her family has attended since 1820. And she plans to remain a pillar of the church, sharing its history with future generations.
On a cold Sunday morning in February, roughly 16 people attend the service at Gloria Dei. Almost everyone that day is older than 50 and sporting various combinations of white hair, glasses and bald heads. Woehr says that, normally, the church has 50 people in attendance on a Sunday morning, including several families with children.
Yet, while less than a third of the pews are full, the church does not feel dead like some other dwindling mainline churches. Rather, its congregants possess a soulful purpose and a sense of pride.
Small and soulful
One parishioner wears a Scandinavian sweater with blue and white colors. Others wear sweatshirts and Philly-style stocking caps to stay warm. Members give announcements with enthusiasm. Stained glass windows at the front dapple light onto wide-planked wood floors and across the colonial white wainscoting, pews and balcony. Historical rules mean they can’t repaint those walls easily.
The interim pastor, the Rev. Koshy Mathews, wears white robes with a green sash as he leads the congregation through hymns like “We Gather in God’s Presence,” prayers and readings from Genesis, Psalms, 1 Corinthians and Luke.
During his sermon on the “Standard of Christian Ethic: God’s Mercy,” Mathews talks about 9/11 and how he was criticized for sympathizing with terrorists and being too soft on crime. He notes that because of his heritage from India, he could pass for a terrorist by look and complexion.
Jeanette Woehr standing at her family’s church pew in Gloria Dei. Photo by Paul Glader
“Today’s environment is easily characterized as the enemy from within,” he says, referring to the passage in Luke 6:27-38 that says (in The Message edition by Eugene H. Peterson) “Love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the supple moves of prayer for that person. If someone slaps you in the face, stand there and take it. If someone grabs your shirt, gift wrap your best coat and make a present of it. If someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more payback. Live generously.”
Mathews says that message was true during 9/11 and today. He criticizes modern cultures of violence and notes that “we make a merchant of hate.” He gently critiques political discourse in America and suggests Christ’s love and message provide a different method.
“This love is subversive,” he says. “This love frees enemies of their hatred.” He cites Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Vaclav Havel, Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela. “They all embody this Jesus love.”
He challenges the congregation to “embody this Jesus love command” as Christians living in the wealthiest and most powerful country on earth. He says it is not easy and refers to Thomas Merton’s words: “The root of Christian belief is not to love but to understand we are loved.”
An iPhone on a tripod live-streams the service into the homes of those who cannot attend. Lights from the balcony backlight Mathews for higher quality video streaming. Woehr notes that perhaps half the congregation is tuning in from home, as the COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged the attendance at Gloria Dei.
Members announce the death of two congregants and share details about upcoming funeral arrangements. “That hit me hard,” Woehr later tells me about one of the fellow parishioners who died.
When it comes time for communion, a nice woman named Carol comes to the row where I’m sitting and asks my five-year-old daughter, Emmy, if she would like to help serve as an usher. Emmy nervously helps and later is excited about that opportunity. The congregation seems heartened by the presence of a kindergartner in their midst, and Emmy isn’t normally the only one. Woehr says that children in the congregation always are invited help with usher duties each week. “We want the kids involved so they feel like they are part of the church and not kept in the back and meant to be quiet and play,” Woehr says.
An advertisement for Gloria Dei in the Fall 2021 issue of Queen Village Quarterly Crier noted that this is a church “where progressive Christianity is preached, black lives matter, LGBTQ+ rights are human rights, white supremacy is rejected, no human is illegal, science is real, love is love, and kindness is everything.”
A Swedish heritage
Few Americans know that the Swedish Empire once authorized a colony in the United States, which started in 1638 on the Delaware River — an area stretching from Wilmington, Delaware, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Trenton, New Jersey — and operated until 1655 amid and in contention with early Dutch and British colonies. They called it “New Sweden.”
Unlike many other early American colonies, the colonists of New Sweden got along very well with American Indian tribes in the region. Historian Jean Soderlund, a professor emeritus at Leheigh University and leading scholar on the Lenape natives, has noted that colonial scholars typically start their histories by focusing on Virginia and Maryland and ignore Pennsylvania until William Penn and the Quakers arrive in 1681. Soderlund’s scholarship on the Lenape realizes the importance of the earlier 17th century settlements on the Delaware, particularly New Sweden.
New Sweden was “quite different from the Chesapeake and New England because the Natives retained control,” Soderlund said in an interview with the University of Pennsylvania Press. “When the Dutch attempted to establish large-scale plantation agriculture at Swanendael (near Lewes, Delaware) in 1631, the Lenapes killed all its residents and demolished the colony.”
By contrast, Soderlund and other historians have noted that the Swedes and Lenape learned to ally with one another and oppose heavy-handed Dutch and English authority. The Lenape and the Swedes, according to Soderlund, “interacted on the basis of personal liberty, religious freedom, decentralized government, trade and peaceful resolution of conflict, thus creating the cultural platform on which the Delaware Valley Society grew.”
New Sweden also is notable in that no record of slavery in that colony exists, in contrast to colonial efforts by Spanish, Dutch and English explorers, which often included slaves to provide labor. A Dutch ship captain dropped off a slave as a gift to the New Sweden colonists, and the Swedes — realizing that slavery was illegal in Sweden and that this slave, named Anthony, was a skilled sailor — made him an assistant to the governor and a ship pilot. They called him “Black Anthony.”
One of the most interesting periods in New Sweden occurred during the reign of Johan Printz, a 400-pound, 6-foot giant of a man who functioned as a creative leader, a shrewd tactician and a blunderbuss whom some colonists considered a tyrant. Printz came from a line of pastors and was a student at universities in Sweden and Germany before becoming a mercenary soldier in the Thirty Years’ War, a captive of war and a prisoner for leaving his post. The leaders of Sweden saw Printz had leadership qualities and offered to restore Printz’s military rank as well as land and wealth if he would lead New Sweden as governor. Printz couldn’t refuse such an offer.
Early on, Printz and the colonists of New Sweden built Lutheran churches and brought Lutheran ministers to the region, begetting thousands of descendants who helped Lutheranism develop in America.
The first Old Swedes log church built along the Delaware in 1646 was led by a unique Lutheran pastor named Johan Campanius for two years. Companius taught himself the Lenape language, worked hard to build friendships with the Lenape tribes and invited members to Lutheran church services. Records indicate some took him up on the invitation. Campanius translated Martin Luther’s shorter catechism as the first book published in the Lenape language. That first log church lasted until 1688.
Another log church, built in 1677, was located in Wicaco on the south side of what later became Philadelphia. Swedes built Gloria Dei in 1700 to replace those early log churches, and Gloria Dei fostered a few daughter churches in the region of Pennsylvania. Swedish American researchers Kim-Eric Williams and the late Peter Stebbins Craig published a nine-volume series of church records titled “Colonial Records of the Swedish Churches in Pennsylvania.”
“Colonial Records of the Swedish Churches in Pennsylvania” has been republished by the church in all 9 volumes.
Along with dozens of other descendents of New Sweden and history buffs, Williams and Stebbins Craig documented the history of New Sweden via journals and events from the Swedish Colonial Society and other nonprofits in the tri-state region of Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey. And the earlier Swedish and Finnish settlers in the region kept detailed records of their journeys, religious services and survival in the new world.
Inside the sanctuary of Gloria Dei today, a model of the Kalmar Nyckel and another model of the Fogel Grip — the two ships that first brought settlers from Europe to the colony of New Sweden — hang from the rafters and dangle confidently over the sanctuary.
An identity morphed
Pennsylvania took more shape when William Penn arrived in 1681 and bought land from some of the Swedish settlers along the waterfront property near where Gloria Dei stands. Over time, the Swedes were forced to assimilate with the English Quaker government in Pennsylvania. Some Swedes retreated to New Jersey as Governor Penn wrested some of their land in Pennsylvania and imposed Quaker rules and norms on the Swedes.
Yet some descendants of New Sweden stayed in the Philadelphia area and became leaders of New England society. One grandson of New Sweden settlers, named John Morton, signed the Declaration of Independence. Woehr says her favorite historical pastor at Gloria Dei was Nils Collin, who served from 1784 to 1831. Collin was a close friend of Benjamin Franklin, who fastened his famous lightning rods to the church building.
The congregation switched from Swedish Lutheran to Episcopalian in 1845. Nevertheless, the congregation still celebrates a Swedish holiday musical pageant each December known as Lucia Fest and St. Eric’s Fair, an event that includes a Scandinavian Christmas bazaar.
The congregation is working to select a new rector, as the Reverend Mathews is retiring soon. Cathy Roberts gives an update on that process. Mathews asks the congregation to make the new rector selection process a matter of prayer in the Lenten season. Ministers hired at Gloria Dei normally have long tenures, spending 30 or 40 years serving the parish.
As the service ends, I say hello to a few people, including a church member named Nils. When Nils learns I am interested in the history of the church and the New Sweden colony, he quickly directs me to Ms. Woehr, praising her for her prowess and commitment to the history of the church.
A church as a museum
Woehr walks me around the church, pointing out some key artifacts and answering questions. She highlights a plaque in Swedish in the back of the sanctuary that translates as “Glory to God in the highest.” Back in 1655, when this church held its first service, people from the Tinicum location of the Swedish colony — just south of land the Philadelphia International Airport now occupies — took ferry boats up the river to attend church.
Woehr notes that the famous seamstress from Philadelphia, Betsy Ross, was married in this church. Woehr was herself, too. This is the oldest church in Philadelphia and the oldest brick building in Pennsylvania. A Swedish flag stands in the back left corner of the church, and an American flag is in the back right corner.
“We have an example here of what Philadelphia was like originally,” she says.
Woehr and her husband, Rich, let my 5-year-old daughter, Emmy, ring the church bell a few times — another highlight for our visit. The bronze bell was recast in 1801. Woehr says kids often ring the bell before and after church. “Some kids in the neighborhood who are in families that are not church people like to come over just to ring the bell,” she says. “We want children to know they are important.”
We stroll out to the church yard to look at the array of buildings on this five-acre property and the lovely cemetery space in the center courtyard. I see the Swedish American historian Amandus Johnson — who documented and retold a good deal of the history we know about New Sweden — is buried in the cemetery. Woehr points out a few other notable tombstones, including one that marks a member of George Washington’s army.
Woehr is proud that this church has always been an early multicultural congregation, with minister Carl Wrangle in 1756 baptizing 29 African congregants. At the time, several colonial churches in Philadelphia recorded African Americans attending services.
One sore spot for Woehr and other members of the Swedish Colonial Society is the lack of knowledge about the original colony in the region, New Sweden. Some say victors write history, and in this region, everyone seems to know about William Penn and the Quakers — but few know about the earlier, radical experiment by Swedes.
Woehr and others have fought with educators to teach that Swedes were here before William Penn. Some descendants and history buffs like Woehr find insightful lessons for religious freedom, peace with Indians and early survival in New Sweden. So have their efforts been successful in getting this early colonial history of New Sweden into schools in Pennsylvania and on the minds of Philadelphians?
“We are always an arrow on maps,” Woehr says with a sigh. “We feel at times like we are a stepchild.”
Paul Glader is executive editor of ReligionUnplugged.com and a professor of journalism at The King’s College NYC. He has reported from dozens of countries for outlets ranging from The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel Online and others. He’s on Twitter @PaulGlader