Methodist Heritage: Tindley Temple United Methodist Church
Methodist Heritage: Tindley Temple United Methodist Church
By William F. McDermott
Coronet magazine, June 1946
Good News
March/April 1982
All Philadelphia went into mourning on July 31, 1933. Government officials and Chinese laundrymen, priests and scrubwomen, corporation presidents and street cleaners, Jews, Catholics and Protestants, blacks and whites, packed 5,000 strong into a church seating 3,200 people, to listen to five hours of inspirational tribute to an aged black man.
Radio stations broadcast the services, downtown streets were roped off to hold back the crowds, hundreds of telegrams of condolence poured in from all over the nation. For several hours previously a continuous stream of mourners had filed by the bier. All this was in heartfelt homage to an ex-slave and hod-carrier.
He was Charles A. Tindley, who at 17 could neither read nor write yet ultimately learned Greek and Hebrew. By day he toiled up and down ladders carrying back-breaking loads of brick, at night he served as janitor of a little mission church. Finally he became pastor of that church, gradually building it into not only one of the largest Methodist congregations in the world with 7,000 members, but also into a city-wide relief center for the poor. Some called him Philadelphia’s foremost citizen, but another title fitted best: a Lincoln in Ebony.
Tindley, 74 at his death, stood six feet two and weighed 240 pounds with a figure as straight as an arrow and a lionesque head. His spirit was one of humility and compassion, particularly for the underdog of any race, and he labored in simple ways that suggested the martyred President. Wherever he went he drew great crowds, often more whites than blacks gathering to hear him. When a theologian asked one of Tindley’s twelve children, “How did your father win such a great success?” the youth answered, “On his knees.”
At the peak of his career during the early 1930s, Dr. Tindley preached to three or four thousand people every Sunday. His great church on Broad Street began filling at 7 a.m. with people eager to attend 10 o’clock worship. During the intervening hours they sang old spirituals, modern hymns, gave testimonies, laughed and cried and prayed. Hundreds were regularly turned away. By 11:20, when the second service started, the sanctuary was jammed. At night there was a similar throng.
Whenever the black clergyman could be lured from his congregation, people of all faiths traveled to hear him. Crowds almost fought to get within earshot. His sermons on ”Trees,” “A Forget-Me-Not,” “Religion in a Blade of Grass,” were masterpieces. He was a landscape artist in words, making nature’s beauty float before his congregation’s eyes .
Always the peak of Tindley’s services was the “altar call,” when penitents were summoned to kneel and seek forgiveness for their sins. One time a young white man, his eyes bleary from drinking, heard Dr. Tindley’s plea and joined him at the altar. Together, before the vast crowd, the two knelt in prayer. Then, as the congregation waited, the pastor and the penitent whispered to each other
“Friends,” Dr. Tindley called to his people, his arm linked through that of the stranger, “I want you to know this young man who has just given his heart to God. He is the grandson of the Maryland planter who once owned me as a slave!”
Tindley was born in a cabin on Maryland’s eastern shore in 1851. A year after his mother’s death, when he was only five, he was separated from his father and sold to a slaveholder in another town. Held in bondage, he was not even allowed to look at a book or attend church. Furtively he sought scraps of printed matter: a torn page of a book in the wood box, a newspaper page along the roadside. He stuffed these inside his ragged shirt, then gathered pine knots and took them to his shanty. There, after the other slaves had gone to sleep, by dim and flickering light the boy tried to make out the mysterious letters.
Night after night he struggled to find the key. Even when he attained freedom after the Civil War, he was still illiterate. But by the time he was 17, he could spell and write the word “cat.”
The only religion Charlie had in those days was what he felt inside, but the longing to attend church grew until he determined to worship somewhere. He would walk to the Chesapeake Bay on Saturday mornings and, with ashes for soap, wash his only shirt and hang it on a limb to dry. Carefully he kept it clean to wear to church next morning.
For long hours he worked in the fields by day, walking 14 miles at night to learn the three Rs. When finally he mastered them he resolved to go to Philadelphia and study further. He became a hod-carrier, for three years toting brick and spending his nights either as a church janitor or school attendant. Tindley determined to enter the ministry and help his people, so he not only attended school but also took correspondence courses. Every spare dollar went into books ….
Especially he loved Greek and Hebrew. He learned Greek by correspondence with a theological school in Boston; Hebrew he studied under a rabbi in Philadelphia. Courses in science and literature were taken privately. Charlie was still church janitor when he took examinations for the ministry. Some of his more formally educated brethren eyed him with amusement. One bumptious young theologian asked: “How do you expect to pass your examination? The other candidates and I have diplomas. What do you hold?”
“Nothing but a broom,” replied Tindley. In the examination he ranked second highest …. In 1902, Tindley was called to Bainbridge Street Methodist Church in Philadelphia, where once he had been a janitor. It was only a storefront mission, barely kept alive by a small group of the faithful. Other pastors consoled Tindley on the “certain failure” that faced him. But his spark of faith touched off a fire of fervor in the congregation. Soon 75 were attending, then a hundred, and finally the mission overflowed. A real church seating 600 was erected. A couple of years later a gallery was added.
About 1907, the old sanctuary of a white congregation, seating 1,500 people, was acquired for $69,000. Soon this building was jammed. Even Tuesday night prayer meetings drew more than a thousand. The movement for a still larger church got under way. Five buildings next door were bought and razed. A huge edifice costing $350,000 was paid for through the tithes of the members, without bazaars or carnivals. Dedication was set for Sunday, December 7, 1924, but at midnight Mrs. Tindley died.
Laboring on despite his grief, and caring for his large brood of children, Tindley built up the congregation to 7,000, plus a Sunday school of more than 2,000. The church, seating 3,200, was filled three times each Sunday and often during the week. Every New Year’s Eve a revival was begun, usually lasling throughout January.
For more than 30 years, the black preacher labored in that one parish, which became famous not only for its services but for its charity. Every winter Dr. Tindley maintained a breadline, often with 500 ragged men and women in it. Hot soup and coffee were dished out freely. If people needed clothing, the pastor provided it. Jobs were also found for the unemployed.
One night the mayor of Philadelphia watched the breadline file by. “I’ve often heard about this relief work,” he told Tindley, “but I never dreamed it was anything like this. I want to help a little.” He pulled out his checkbook and wrote a check for $3,000.
“There’s no politics attached to that,” said the mayor, grinning. “I don’t expect even one vote.” When Tindley’s son remarked that his father won his success on his knees, he spoke literally. Tindley was not only given to prayer but also to self-discipline. Always he arose at 4 a.m. and went to his study for intercession. Sometimes his children awoke at the sound of the key being turned in the study door. Other times they would stir in their sleep as their father sang alone his hymn of devotion. Often he sang his own compositions, for during his lifetime he wrote many songs ….
People of different nationalities and races not only attended Tindley’s services but served as officers of the congregation. Both blacks and whites were represented in the leadership, along with Italians, Jews, Germans, Norwegians, Mexicans, and Danes ….
Many offers and honors came to Tindley, including honorary degrees, but he preferred the humble task of shepherding his flock. More than once his name was submitted to the Methodist General Conference for election as bishop, but he always withdrew it. He was 74, working hard as ever, when one day in July, 1933, he had a premonition that his work was done. He went home, put his affairs in shape, then journeyed to the hospital where he spent a week in quiet talks with his children. Then the father turned weakly on his side and, pointing to the window, said, “I can see my mansion now. It’s as large as the state of Pennsylvania.” He died the next day.
When Tindley’s new church was built in 1924, the name was changed, in spite of the pastor’s protests, to the Tindley Temple Methodist Church. It stands today on Broad Street in Philadelphia, a memorial to the one-time slave and hod-carrier, the Lincoln in Ebony who, by his love of God and devotion to humanity, won the heart of the City of Brotherly Love.
This article first appeared in Coronet magazine, June 1946. Reprinted by permission. Coronet published 1936-1971.
Tindley Temple Today
By Diane Knippers
The “faith of our fathers,” like that of Charles Tindley, doesn’t mean a thing unless it becomes the faith of this generation. So we wondered what the Tindley Temple UM Church was like today. It is still the imposing edifice along a wide thoroughfare in downtown Philadelphia. But what is going on today inside the historic building?
To find out, I called Claude Edmonds, the pastor of Tindley Temple since October 1980. Tindley Temple certainly doesn’t have the size and impact it once did (the present membership stands at 1, 100 with average attendance of about 400). But I did learn that there are significant signs of spiritual vitality in this inner city church.
First, I was curious about what it is like to minister in a church with the kind of history and tradition Tindley Temple has. So I asked Dr. Edmonds if the past is a burden – or if the heritage is a helpful factor.
“I was born and raised in Tindley Temple, and was a baby when Charles Tindley died,” he responded. “So the tradition of the church is not new to me. We are proud of our spiritual roots and heritage. But we can’t live in the past.”
When I asked about his dreams for the future of Tindley Temple, Dr. Edmonds emphasized the centrality of spiritual Edmonds renewal: “We want to see the church, as a community, have a hunger and thirst after righteousness. This must be the basis of all our outreach to the community and society. Right now we are emphasizing our prayer meeting and the things of the Spirit. A strong prayer meeting will spill over into the Sunday worship service and other ministries. If the inner life is growing, that will attract other people to come to Christ. That is basic to a growing community.”
Dr. Edmonds shared the exciting news that Charles Tindley is being recognized by the Smithsonian Institution in May 1982 for his contribution to American life. Tindley wrote some 60 hymns, and many are in our UM hymnal. Dr. Edmonds concluded, “There is no future for a congregation such as ours unless we develop a strong spiritual inner life.”
– Diane Knippers