St. George St. Barnabas: One Family

Edwards, noted Holland, is credited for making this church part of the neighborhood and embracing the changing demographics. “We were the third family of color to move onto our street,” explained Deborah Gaye-Chappelle. “This was an all-white church when I was four years old. Father Edwards, (who was white) gave a sermon to the congregation telling them that the neighborhood was changing. That there would be people coming in that would not look like them and they needed to get used to it. He was very direct about that.” By the 1950s, the African-American population in West Philadelphia had increased by 72 percent.

SGSB holds the history of both churches, and that of St. Cyprian’s, in photos inside the church. Founded in 1912, St. Cyprian’s, an African-American congregation in Elmwood, later joined with St. Barnabas in 1964 as part of “an urban challenge” to merge two racially distinct congregations. In 1993, both St. George and St. Barnabas became one.

There is no doubt this congregation is unified. “We are home folk,” notes Marianne Pearson, who has been a parishioner for 30 years. On not using “and” in the name of the merged churches of St. George and St. Barnabas, Pearson added, “we are just one family. We didn’t want the separation.”