May 25 (Sunday): Philadelphia

The weather is perfect this morning, sunny and cool. We cycled the 17 blocks to worship with the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia. Their church bulletin shares that the church family worshiping here dates back to 1698 with 5 men and 4 women beginning the church. In 1707 they formed the first Baptist Association of churches, and in 1814 this church hosted the founding of the Baptist denomination of the United States. The current American Baptist churches, USA and Southern Baptist Convention grew from the organization founded here. In a time before public schools existed and illiteracy was rampant, this church began the first Baptist Sunday School classes. The church is a huge brown stone building on the corner of Moravian Street and 17^th. When we entered the sanctuary we were struck by the contrasts. We arrived early to find their small praise choir practicing “This little light of mine” to an amplified acoustical guitar played by a bearded young white man. Even though they were standing just in front of a huge pipe organ, flanked by stain glass windows and under a gilded dome ceiling with 12 huge chandeliers in a circle, this was certainly no high church. The sanctuary could have easily seated 1000 people, but the congregation of around 100 was there to sincerely worship the Lord. The service was led by a black woman and the sermon pronounced by an articulate Hispanic woman. All the singing was accompanied by guitar, and there was a black woman playing a tambourine in the aisle as we sang “I saw the Light” and “This is the Day that the Lord Has Made”. The congregation was naturally diverse and brought life to the sanctuary which surely has seen many changes through the years. The building is used every day of the week for a variety of ministries. We felt blessed

to have had our Sunday morning with them.

After lunch, we filled up with fuel at the Philadelphia Marina, now at $5.00/gallon, and headed out retracing our path back to Delaware City. We passed several Navy ships and an aircraft carrier that were perhaps being reconditioned. The Delaware River has two channels as it nears Delaware City and they are split by a small island where we found Fort Delaware State Park. The park is on the grounds of the fort built in 1859 to protect Philadelphia. The lady at the pizza restaurant told us that the park staff is in costume and they load the canon with gun powder and fire it for visitors. We will spend the night at this little layover on the way to Cape May.