Historic Bellefonte AME Church Reopens Under New Leadership After Five-Year Closure (Bellefonte, Pennsylvania)

For nearly five years, St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, remained without a congregation. Now, under the leadership of the Rev. Renita Marie Green, the historic church is reopening its doors to serve a changing community.

Green, newly appointed as pastor in September, has been planning events, distributing flyers and engaging with neighbors. Rather than replicating past practices, she aims to adapt the church to meet current needs. She is starting with monthly gatherings featuring music and food, a grief support group, and plans for a speaker series on history and justice. “What I’m finding is that people need connection,” she said at a recent ice cream social attended by about ten people.

The night before, Green had stayed up until well after 2 a.m., cleaning and making repairs. “It’s all worship,” she said. “Everything you dust, everything you touch, it’s worship.”

As Green leads the church into a new chapter, the legacy of her predecessor, the Rev. Dr. Donna King, remains influential. King, a historian and pastor, died in 2021. The absence of a pastor, alongside an aging congregation and the pandemic’s disruption of in-person worship, left the pews empty. With a hymn sing planned for Sunday, Green hopes to seat them again, preserving St. Paul’s role as a site for worship, community and local history.

More than a church, St. Paul AME represents a local history that often goes unnoticed. Public historian Philip Ruth has been documenting the church’s significance to Black history in Bellefonte. As research coordinator for Black History in Centre County, Pennsylvania, a project linked to Penn State, he hopes to qualify St. Paul for the National Register of Historic Places.

Ruth traces the church’s origins to the early 19th century, when an African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) congregation formed, representing a growing population of free-born and formerly enslaved African Americans in Bellefonte. An AME congregation began in 1844, and years later absorbed the AMEZ group. The combined congregation found a permanent home for worship in 1860.

After a fire in 1910 destroyed the building, the congregation rebuilt on the original foundation, creating the current church on Halfmoon Hill. Over the decades, the AME church provided worship, fellowship and education, especially for Bellefonte’s Black community. A committee from the congregation fought to improve schooling for Black children, prompting the borough to integrate schools in 1886 — decades before the Supreme Court ruled state-sanctioned segregation unconstitutional.

As pastor, King safeguarded St. Paul’s long and vital history, ensuring its legacy endured.

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