The John Street United Methodist Church located at 44 John Street in Manhattan, New York, USA was built in 1841. It is the third church located at the site. It is the home of the oldest Methodist congregation in North America, starting on October 12, 1766.
It was designated a New York City Landmark in 1964.
Below the sanctuary, the Wesley Chapel Museum displays many artifacts from eighteenth and nineteenth century American Methodist history. These include church record books, the Wesley Clock (a gift of John Wesley, 1769), love feast cups, class meeting circular benches, the original 1785 altar rail, the original 1767 pulpit made by Philip Embury, and Embury's signed Bible.
The current pastor is the Rev. Jason P. Radmacher. The organist and choir master is Earl Wentz.
Hymnist Fanny Crosby was a member of the church congregation for many years.
Famous quotes containing the words john, street, methodist and/or church:
“Reprehension is a kind of middle thing betwixt admonition and correction: it is sharpe admonition, but a milde correction. It is rather to be used because it may be a meanes to prevent strokes and blowes, especially in ingenuous and good natured children. [Blows are] the last remedy which a parent can use: a remedy which may doe good when nothing else can.”
—William Gouge, Puritan writer. As quoted in The Rise and Fall of Childhood by C. John Sommerville, ch. 11 (rev. 1990)
“The harlot’s cry from street to street
Shall weave old England’s winding sheet.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“Kipling, the grandson of a Methodist preacher, reveals the tin-pot evangelist with increasing clarity as youth and its ribaldries pass away and he falls back upon his fundamentals.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Combativeness was, I suppose, the dominant trait in my grandmother’s nature. An aggressive churchgoer, she was quite without Christian feeling; the mercy of the Lord Jesus had never entered her heart. Her piety was an act of war against Protestant ascendancy. ...The teachings of the Church did not interest her, except as they were a rebuke to others ...”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)