Bethel Church
Near Ocean City, Maryland
This rural corner of Sussex County sits in what early circuit riders called the heart of Methodism. In the seventeen eighties, traveling Methodist preachers crossed the Delmarva Peninsula, and their message took deep root among the farming families here.
On February twenty-third, eighteen forty-one, a group of local Methodists purchased this land, where a meeting house already called Bethel had been raised. By the end of the nineteenth century the congregation was holding annual camp meetings, the great open air revivals that drew worshippers from miles around to sing, pray, and listen to days of preaching under the trees. Bethel Church has carried on serving this small rural community ever since, a living thread back to the founders of American Methodism who once rode these country roads on horseback.
