Bethel Presbyterian Church: Founded in Revolution

Bethel Presbyterian Church was founded in seventeen seventy-six, the same year the nation declared its independence. The Reverend John McMillan, a pioneer minister and educator on the western Pennsylvania frontier, began the congregation in what is now Bethel Park.

McMillan was no ordinary frontier preacher. He founded or helped found several churches and schools across western Pennsylvania, and is remembered as one of the great civilizing forces of the early republic in this region. It is said to have become the mother church of several nearby congregations. In the cemetery surrounding the church, fourteen soldiers from the Revolutionary War are buried, their service and sacrifice rooted in this same community that gave rise to the nation. The church has given its name to the surrounding Bethel community, a living echo of McMillan's founding vision.