Isaac Long Barn and the United Brethren
Near Intercourse, Pennsylvania
About a mile and a half north of here stands a barn where American Protestant history quietly changed course. Around seventeen sixty-seven, the Reverend Philip William Otterbein of the German Reformed Church and Martin Boehm, a Mennonite preacher, held a revival at the Isaac Long barn. The two men were moved by a shared evangelical fervor that crossed their denominational boundaries.
After the service, Otterbein reportedly embraced Boehm with the words, we are brethren. That moment of fellowship eventually gave rise to the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, formally organized in eighteen hundred, and later the Evangelical United Brethren Church, which in nineteen sixty-eight merged with the Methodist Church to form the United Methodist Church.
