Shining the Light
Greene Valley Presbyterian Church
By Colleen Nelson
The spirit of Reformation came to Carmichaels in 1775 when pioneering Presbyterians built a three-sided shelter beside the military outpost in Glades Grove, a place where settlers gathered in the evenings by bonfires to socialize as their children ran and played in the fire light.
Early settlers were within running distance of Isaac Israel’s lookout post, with a fortress tucked into the hill behind it, guarding against French and Shawnee attacks, then later British militiamen when the American Revolution came calling. Remnants of that old lookout are buried within the walls of the stately brick house once owned by Mary Hamilton on Glade Run Road, which meanders back onto Rt. 88 a little further down the hill.
The worshippers in Glades Grove called their church New Providence and were made part of the Redstone Ministry in 1775. By 1784 they had built a log cabin church “on the brow of the hill” above the cemetery on Rt. 88 that overlooks the intersection of Rt. 21. Then it was back to the grove at the bottom of the cemetery for another log church, then a brick church. When it was destroyed by fire after the Civil War it was “replaced by a brick building at the top of the hill.” It would become known as the Country Church because now there was a New Providence “Town Church” on George St. It was later sold to the American Legion and now stands empty but is still a beautiful example of 19th century church design.
By 1832 Cumberland Presbyterians had arrived to do a revival in Hewitt’s Grove, halfway between Glades Grove and Carmichaels that lasted from February until August. The people responded and began building altars and holding services in their homes. When the first Cumberland Presbyterian Church was built in 1834 on the site of today’s Greene Valley Presbyterian Church of America, the congregation was led by plain speaking pastors whose “character and moral standards were equal to those of the parent church who had college and theological training.”
The second church was built in 1866, using stained glass windows salvaged from the first church. A severe storm took its roof in 1902 and a new brick church emerged from the wreckage only to burn in 1922. Undeterred, the congregation rebuilt and continues its tradition of being Presbyterian with the ability to change its mission and its name with the times.
Five miles west of Carmichaels, Fort Cline sheltered Presbyterian settlers in the 1700s and by 1854 Sunday school was being held at the Gwynne School House near Khedive. A revival was held in 1856, many in the neighborhood were converted and Muddy Creek Cumberland Presbyterian Church was formed and shared a pastor with Carmichaels.
Later, the coal mining towns of Crucible and Nemacolin would build churches to serve a new generation of worshippers. But the mines were playing out and young people were leaving. In 1967, the Presbyterian churches of Nemacolin, Muddy Creek, Carmichaels and New Providence voted to phase out their smaller congregations over three years of transition and join together in Carmichaels as Greene Valley Presbyterian Church on Greene St.
Today’s congregation can count themselves at 500, Carmichaels Mayor David Jack tells me when I stop by for services. Renovations over the years have replaced the plaster ceiling in the chapel with wood and an organ and a baby grand piano flank the pulpit. When the music starts and everyone stands up to sing I am startled to find myself transported by a sound that is reminiscent of the processional hymns of old, high and soaring, with plenty of room for harmony and it fills the air around us.
The Presbyterians may have gone through the changes that American life asked of them but the joyful sound they make when praising the Almighty still has its roots in the earliest songs of Colonial times, when ministers were educated at Yale and took their convictions by horseback into the Western Frontier. Mayor Jack beams when I share my thoughts on their hymn singing. “I like to think that this is a church my grandmother would have loved going to.”