This church opened as the home of Bethlehem Methodist Episcopal Church, but in more recent decades was the Christ Cornerstone Missionary Baptist Church, led by influential east side preacher the Rev. Obie Mathews.
Bethlehem Methodist Episcopal was originally the St. Clair Heights Methodist Episcopal Church, founded as a mission in 1911. The cornerstone for its first church on the corner of Mack and LeMay avenues was placed Oct. 20, 1912, with Bishop Burt of Buffalo, N.Y., as principal speaker.
The congregation dedicated the church less than two months later, on Dec. 8, 1912. Despite the congregation being founded only a year earlier, the Rev. Harold C. Goodenow had already grown his flock to 100 members with 170 kids attending Sunday school. The Free Press reported the morning after the church's dedication that, even though the congregation's new home had just opened, it already had bigger plans: "When the contemplated large church is built on the adjoining lot, this building will become the pastor's residence or the church house for meetings of the church societies."
At the time of the church’s opening, the Village of St. Clair Heights had not yet been annexed by the city of Detroit. A November 1915 census showed the village had grown by 500 percent in just five years, increasing to just shy of 7,000 residents.
Goodenow used his pulpit to not only spread the word of God but also the benefits of being absorbed into the city limits.
"What this suburb needs is annexation," Goodenow said in a sermon, as quoted in an April 21, 1913, article in the Free Press. "We are really part of the city now, and might as well have its benefits. We need better police and fire protection, better lighting, mail deliveries to our homes, paved streets and a drainage system and all these good things and many more will come with annexation. We have everything to gain and nothing to lose."
As the debate continued, Detroit continued to annex land all around St. Clair Heights, leaving the village surrounded on all sides by the Motor City, much like Highland Park and Hamtramck are today.
Annexation proceedings were filed Oct. 1, 1918, and with that, the Village of Saint Clair Heights ceased to be. To read more on St. Clair Heights and its annexation, check out this fascinating and well-researched history at Detroit Urbanism. The St. Clair Heights Methodist Episcopal Church was suddenly now in Detroit, leading to a name change.
On May 23, 1922, the Free Press reported that work on that larger church was to finally begin around July 1 of that year. It was built on the site of the existing church's auditorium. It was hoped to be completed no later than Jan. 15, 1923. It would miss that target by almost two years.
In June 1924, ads listing salvaged materials from a church demolition at Mack and Lemay appeared in the Free Press. This was likely the auditorium, hinting that things didn’t get started as soon as they had hoped.
Regardless, the new church was formally dedicated on Oct. 26, 1924, by Bishop Thomas Nicholson. Services were delivered to a capacity crowd by the church's pastor, the Rev. W.B. Weaver.
"There will be something doing at the church every day for a week or more," the Detroit Free Press reported the following morning.
The building cost about $63,000 to construct, the equivalent of about $1.2 million in 2026 valuation, when adjusted for inflation.
Bethlehem Methodist Episcopal would continue to serve the community for decades without much excitement or fanfare. However, as the city’s fortunes and population dwindled by the 1970s, the church closed.
It wouldn’t stay empty for long.
A community Cornerstone
In 1973, the Rev. Obie Mathews established a new congregation in the former Bethlehem Methodist Episcopal Church building. He named it Christ Cornerstone Missionary Baptist Church.
He and his wife, Camilla, had moved to Detroit in 1943, where he worked for Ford Motor Co. He became a minister in 1954, taking over Corinthian Baptist Church. But when he left to found Cornerstone, he took part of his flock with him.
Mathews was a prominent east side minister and an ally of Mayor Coleman A. Young. A pulpit politician with the East Side Ministries United for Action, a coalition of east side ministers advocating on community issues.
"The Rev. Obie Mathews is street-smart and Bible-wise," The Detroit News noted Nov. 4, 1982.
The Kalamazoo native would lead a number of charges over the years to affect change in the Detroit Public Schools, lobbying for school millages ("It costs us $29,000 a year to keep a person in prison and $19,000 to keep a child in the schools," he told The News for an Oct. 23, 1980, article. "Let's keep that child in the schools.") and against teachers strikes ("The message can't be 'unions first' or 'my job first,'" he said in the March 29, 1990, edition of The News. "It has to be the children first."). He rallied against bringing casinos to the city, and campaigned for better mental health aid for the community and to force car companies to call back laid-off auto workers in Poletown.
"As men of the cloth, we can use our influence to get things done," Mathews told The News for the Nov. 4, 1982, profile. "We can give people hope."
He would continue to be a force for good in the church’s neighborhood. It lived up to its name - it was a cornerstone of the community.
"Some people laughed when the Rev. Obie Matthews (sic) bought a gutted, roofless building across from his church. But Matthews (sic) did fix it up, and now it offers classes and distributes food to hundreds every month," the Free Press wrote Oct. 16, 1991.
Christ Cornerstone Baptist Church continued offering services, led by Mathews, into the 2000s. It’s not clear when it closed, but its name stopped appearing in the newspapers around 2003 or 2004. The church does not appear to have been vacant for 20 years.
Anyone with knowledge about when this church closed, please let us know at [email protected].