nd the organization of a church on a strictly
anti-slavery basis, for the purpose of heading a movement to make
Illinois a free state."[21] According to another, and more probable,
version of this story, when Jefferson learned, through a mutual friend
(Mr. S. H. Biggs), of Lemen's determination to force the issue in the
church to the point of division, if necessary, he sent him a message
of approval of his proposed course and accompanied it with a
contribution of $20 for the contemplated anti-slavery church.

The division of the Territory was effected early in the year 1809, and
in the summer of that year, after vainly trying to hold all the
churches to their avowed anti-slavery principles, Elder Lemen, in a
sermon at Richland Creek Baptist church, threw down the gauntlet to
his pro-slavery brethren and declared that he could no longer maintain
church fellowship with them. His action caused a division in the
church, which was carried into the Association at its ensuing meeting,
in October, 1809, and resulted in the disruption of that body into
three parties on the slavery question--the conservatives, the
liberals, and the radicals. The latter element, headed by "the Lemen
party," as it now came to be called, held to the principles of The
Friends to Humanity, and proposed to organize a branch of that order
of Baptists. When it came to the test, however, the new church was
reduced to a constituent membership consisting of some seven or eight
members of the Lemen family. Such was the beginning of what is now the
oldest surviving Baptist church in the State, which then took the name
of "The Baptized Church of Christ, Friends to Humanity, on Cantine
(Quentin) Creek." It is located in the neighborhood of the old Cahokia
mound. Its building, when it came to have one, was called "Bethel
Meeting House," and in time the church itself became known as "Bethel
Baptist Church."

The distinctive basis of this church is proclaimed in its simple
constitution, to which every member was required to subscribe:
"Denying union and communion with all persons holding the doctrine of
perpetual, involuntary, hereditary slavery." This church began its
career as "a family church," in the literal sense of the word; but it
prospered nevertheless, {p.19} until it became a numerically strong
and vigorous organization which has had an active and honorable career
of a hundred years' duration. Churches of the same name and principles
multiplied and mai