O'Kelly's Chapel

O'Kelly's Chapel is a historic chapel located near Farrington, Chatham County, North Carolina. Named after Reverend James O'Kelly and was built about 1900. It is a modest one-room rural chapel with Gothic Revival features including a steeply pitched roof and lancet windows.It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.The History of O’Kelly ChapelO’Kelly Chapel was the home church of James O’Kelly, founder of the Christian Church. O’Kelly entered the ministry as a circuit-riding Methodist preacher in the 1780s. At that time, the Methodist Church was not an organized “denomination,” but a movement within the Church of England. After the American Revolution, these Methodist societies sought to break from England and form a church patterned after the hierarchical structure of the Church of England.O’Kelly and others protested at the organizational conference that the church should not concentrate so much power in the bishop but be structured more democratically, with self-government for ministers and churches. O’Kelly envisioned “a republican, no-slavery “Essay on Negro Slavery” posited that all Methodist ministers should manumit their slaves.“Essay on Negro Slavery”], glorious church” that would be congregationally based. The church was to reflect the democratic principles of the newly formed United States, organized into conferences with each pastor having equal authority and laymen having a voice, too.