
The sale of the manse at the First Presbyterian Church of Lansdowne resulted in a portion of the proceeds from the sale being returned to Lenape Nation, who are the original occupants of the land.
On the surface, selling a half-acre lot in Lansdowne, PA, isn’t big news. The fact that this piece of land was located on the property of the town’s First Presbyterian Church doesn’t add any more weight to it. But what does bring significant meaning to this sale is the backstory of the land and where some of the funds from the transaction went.
In the spring of 2023, the First Presbyterian Church of Lansdowne sold its manse and the 0.56-acre lot it’s located on. The manse was deteriorating, and the congregation didn’t feel it was worth its money to fix it up.
“The building needed a lot of repair,” said the Rev. Jonathan Britt, who only lived in the manse for three weeks after he was hired in July of 2021. “It’s a classic case of a church with way too much building to maintain and a congregation that’s trying to figure out where to spend its funds. The manse was not a priority for the congregation to keep and maintain.”
Built in 1896, the manse is a six-bedroom, three-and-a-half bath Victorian structure that sits just outside the back door of the church’s Fellowship Hall. However, it’s not the brick and mortar that make it a notable piece of property. The history of the lot dates to William Penn, the famous Quaker who founded Pennsylvania. He bought the property from its original stewards – the Lenape Nation – in 1682, and while this specific piece of land and others surrounding it were owned by Penn, he agreed to allow the Lenape to remain in certain areas. However, upon his death, those relations disintegrated, and the encroaching settlers forced the Nation to relocate elsewhere.
That ousting of the Lenape, and many other Native American nations from their lands by settlers across the United States, has become a point of emphasis for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). During the 223rd General Assembly (2018), the PCUSA acknowledged that the land that is now the United States was stolen from its Indigenous inhabitants and caretakers. Since then, the PCUSA has urged church bodies to acknowledge their land as a way of admitting to the denomination’s past harms.
When the Presbytery of Philadelphia closed Kirkwood Camp and Conference Center in East Stroudsburg in 2022, it donated a large portion of the proceeds from the sale to the Nanticoke Indian Tribe (which, along with the Lenape Nation, has roots in the Pocono area) as an acknowledgement of the land that belonged to their people. This example stuck with Jonathan as they were selling First Lansdowne’s manse, and it seemed more than appropriate to follow the lead of the presbytery and the directive of the denomination.
“When I was hired here, I was told by the search committee that we have too many buildings,” Jonathan recalled. “One of the first things we need to do is sell the manse. One of the things I was trying to figure out was how can we not just do this as something that we need to do as a congregation. It’s a financial decision, but also how can we do this as a ministry opportunity?”

Rev. Jonathan Britt feels blessed by his congregation. “The fact that everybody was essentially on board from the beginning tells me that indeed the Spirit is moving, and I don’t question it was the right thing to do.”
The church is only the fourth steward of the land, behind the Lenape, William Penn and two Quaker families, both of which donated parts of the land to the church in the late 1800s. Because the line is fairly short to those first inhabitants, it made it an even easier decision to return a percentage of the sale to the original owners.
Jonathan contacted an organization called Restorative Actions, which is an economic equity initiative born from the intersection of theology, justice and economics aimed at helping individuals, churches, presbyteries and other groups of the PCUSA as they seek to returning resources to original settlers.
“Their goal and intent is to get organizations, individuals, congregations, churches on board with this idea of surrender,” Jonathan explained. “They set up mechanisms to make this easy, but whether or not the work goes through them they don’t really care.
“Because we knew that this was Lenape land, we wanted the funds to go directly back to the Lenape peoples. This seemed like a way to relieve the church in some way, to try to be better stewards of the land we have and the resources that we’re in charge of. So, this was a way to do some of that.”
The people of the Lenape Nation who lived in Lansdowne before European settlers had since been forced by encroaching settlers and the military to move either to the backwoods and backwaters of their homeland or west onto reservations in the United States and the Provine of Ontario. This displacement resulted in today’s nine separate Lenape nations, among whom First Lansdowne decided to split the proceeds from the sale of the manse, resulting in checks of roughly $2,700 going to each nation.
“It’s a start, it’s not an end,” Jonathan said. “It’s probably not a huge drop in their bucket but it’s a good start for us as a congregation. The idea, the hope is that we’ve seen other people do this, we want to make sure that as many people as we can tell will know that we are doing this, and it will hopefully inspire other people to do this and keep the ball rolling.
“I’ve tried to present it to the congregation that it’s not our fault what William Penn did or what the Quakers did or what our congregation did before it got to us, but now that we are a part of this congregation, we now have the responsibility to try to make some things more right than they were.”
The church’s session approved the donated percentage after having discussions with Restorative Actions.
“They help individuals and congregations figure out what that surrender number is,” Jonathan said, recalling his conversation with that group. “That percentage is what they define as the amount of wealth that congregations would have if it were not for the legacies of white supremacy, slavery and forced displacement. That’s the percentage we got from them.
“In our conversation with them, they said ‘We’re not trying to shut churches down. That’s not our goal. But we are trying to make it a meaningful amount.’ For this congregation, $27,000 is huge. That’s 10 percent or more of our annual budget. It’s not an inconsequential amount for a medium-sized congregation.”
The manse was bought by a contractor, who did the needed work to fix it up and then sold it to a family. As for the remainder of the funds from the sale, they are being used for upgrades in the church building as well as helping to maintain ministries the church already has in place in Lansdowne.

Church member Andy Farquhar discusses the history of the land the church manse is located on during the public surrendering of the funds at a late December worship service as the Rev. Jonathan Britt looks on from the left.
The Sunday before Christmas – the last Sunday of Advent – First Lansdowne publicly surrendered the funds during its morning worship service. Also that day, information regarding a petition at change.org was introduced, which is a push to make the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania officially recognize the Lenape Nation in Pennsylvania. The Lenape people who chose to remain in their homeland in Pennsylvania had to conceal their identity and ancestry to avoid theft of their land and removal by the government. Over the years the Lenape people welcomed other marginalized people into their communities, including formerly enslaved, fugitive Black people and people from other indigenous nations. Many Lenape families became blended families, but they retained their culture, traditions and history. Now the same Commonwealth that forced Lenape people to conceal their identity and ancestry demands stringent proof of both to obtain official recognition.
The worship service provided a time for the congregation to come together and honor those who had come before them. Jonathan hopes this message will be received by others.
“We as a congregation hope that other organizations will see this as not just as an option but an imperative whenever they have to do a real estate exchange or a sale or anything that involves land and property that were not ours to begin with,” he said. “As part of our conversation with the Restorative Actions folk, even as an entire denomination, we cannot enact reparations. We’re not big enough. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to be a part of the solution and try to get the ball rolling, nudge others with power and money to do something similar, to show that it can be done, and it is possible.
“We’re just trying to further the conversation and the movement and keep things not on the back burner.”
It’s been a nearly two-year journey for the First Presbyterian Church of Lansdowne since the sale of the manse and the distribution of funds to the Lenape. But it’s been an incredibly meaningful ride for this congregation that hopes its example will be replicated by many going forward.
“When I initially brought the idea to the ad-hoc committee and then the session, nobody said ‘no,’” Jonathan said, fighting back his emotions as he recalled those early conversations with his congregation. “The whole congregation was on board with it. Nobody has come and said ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this. We need this money for us.’ It’s an incredible group of folks.
“The fact that everybody was essentially on board from the beginning tells me that indeed the Spirit is moving, and I don’t question it was the right thing to do. In the conversations with everybody you could just see the seriousness with which everybody took this. People in the congregation have been talking about it with folks in the community and their friends, so they’re trying to get the word out that this is something people can do. That to me is like watching the Spirit move within the congregation. I feel blessed to be able to just come alongside them.”