| A small Greek Revival church of wood-frame construction, distinguished by a distyle-in-antis portico – or more correctly, a distyle-in-muris portico. This type of portico was a popular motif in Greek Revival architecture, appearing in the designs of such notable Greek Revival churches as Government Street Presbyterian Church in Mobile, Christ Church in Mobile, and the old Methodist Church in Aberdeen, Mississippi (1859-60). This portico configuration linked Bethel Church stylistically with a group of small, wood-frame rural Greek Revival churches in Alabama, including Robinson Springs Methodist Church in Elmore County (1845) and Ivy Creek Methodist Church in Autauga County (1850). This building was listed on the National Register on 19 December 1986 as the "finest surviving example of Greek Revival religious architecture in the Black Prairie region of Mississippi and one of the two finest churches in that style in the northern half of the state." Bethel Presbyterian Church was completely destroyed by a tornado on 10 November 2002. It was removed from the National Register on 23 June 2003. It is included in "Look to the Rock: One Hundred Ante-bellum Presbyterian Churches of the South" (1961), "America’s Religious Architecture" (1997) (p.285), "Thy Dwellings Fair: Churches of St. Andrew’s Presbytery” (2000) (pp. 22-23), and "Lost Churches of Mississippi" (2010) (pp. 48-49). |