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ATLAH World Missionary Church

church building in Manhattan, United States of America

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 12, 2026
Entity authorityQ4815950 ↗
Source-derived summary

ATLAH World Missionary Church (formerly Bethelite Missionary Baptist Church) is a Christian church and ministry located in Harlem, New York. James David Manning is the chief pastor. The church campus is the site of the unaccredited ATLAH Theological Seminary, where classes are offered on preaching and prophecy. The church also has a studio that Manning uses for his Internet radio program The Manning Report. The church's YouTube channel had over 72,000 subscribers as of March 2018 but was shut down by YouTube later that year.

History

The church was founded and organized in Harlem on June 6, 1957, by the Reverend Millard Alexander Stanley as the Bethelite Community Baptist Church.

In early June, just a few days before the first worship service was held, Stanley was sitting in front of a storefront on 8th Avenue in Harlem. A local heroin addict spoke to him and said, "If y’all gonna be a church, you better 'Be-The-Lite.'" Thus, the mission was formed and named Bethelite.

In 1981, James David Manning replaced Stanley as chief pastor. Under Manning's leadership, the church name changed to ATLAH ("All The Land Anointed Holy"), and ministries were established.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “ATLAH World Missionary Church” is church building in Manhattan, United States of America. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through ATLAH, World and Missionary, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewMost useful as a place-based finding aid connecting the present description to earlier jurisdictions, maps and built evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2018, 1957, 1981—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1991. For this dossier, ATLAH, World and Missionary is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “church building in Manhattan, United States of America” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4815950. Authority coordinates are 40.806, -73.946. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2018, 1957 and 1981.

Critical limits

Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “ATLAH World Missionary Church”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow ATLAH World Missionary Church primary sources, ATLAH World Missionary Church archive and ATLAH research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “ATLAH World Missionary Church”?
  2. What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
  3. Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “ATLAH World Missionary Church” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.