By Lucy Chumbley November 15, 2009 ( Vol. 78, No. 8 , Nov-Dec 2009 )

"The life of a congregation grows out if its foundation," said the Rev. Carleton Hayden to a group of about 50 breakfasting in Calvary, D.C.'s parish hall on a recent Saturday. "So it's important to understand when a congregation was founded."

Cue the Soul Pilgrimage Tour, a closer look at four historically black congregations in the Diocese of Washington organized by the Episcopal Women and Girls of Calvary and led by Hayden, a Howard University history professor and retired priest of the diocese.

The first stop on the day-trip, themed "understanding our past and shaping our future" and more than two years in the planning, was St. Mary's, Foggy Bottom – the oldest African American church in the diocese.

As the bus crossed town, Hayden explained that before the Civil War, there were no black Episcopal churches; just slave chapels or galleries in white churches. But "after the war, there was a tremendous push to have organizations where blacks have input," he said. "St. Mary's rose out of that."

During this era of emancipation, the evangelism strategy of the Episcopal Church was to provide schools and hospitals to draw people into the life of the church, Hayden said. The idea was "as they are drawn in, we can teach them, and they will become baptized and convert."

This historic focus on education fostered leaders like Frederick Douglass and Thurgood Marshall, but "also has been the bane of our life," he said. "Because the image that we have in the rest of

St. Mary's, Foggy Bottom

St. Mary's (which was originally named St. Barnabas' and changed its name after several months for reasons unknown) began its life as a congregation in June 1867.

Church members met in a former wooden Union Army Chapel, transported from Kalorama Hospital to land in Foggy Bottom donated by a parishioner from St. John's, Lafayette Square. Epiphany, D.C. also offered financial and clerical support to the fledgling congregation.

"This was a place where you could worship without discrimination," said present-day parishioner Lionel Gloster, welcoming the group into the newly-restored nave. "Today the church is very diverse – still a place where you can worship without discrimination."

In 1882 a parish hall and school were built, and in 1887 the red-brick church, designed by architect James Renwick, of Smithsonian Castle and St. Patrick's Cathedral fame, and costing just $15,000, was completed.

Although inexpensive by today's standards, the money was a lot for the new congregation to raise, architect and parishioner Mark Fetterman said, far exceeding the original budget of $6,000.

The building's simple design emulated the English churches being built by the Ecclesiological Society at that time, he said, designed to keep costs down and refocus attention on the spiritual.

"All the important decoration is in the chancel," he said, including the newly restored gold stenciled paintwork and a triptych window over the altar that was created in France.

"The parishioners worked very hard and diligently to make these gifts possible for the church," said parishioner and Howard University Provost Richard Allyn English, noting that the church's stained glass windows are all memorials.

The triptych window also honors the ethnicity of the church founders, Hayden explained, pointing out that the central panel shows St. Simon of Cyrene bearing the cross of Christ.

"The fact that Simon is an African is significant," he said, pointing out the color of his skin, which has been faithfully portrayed. "This tribute to racial origin is quite noticeable and one of the outstanding features of this window."

During his episcopacy, Bishop Henry Yates Satterlee suggested that the church be named for St. Simon, Hayden said, but church members rejected the idea.

Simon was a foreigner who was compelled to carry the cross, he said. "My guess is that because of those connotations they really did not want that. They wanted a name that would associate them with the Episcopal Church in the broadest way."

To the left of Simon is a panel depicting St. Trophina, in memory of Gertrude Trophina Willis, St. Mary's first deaconess, and to the right is a panel of Bishop Cyprian of Carthage (North Africa), given by parishioners in memory of Abraham Lincoln.

Willis, a sickly Englishwoman who worked selflessly in the church's House of Mercy died young and is buried in the St. Paul's, Rock Creek Cemetery, Hayden said. He noted that many whites who ministered to blacks in those days were Europeans who had not been socialized in the United States.

The church operated as a mission of St. John's until it became a parish in 1920. But before this, in 1873, the burgeoning congregation had divided, with about half the members joining the Rev. Alexander Crummell to found St. Luke's, D.C.

St. Luke's, D.C.

St. Luke's was the first independent black congregation in the diocese, and Crummell was its first rector, said the Rev. Virginia Brown Nolan, the eighth and current rector, welcoming the group to her church.

(In one of history's little quirks, Nolan's father, the Rev. Dillard H. Brown, served as the fifth rector of St. Luke's and left to become the first missionary bishop to Liberia, she said, pointing out that Crummell came to this diocese after serving as a missionary in Liberia.)

Dr. Crummell, a highly regarded scholar who was born free in New York City, ordained by the Bishop of Delaware after being refused ordination by the Bishop of New York, educated at Cambridge, England and served as a missionary in Liberia before returning to New York to become rector of St. Philip's, was an impressive and influential figure.

Initially called to serve at St. Mary's, Crummell found it necessary to build a new church to cope with the huge influx of worshippers to that congregation. His vision was that St. Luke's would also become a community center, offering a clinic and school, Nolan said.

St. Luke's was established as a separate congregation – a church without parish bounds – Nolan said, explaining that St. Luke's eventually petitioned for and received about two square blocks to call its own. But some people in the congregation viewed the word separate a little differently, she said, leading to historic tensions with the diocese around issues of authority.

These were not eased by Bishop Angus Dun, who drew ire when he told church leaders that St. Luke's plans to build an undercroft were "too ambitious for a black congregation," Nolan said, to a chorus of groans. "That feeling did not go away."

Tensions emerged more recently when in 1999 some members left when Nolan, the church's first female priest, was called as rector. But, she said, "it's important for us to look at both the strengths and weaknesses of our congregations in order to grow and move forward."

"In the church we operate so much from our emotions that sometimes we can't see. We have to turn our focus on the people who need good news but have not heard it yet. We need to really focus on what is important, and community is important."

At its peak in the 1940s and 50s, St. Luke's boasted about 1,500 members, but demographics have changed dramatically, and the once predominantly black neighborhood is now home to a younger, wealthier, whiter and more transient population.

"I think all of us, if we're going to survive another 150 years, we're going to have to look at how we're going to proclaim the message of Jesus Christ to our surrounding community," Nolan said.

Continue the Soul Tour: Calvary, D.C. and St. George's, D.C. >>

Lucy Chumbley is the editor of Washington Window, the newspaper of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.