St. Thomas’ Parish at Dupont Circle
Radical Hospitality
Who are we? My Top Ten.
Jun 29th
We want you to know who we are at St. Thomas’ Parish; here are some good ways to start:
1. We try to be a place where all can find and be found by God. We are a community of ordinary people on a joyful and thoughtful spiritual journey together. Our ministers are called Priests; and the senior minister in an Episcopal Church like ours is called the Rector.
2. This is a Christian community, which for us means that we are part of a long line of people who share a long story that stretches back two thousand years to Jesus and almost two thousand years before that to the earliest memories of the Jewish people. In particular we are part of the Anglican line of Christians which stretches back to the earliest Celtic Christian communities in the British Isles, and took its Episcopal Church form in the United States following the American Revolution.
3. We practice what we call Radical Hospitality, patterned after Jesus’ own teachings and personal practice. This means that everyone is welcome – there’s no litmus test. All of you is welcome – you don’t have to check part of yourself at the door – not your mind, questions, body, feelings, doubts, or background.
4. Worship is at the center of who we are as a community, and shapes all else that we believe and do. Our Sunday morning worship is centered on the Holy Eucharist, or Holy Communion, a commemoration of Jesus’ last meal with his original followers, and a central way that we celebrate Jesus being present with us today through eating bread, and drinking wine together. Wherever you may be on your faith journey, there is room at the table for you.
5. Our worship is ordered by what is called The Book of Common (that is, community) Prayer, which contains many of the oldest forms of worship and prayers that Christians used when they first gathered together.
6. When we gather for worship, we usually start with music and singing. We read from the Bible, and listen to sermons (shorter than those in many other Christian churches!) that help us to connect the stories of the Bible with the stories of our own lives. We pray together, give God thanks for our blessings, confess our failings, ask for forgiveness, and lift up our own needs and those of others to God’s hearing.
7. We regularly recite what is called the Nicene Creed, a shorthand way of reminding ourselves of the shape of the whole story of God interacting with our world: God made everything, and everyone. God took human form in Jesus and loves us so much that Jesus was willing to suffer and die on our behalf. God could not be defeated even by death, and lives on now with us as the Holy Spirit, who called the church into being.
8. Episcopalians are a combination of Catholic and Protestant styles of Christianity — our sacramental emphasis on Holy Eucharist is brought together with a deep reverence for the primary authority of Holy Scripture in telling us about God and ourselves. We are a both-and, not an either-or, church; the world isn’t black-and-white, and we are confident that God is with us in all that life brings our way.
9. We also believe in the goodness of human reason, as a God-given resource for understanding who we are. And we trust in what we call tradition — the ways that faith has been passed on over the centuries, down to the present day, in the beliefs and practices of faithful people long before us.
10. At the end of worship, we are sent out to be bearers of God’s love and compassion and justice in the world. Our mission as Christians is to represent Christ in our daily lives, bearing love and justice that is the life-giving power at the heart of reality. Worship gives us strength for our journey and courage to be God’s people in a challenging world.
Come and visit us and see for yourself. There is a place at God’s table for everyone.
We’re Growing a Church Just For You
Jun 28th
On June 20, 2010, the Vestry (or governing board) of St. Thomas’ Parish voted unanimously to move forward to rebuild a new worship space in Dupont Circle. While our new building is going up, I want to be in conversation with you about who we are, what we’re doing here, what we believe in, and why we think this parish matters to the larger communities we live in.
After the original structure, church home of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, was destroyed by arson 40 years ago this August, our congregation chose to remain in the neighborhood of Dupont Circle, worshiping, as we still do, in the renovated parish hall. Over time this prophetic decision evolved into an intentional, creative, and courageous leadership role in solidarity with of the growing GLBT community in this historic Washington, DC, neighborhood.
- We opened our doors during the height of the AIDS crisis – welcoming HIV positive individuals to the Eucharist, ministering to the dying and their grieving partners and friends, and honoring the dead with funerals and memorial services when few other parishes did so.
- We pioneered the development of rites for the blessing of same sex unions in the Episcopal Church, writing a still frequently used and widely adapted liturgy in 1998. Subsequently we have hosted countless blessings of holy unions, and our clergy have officiated at many others beyond our doors. Most recently we have been celebrating a steady flow of same sex marriages at St. Thomas’ Parish, including a wedding just this week of a gay couple who have been faithful partners for 33 years.
- All of us at St. Thomas’ Parish have been blessed, too, by a steady growth in the numbers of children in our ranks, some with same-sex and others with straight parents, all of them looking for a spiritual home where they can be assured, as one said recently, that “my child will never learn to hate in this place.”
- As older straight and GLBT members have retired or moved from the parish, younger adults have found a home with us in growing numbers. The result is that the median age of our parishioners is about 35, with only a handful of members over the age of 55, and currently only one vestry member over 45. This influx of young adults has led to a doubling of our congregation’s size and budget in the past 5 years. Now we are in the both enviable and lamentable place of being almost out of room to welcome those still arriving at our doors.
People who come here find an inclusive congregation, whose life is centered in the sacraments of baptism and holy communion — “a place where all can find and be found by God.” We are constantly deepening our practice of faith rooted in vital worship and bold outreach in equal measure, continually learning to love one another and our neighbors, although sometimes it is not clear which is the more difficult. We are proud to be a part of our community, and we also are deeply committed to contributing to our neighborhood and world in days long after we ourselves are gone. We’re growing a church just for you — and a place of sanctuary and refuge, of inspiration and courage, of faithfulness and compassion for tomorrow and the day after.
Anglican Covenant – a bad idea whose time has come?
Jun 22nd
Dr. Wayne Whitson Floyd, a lay theologian, chairs
the Education and Formation Committee
at St. Thomas’ Parish, Dupont Circle, Washington, DC
One of the recommendations of the 2004 Windsor Report, written in response to reaction against the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, was that the Anglican Communion move towards the adoption of a so-called Anglican Covenant. Despite many gallant attempts to make Windsor into a statement of the beauty-of-unity that is the Anglican Communion, I remain unconvinced. As the old Southern saying goes: “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.” I say this because I am convinced that such a document — however nuanced its wording — would in effect state the means by which official condemnation of the Episcopal Church’s full inclusion of gay and lesbian Christians at all levels of church life could be justified. It also would define the Episcopal Church’s action in consecrating Bishop Robinson as having removed TEC from the fellowship of the Anglican Communion. Dress it up however you want, but IMHO it’s still a pig.
To its credit, the response of the Episcopal Church up to now has been far from enthusiastic about such a Covenant — “it would be a bad idea that I do not support” Washington’s Bishop John Chane was overheard to say recently. Our bishops and Executive Council and General Convention deputies have agreed, however, to study the idea and make recommendations about the Covenant (the official study guide can be found here), which is in its second draft (the full text can be found here).
The Diocese of Washington’s Episcopal Cafe recently commissioned a series of articles on the Covenant, which give you an idea of how it is being approached officially by the Episcopal Church. And the General Theological Seminary’s Desmond Tutu Center, following its April 2008 conference on the proposed Covenant, has posted on its website more html, mp3, and pdf resources and responses to this than most Episcopalians will ever have the patience to absorb.
I realize I betray my own heterodox Episcopalianism — and poor Southern manners — by having lost already most of my patience to participate in what already is a several years long extended series of debates among our bishops, Executive Council members, General Convention deputies, seminary faculty and all manner of cogs in the complex machinery that is the Episcopal Church. This will continue past this summer’s Lambeth Conference, into the 2009 General Convention, and certainly beyond.
From the outset, I must say that I simply think the whole endeavor is a bad idea, but a bad idea whose time appears to have come.
It’s a bad idea for some fairly simple reasons: More >
not as a spectator
Jun 17th
I’m always on the lookout for interesting congregational websites and blogs. Today I returned a telephone call to a rabbi at a New York synagogue, Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, whose website describes them as “a unique congregation committed to building a kehilla kedosha, a sacred community, built on a love of the Jewish people, a passion for social justice, prayer and study. We are a caring community, a home in which to celebrate life’s simchas, joys, as well as to grieve and mourn loss.”
I particularly like the invitation by the rabbi, Sharon Kleinbaum, which sounds very much like St. Thomas’ Parish and our language of prophetic hospitality. She wrote: “Join us, not as a spectator, but as a member of the family, with rights and privileges, obligations and commitments. Together we can create a true [sacred community].”
