St. Thomas’ Parish at Dupont Circle
St Thomas’ Parish
Hot time at St. Thomas’ Parish
Aug 25th
Lots has been going on at St. Thomas’ over the summer; and right on cue Blogging-Thomas crashed for a month! Resurrection, however, is at hand — just in time for Richard Morgan’s edgy and thoughtful and fun Washington Post “On Faith” article, “Once a victim, St. Thomas’ Parish rebuilds.”
Some of my favorite parts (disclaimer: I am, after all, the spouse of the rector at St. Thomas’ Parish!) –
That hot August 24 morning, the building that The Washington Star in 1923 called “one of the most beautiful edifices in the country” was ordered razed. The next day the church paid $50,000 to demolish itself.
The congregation is a motley crew — former Catholics, Lutherans, Evangelicals, Quakers, families from Silver Spring and Alexandria, African-Americans, Asians, Latinos, and a pride parade’s worth of gays (“a He-Man Woman Haters’ Club for Jesus,” said one, “except we actually do have female members, and they’re pretty cool too”).
St. Thomas’ is a church at its most human, its most tender and frail and vulnerable, asking questions of itself and of its past and future — and, toughest of all, its present — that it never imagined. Akin to a 40-year-old leaving his hometown for the first time, the personal sense of identity here asks a secret, taboo question: What does church mean to you? And what would you do — how would you handle it? — if you could rebuild yours?
There’s Nancy Lee Jose, 61, the fourth-generation Washingtonian who is a priest of equal parts Geraldine Ferraro and Mary Lou Retton — petite, joking, gentle, bold — a confection of a woman topped with a whipped-cream dollop of Miranda Priestly hair. [WF: "That's my sweetheart!!"]
It’s not a best-face-forward church. It’s honest, treating people as valued, as good, as loved. God, gays, education, equality. They’re all so strong here and all about the same thing: understatement that’s both powerful and radical.
This is a real church. And bit by bit we’re building a stronger community every year. By the grace of God we may build a new building. But God has been at work in this place for a long time, building what lasts – a place of faith, and love, and hope … the only things, after all, that last forever.
Great movie opportunity
Aug 24th
The Pulitzer Center and St. Thomas’ Parish present
Glass Closet:
Homophobia, Violence and the Spread of HIV in Jamaica
a film screening and Q & A with Lisa Biagiotti
The Glass Closet: Sex, Stigma and HIV/AIDS in Jamaica, a reporting project by Micah Fink and Gabrielle Weiss, was produced in partnership with WNET’s Worldfocus program and correspondant Lisa Biagiotti.
The project explores the effects of homophobia on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Jamaica and includes four short documentary films that were broadcast on Worldfocus.
The Glass Closet videos will be screened at St. Thomas’ Parish in Washington, DC, on Monday, August 30. A discussion and Q&A with Lisa Biagiotti will follow.
6:30 p.m. – Reception
7:00 p.m. – Screening
7:00 p.m. – Screening
St. Thomas’ Parish Episcopal Church – 1772 Church Street, NW – Washington, DC 20036
Metro: Dupont Circle, on the Red Line – RSVP requested - rsvp(at)pulitzercenter.org
Lisa Biagiotti is an independent multimedia journalist. She recently produced a documentary on toilets and open defecation in India and Indonesia for Current TV’s Vanguard documentary series. Lisa has produced and edited short-form videos and weekly radio shows for Worldfocus — a daily public television news program and website. She was awarded the 2009 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in the international television category and was nominated for a national news Emmy Award for the videos she produced on the crisis in Congo. Lisa worked with the Pulitzer Center as a Worldfocus correspondent to produce “The Glass Closet: HIV/AIDS in Jamaica.” Learn more at http://lisabiagiotti.com/The Glass Closet is part of the Pulitzer Center’s in-depth reporting on HIV in the Caribbean, which also includes current work in Haiti and the Emmy award-winning project HOPE: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica.
The Pulitzer Center promotes in-depth engagement with global affairs through its sponsorship of quality international journalism across all media platforms and an innovative program of outreach and education. To learn more visit www.pulitzercenter.org
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.
Hellooooooooooooo Epis-pickle-palians!
Jul 13th
VirtuallyFaithful here! Are you following General Convention? You should. But not too closely.
It’s like watching a waterfall — powerful and inspiring, but get too close and it’ll knock you over. You also don’t want to pay too much attention to all the droplets slashing out on the rocks. Go downstream a bit. Watch the water flow. Sometimes the stream itself will shift a little. Most times it doesn’t, because the total force of the stream is far bigger and more important than any few hundred or even thousand gallons that get dumped in all at once.
When light shines on all those exquisite drops, rainbows appear, as is right. But the rainbows aren’t to be confused with the waterfall, or the stream that drives it. No stream, no waterfall. No waterfall, no rainbows. So don’t just look at the rainbows alone. But do notice them. They are, after all, one of God’s favorite signs of unbreakable covenant with us all.
Listen to the water. God speaks through the mystery of that sound. It’s a different voice than you hear in Washington Weekly or on talk-radio, or even online in blog posts like this. It’s more subtle. Less in your face and pugnacious (there’s a word for you!). God’s like that. Really faithful to us. While we’re virtually faithful, at best, in return. That’s what it is to be the church. So watch and listen, but more to God than to General Convention. But since we’re the Episcopal Church, watch and listen to what’s going on there, too. God may even choose to speak from the maelstrom, again.
Four New Episcopalians!
Nov 3rd
This past Saturday, November 1st – All Saints’ Day – four members of St. Thomas’ Parish – Tim Johnson, Topher Bengtson, Aaron Adkins and David Park – were among the 245 persons confirmed or received into the Episcopal Church at Washington National Cathedral.
Bishop Chane was assisted by two retired Bishops – Mike Creighton (Central Pennsylvania) and Allen Bartlett (Pennsylvania). Bishop Bartlett is pictured at left with our four confirmands, plus The Rev. John Dwyer (Asst. Rector) and The Rev. Nancy Lee Jose (Rector) and Wayne Floyd who led the confirmation class for the group.
This was the largest contingent ever confirmed and/or received in a Diocese of Washington service, which included a historic number of Spanish-speaking Episcopalians, many of whom came from three Hispanic congregations in the Diocese of Washington.
Another Confirmation Class will form in the winter to prepare people who wish to be confirmed or received at the Spring Confirmation Service at the Cathedral.
