Christ Church — known also as Christ Church, Washington Parish or Christ Church on Capitol Hill — is a historic Episcopal church located at 620 G Street SE in Washington, D.C., USA. The church is also called Christ Church, Navy Yard, because of its proximity to the Washington Navy Yard and the nearby U.S. Marine Barracks.
Christ Church was established in 1795, one of two congregations envisioned for Washington Parish, created by an act of the Maryland General Assembly in 1794. Initially, worship services were held in a converted tobacco barn. The present structure was built in 1807, the first Episcopal church in the original city of Washington, on land given by William Prout. Through changes to its exterior and interior over the years, the building has been the site of a continuously worshiping community ever since. The church was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969. The Rev. John A. Kellogg is the current rector.
The church reported 409 members in 2015 and 526 members in 2023; no membership statistics were reported in 2024 parochial reports. Plate and pledge income reported for the congregation in 2024 was $931,375. Average Sunday attendance (ASA) in 2024 was 210 persons.
History
Founding of the Parish, 1794 When the District of Columbia was created, there was no Episcopal Church in the city of Washington or Georgetown, although there had been an Episcopal presence. The Church of England had bought land for building an Anglican church in Georgetown in 1769. The Revolutionary War and time needed to establish the new Episcopal Church delayed building, but Anglican services were sometimes held at the Georgetown Presbyterian Church on Bridge St. (now M St.). Services connected to St. John's Broad Creek were held in a renovated tobacco barn on Capitol Hill, possibly as early as the 1780s.
Nevertheless, existing Episcopal churches were miles from where population growth was expected, and the Rt. Rev. Thomas Claggett, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland and first Episcopal bishop consecrated in the United States, was determined that there should be an Episcopal church in the nation's capital. In 1793, he appointed prominent local businessmen and landed gentry to explore using a lottery to finance building a church there. After that group, including Samuel Blodgett, Uriah Forrest, Benjamin Stoddert, William Deakins, and Anthony Addison, failed to make progress, the bishop pressed on to the Maryland legislature. The Maryland Vestry Act of 1794, drawing boundaries for a new parish in the Diocese of Maryland, made up of Washington and Georgetown, was signed into law on December 26, 1794.
Early Years, 1795–1844 The first meeting establishing Christ Church was held on May 25, 1795. Although Bishop Claggett had voiced his desire to be rector the newly elected vestry called the Rev. George Ralph, who had recently moved from Maryland to start a school in Washington. Many clergy—often the best educated men in the community—ran schools to supplement incomes that otherwise came solely from pew fees. The first vestry, prominent local land owners, speculators, businessmen, and local politicians William Deakins, Jr., John Templeman, Charles Worthington, James Simmons, Joseph Clarke, Thomas Johnson, Jr., and Gustavus Scott, appointed Henry Edwards as registrar, and elected Clotworthy Stevenson and William Prentiss as wardens for one year. In the following year, Thomas Law, General Davidson, and John Crocker were appointed to take the places of Johnson, Clarke, and Simmons, who had left the parish.
Few parish records of this first decade survive, but other sources document that worship services were held in the converted tobacco barn and in the hallway of the War Office on Sunday afternoons. When Ralph left after two years to return to Maryland, his assistant, the Rev. Andrew McCormick was left in charge. In 1807, Ralph, still nominally the rector, returned to the city and called a parish meeting. Although in the interim the parish may have been, like the city, as much vision as reality, the meeting resulted in the election of a new vestry: Commodore Thomas Tingey, John Dempsie, Bullveer Cocke, Andrew Way, Thomas H. Gillis, Thomas Washington, Peter Miller, Robert Alexander, and Henry Ingle. Ralph resigned, and the new vestry elected McCormick as rector. It is in 1806, shortly before Ralph's return that vestry minutes begin anew and continue to the present time.Robertson, Nan. (2015) Christ Church, Washington Parish. https://washingtonparish.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Christ-Church-History-2015-Final2.pdf
During McCormick's tenure the new church was built on land donated by William Prout, a land owner, developer, businessman, and civic leader in the new city. The church was completed in 1807 and dedicated in 1809 by Bishop Claggett. In 1812, the vestry of Christ Church took ownership of a cemetery that had been established in 1807 by men who were also members of Christ Church: George Blagden, Griffith Coombe, John T. Frost, Henry Ingle, Dr. Frederick May, Peter Miller, Samuel Smallwood, and Commodore Tingey.Johnson and Johnson 2012, p. 16. This Washington Parish Burial Ground quickly became known as Congressional Cemetery.Johnson and Johnson 2012, p. 33.
During the War of 1812, the community around the church survived the burning of the Washington Navy Yard, just blocks away. The fire was started by Mordecai Booth, another Christ Church vestryman, under orders of Tingey, Commander of the Navy Yard, to prevent the British from capturing a valuable foothold in the nation's capital. Archibald Henderson, longest serving Commandant of the Marine Corps, also played a prominent role in the life of the church and served on its vestry.Johnson and Johnson 2012, p. 225. As the communities around the Capitol and the Navy Yard grew, so did Christ Church, expanding its physical structure in the first of many renovations in 1824.Ennis 1969, p.173-175. Likewise, the city of Washington was growing. The boundaries of Washington Parish, which had encompassed the original City of Washington and Georgetown, began to contract as new churches formed and parish boundaries were set for them: St. John's Georgetown in 1809,Journal of the Proceedings of the ... Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Diocese of Maryland, 1809. St. John's Lafayette Square in 1816, Trinity Church in 1827 (demolished 1936), Epiphany in 1844, and Ascension in 1845.
The Civil War Era, 1844–1870 The Episcopal Church as a whole and the Diocese of Maryland were not particularly progressive on the issue of slavery.Klein, Mary and Kingsley Smith. (June 24–27, 2007) "Racism in the Anglican and Episcopal Church in Maryland." Presentation at the Tri-History Conference of the National Episcopal Historians and Archivists; the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church; Episcopal Woman's History Project, Williamsburg, VA. https://episcopalmaryland.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2019/04/Racism-in-the-Anglican-and-Episcopal-Church-of-Maryland.pdf A number of early Christ Church leaders were enslavers. While both free and enslaved African Americans appear to have been baptized, confirmed, and married at and communicants of Christ Church from at least 1805, their numbers were few and seating was segregated, with one of the balconies reserved for enslaved persons. Christ Church allowed African Americans to be buried in its cemetery but not in the original enclosed portion of the burial ground.Johnson and Johnson 2012, p. 31. Before the war, Christ Church called an anti-slavery rector in the Rev. Julius Morsell and after the war, a southern sympathizer in the Rev. Charles Hansford Shield. In 1858 Christ Church hired Theophilus Howard, an African American, as sexton. During the war Union forces used its tower to observe the area across the Potomac. In 1865 it counted among its members David Herold, one of the Lincoln assassination co-conspirators. A member of the parish, Dr. Samuel McKim, spoke in Herold's defense at his trial, and the rector of the parish, the Rev. Marcus Olds, was at the scaffold with Herold, as were other clergy with the other co-conspirators. Except for expressed relief that the church building was not commandeered for the war efforts and an authorization to drape the bell tower in black after Lincoln's assassination, there is little mention of the issue of slavery or the effects of war in the vestry proceedings of the time.
The Gilded Age, 1870–1900 If hard use during the war battered Capitol Hill's roads and existing buildings, it also brought new residences, schools and military and civic buildings, and the local population grew after the 1883 Pendelton Civil Service Reform Act gave federal workers greater job security and regular wages.Williams, Kimberly Prothro. (2003) Capitol Hill Historic District. DC Historic Preservation Office. Christ Church mirrored this pattern, growing from 147 communicants in 1870 to 532 in 1895.Journal of the Eighty-Seventh Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Maryland, Baltimore, 1870.Journal of the One Hundred and Twelfth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Maryland, Washington, DC, 1895.
The best known Christ Church member is John Philip Sousa, the famous March King and head of the Marine Corps Band from 1880-1892. He was born at 636 G St., SE, just three doors east of Christ Church and had a lifelong association with the parish.Johnson and Johnson 2012, p. 182-183. Sousa referred to Christ Church in a novel he wrote set in the Pipetown neighborhood east of the Marine Barracks. Christ Church was stable enough to establish a parochial chapel, St. Matthew's, at Half and M Streets, SE, in 1892. St. Matthew's added a parish hall in 1914. During this time Christ Church was known for its music program. A Hook & Hastings organ was installed in 1880, and there were a boys' choir and sponsored musical events. The church celebrated its centennial on May 25, 1895. That year saw the establishment of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, which split the District of Columbia and nearby Maryland counties from the Diocese of Maryland. The end of the 19th century gave the church the dubious distinction that former rector the Rev. Gilbert Fearing Williams was the first clergyman in the newly formed Diocese of Washington to be tried for misconduct. Having been found guilty, Williams was deposed by Bishop Satterlee in 1898, but was reinstated in 1914 by Bishop Harding when new evidence came to light.
World Wars, 1900–1946