Texas Monthly features St. James’ Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas. William Martin writes of his recent visit:
One seldom encounters the Nicene Creed and the gospel-country classic “Sweet, Sweet Spirit” in the same worship service. But Austin’s St. James’ Episcopal Church, “an inclusive multicultural community,” is not your average Anglican assemblage. In the early forties, when a small group of African American Episcopalians found themselves unwelcome at the city’s all-white churches, they enlisted the Reverend John D. Epps, the dean of the Colored Convocation of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, to help them form a “Negro” congregation. Today, the five-hundred-plus-member church is fully integrated, flourishing, and such an exemplary parish that its former rector, the Reverend Greg Rickel, was installed this past summer as bishop of the Diocese of Olympia, which includes Seattle and the rest of western Washington. As an even more visible sign of its vitality, the church, which had outgrown its facilities on East Martin Luther King Boulevard, recently moved into spacious new quarters a few blocks away, on Webberville Road.
Continuing his description of the the mix of ancient liturgy and modern concerns, and highlighting the ministry of the St. James’ School and the blessing of its teachers, Martin concludes:
The service ended in a grand manner, as we sang James Weldon Johnson’s rousing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which the NAACP designated “the Negro National Anthem” in 1919 and has long been a standard in black churches. It was a fine way to climax two hours of encouragement, worship, and fellowship, acknowledging the deep imperfections of our country but refusing to surrender to despair—and recognizing that churches, Episcopal and other, can be a bastion of privilege or a beacon of hope
St. James’ also has a Spanish language Eucharist at 2 p.m. Sunday afternoon and a Jazz-Gospel-New Zealand Prayer Book Eucharist at 6 p.m. Sunday evening.
Read it all here.