On Sunday I attended an Episcopal Church service in Alexandria, Virginia, a short walk from where I’m staying. It’s a historic church where, curiously, George Washington and and Robert E. Lee, opposing generals in the Civil War, both worshipped regularly and called it their “home” church.
Many other historic luminaries like Rosa Parks, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Winston Churchill also attended services there on visits.
I’m not religious but interested in the culture and history of religious ceremony and perversely taken with the often bizarre pageantry.
I was drawn initially by the graveyard surrounding the church, which I passed by several times and took photographs, but the church itself was never open.
I was hoping that by attending the service I would get inside, but due to Covid, services are being conducted among the gravestones outside the sanctuary.
Three women wearing white Anglican vestments conducted the service, after being ceremoniously paraded to the makeshift pulpit behind an older, bespectacled man wearing a black robe and carrying a sort of mace. He then sat down on the side and played no other part in the service until he led the women out at the end.
The service included Holy Communion with wafer ( a gluten-free version of the body of Christ was available), and the baptism of a very sweet baby.
About 50 people who attended in the cool air of a sunny morning were spread out on lawn chairs and blankets on the grass among the graves.
The congregation was entirely white, casually well-dressed with classic navy blue blazers apparently de rigueur for the men. Black maintenance men for the church stood idly around the periphery of the service.
I had gone to the service expecting there to be singing and was surprised at the end that there were no hymns, not even a doxology, despite a man playing quite well on a portable electric piano. I thought that to be uncommon at an Episcopalian service.
All in all an interesting morning. I spoke with a church official afterward and arranged to get inside the sanctuary for some photos on Saturday.