History

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, a parish of the Diocese of Virginia, is a historic church in Richmond, Virginia, founded in 1845 across from the State Capitol. The building was listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register in 1968 and on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.

The parish is actively engaged with the downtown Richmond community and provides a full array of church programming including weekly worship services, faith formation, choral and instrumental music, and pastoral care. At present, its primary worship service is held at 10 AM on Sunday, along with services of evening prayer and evensong at other times and days. St. Paul’s welcomes all persons to its services and programs.

The St. Paul’s congregation grew out of Monumental Protestant Episcopal Church on Broad Street (est. 1814). With the substantial transfer of that earlier church’s clergy, vestry, and over 200 members, the new church debuted as the Diocese’s largest parish.

The founding generation was comprised of prominent Virginia leaders in business, industry, and government. Extensive research confirms that nearly all were also enslavers who owned Black men, women, and children to labor in their city homes, their factories, coal mines, and in the fields of their country estates. While the record does not identify commercial slave traders on membership rosters, parishioners independently bought, sold, and sometimes rented African Americans at will. In the antebellum years, there were no more than six Black communicants listed as official communicants. After 1861, there would be no African American members in the segregated church for another century. Black individuals who did attend services were relegated to separate pews in the west gallery.

During the Civil War, the people of St. Paul’s were fully aligned with the Confederate cause. Because of the proximity of St. Paul’s to the Capitol building, notable Confederate government and military leaders were communicants, including Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. Embracing this history, as well as mourning a sizeable number of wartime casualties, the church maintained its Confederate identity in the post-war decades. It perpetuated Lost Cause sentiment through memorial windows, plaques, and related services well into the 20th century.

During the Progressive Era, 1910s-1930s, two young rectors—Walter Russell Bowie and his successor, Beverley D. Tucker Jr.—guided the church’s focus to the issues and needs of Black Richmonders. As the Commonwealth and city enacted strict Jim Crow laws, St. Paul’s hosted regular integrated gatherings of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. Both Bowie and Tucker publicly denounced the Ku Klux Klan from the church pulpit. At mid-century, when clergy and parishioners disengaged from race relations, some members became vocal advocates for ongoing segregation and the state’s “Massive Resistance” campaign against integration. This changed in the late 1960s when the U.S. Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia established policies supporting civil rights and urged outreach to Black communities. The new rectorship of John Shelby Spong (later Bishop of Newark), aided by dedicated parishioners, helped realign St. Paul’s mission. From the 1970s until the present day, St. Paul’s has positioned itself as an inclusive, socially active congregation.

In 2015, following the murder of nine Black members of Mother Emanual Church in Charleston, S.C., St. Paul’s began a multi-year program of self-study and prayerful conversations called the History and Reconciliation Initiative. Its mission was to recover, examine, and acknowledge its racial history in order to repair, restore, and seek reconciliation with God, one another, and the broader community. The initiative sponsored workshops, lectures, films, and travel to significant Black history sites in the city, as well as a pilgrimage to Montgomery and Selma, Alabama. At regular intervals, parishioners learned about and discussed the findings of new research regarding the church’s complicity in systemic racism, from its founding to the present day. This history was shared during the 2018 forum, “Bending Toward the Truth,” with the Most Rev. Michael Curry, presiding bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church, as a participant. The recovered history is detailed in a book by parishioner and historian, Christopher A. Graham.

By resolution of its vestry, St. Paul’s removed and stored all plaques and kneelers bearing Confederate battle flag motifs (2016) and additional plaques associated with the Confederacy and Lost Cause sentiment (2020). In a service of reconciliation (2020), the church also rededicated two pairs of windows originally honoring Confederate leaders—now dedicated to the glory of God. In 2022, St. Paul’s commissioned 14 hand-cut silhouettes by artist Janelle Washington illustrating the church’s racial history. Modeled after the Stations of the Cross, the “Stations of St. Paul’s” are displayed in the sanctuary during Lent and other special occasions.

Lost Cause Myth or Truth: Did Robert E. Lee Integrate Communion at St. Paul’s?

Presented Sunday, March 1st

A story from St. Paul’s has served to illustrate the graciousness and wisdom of one of our most famous attendees. Apparently, Robert E. Lee integrated communion here as a symbol of a new America after emancipation. The story has been used to advocate for causes and prove points since it first appeared. But the question remains… did it even happen? Presented by Chris Graham.

Rectors and years of tenure

William Norwood 1845-1849
Alexander Jones 1849-1854
Charles F. Minnigerode 1856-1889
Hartley Carmichael 1889-1899
Robert Strange 1900-1904 (later Bishop, Diocese of East Carolina)
Robert Wright Forsyth 1904-1911
Walter Russell Bowie 1911-1923
Beverley Dandridge Tucker Jr. 1923-1938 (later Bishop, Diocese of Ohio)
Vincent C. Franks 1939-1947
Robert Raymond Brown 1947-1955 (later Bishop, Diocese of Arkansas)
Joseph Thomas Heistand 1955-1968 (later Bishop, Diocese of Arizona)
John Shelby Spong 1969-1976 (later Bishop, Diocese of Newark)
Craig Biddle III 1977-1982
Robert Gunn Hetherington 1984-2006
Wallace Adams-Riley 2008-2017
Charles T. Dupree 2019-present

Consecrated in 1845, the church’s Greek Revival building was designed by Thomas Somerville Stewart and modeled largely on his St. Luke’s Church, now Church of St. Luke and the Epiphany, in Philadelphia. Stewart used as his model the Corinthian order found on the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, located at the Acropolis in Athens. This inspiration is most obvious in the capitals atop the church’s two-story Corinthian columns outside on the portico, and matching columns inside around the chancel. St. Paul’s retains its original neoclassical interior decoration as well as its distinctive pews. Also original is the nave’s large ceiling medallion, centered with a triangle containing the Hebrew letters representing “Yahweh”—the name of God (Tetragrammaton).

At the time St. Paul’s was built, the Diocese of Virginia enforced Protestant “low church” sensibilities that eschewed medieval-style ornamentation and liturgical practices. Therefore, for its first half-century, the church was devoid of religious imagery, icons, or memorial wall plaques, and its windows were clear glass. Its original chancel had no altar but instead featured a large wooden pulpit at the center. After a relaxing of decoration policies, St. Paul’s embarked on a major renovation in 1889-90, which installed a decorative brass pulpit to the side and deepened the chancel to facilitate a central altar and its first four stained-glass windows. Soon after, the first memorial wall plaques were dedicated. Through the mid-20th century, congregants donated dozens of additional windows and plaques dedicated to the memory of church leaders and family members.

The nave features ten windows created by Tiffany Glass & Decorating Co. (New York, renamed Tiffany Studios in 1902), including stellar examples exhibiting the firm’s characteristic opalescent glass and deep dimensional molding. In 1896, the Tiffany firm also designed the large mosaic behind the altar, which reproduces da Vinci’s “Last Supper.”

In 1903-1904, the church added a small two-story annex to its southwest corner. This was razed in 1923 to create a passageway to a new parish house on the adjoining lot to the west. In 1959-1961, the church built an expanded two-story parish hall and subterranean parking garage. Extensive renovations were again undertaken in 2018-19 to shore up the chancel floor and extend it into the nave, which facilitates a ramp for disabled communicants. At that time, the church also commissioned a new Holy Table and related chancel furnishings. Designed and crafted by Erich Thompson, the distinctive new pieces are comprised of multi-toned wood created by melding light southern pine reclaimed from the historic chancel floor to dark-hued Sapele, an West African wood.

From its founding, St. Paul’s has established a reputation for community outreach efforts. In its early years, it established the St. Paul’s Church Home for Girls (1859-1928), the Belvidere Mission School (1873-1892), and the St. Paul’s Church Home for Aged and Infirm Women (1873-1908). In 1905, St. Paul’s began hosting midday community Lenten services, accompanied by lunch starting in 1920, with profits benefitting various charities. In the 1960s, St. Paul’s established and housed the Oral School for deaf preschool children (1967-1970) and the Adult Development Center for the disabled (1967-1983).

In the 1970s, St. Paul’s expanded efforts in community outreach, co-founding the Downtown Community Ministry with other downtown churches, which still provides significant aid to the city’s unsheltered and food-insecure population; implementing St. Paul’s Isaiah 58:12 program, which helped fund the Fulton Medical Clinic and the Richmond Street Academy; and supporting the Peter-Paul Development Center founded by John H. Coleman Jr. (1972-present). St. Paul’s sponsored and housed the Richmond Urban Institute, formed in 1979 to promote dialogue and cooperative programs between black and white Richmonders.

In 1996, St. Paul’s announced its new motto, “Proclaiming Christ in the Heart of the City.” The church sponsored the Prison Visitation Program and funded Spring Hill house, a transition home for formerly incarcerated women. Two years later, the church launched the groundbreaking Micah Initiative, a multi-layered program that serves at-risk students in an underfunded elementary school.

Today, we continue to build on this legacy of social justice through St. Paul’s Community Engagement Ministry, seeking to create a more equitable, loving, and just community in Richmond and beyond. Grounded in our Five Commitments, our Community Engagement Ministry focuses on six areas: Downtown, Racial Justice & Healing, Beyond Richmond, Environmental Stewardship, Education Faith & Action.

St. Paul’s has a long, rich history of musical excellence, featuring choral singing and organ performances during worship services and concerts. The church organ created by Manuel Rosales of Los Angeles was installed in 2000 in the north gallery. Its Greek-revival casework, constructed of Honduras mahogany, was designed by Philadelphia architect, John Blatteau.

Annual musical events include Choral Evensongs, Lessons & Carols, and the Richmond Three Choirs Concert. In 2022, the Richmond Men’s Chorus (part of Richmond Allied Voices), led by choral director and St. Paul’s organist, Dr. Christopher Reynolds, performed its “Back in Bloom” choral concert at the church.

Its various pipe organs were all custom-made for the church by nationally renowned builders:

First organ, 1845-1907: Created by Henry Erben of New York, the three-manual instrument stood in the north gallery, where the present-day organ is located. In 1889, the instrument was relocated to a chamber on the right (lectern) side of the chancel and was refurbished in 1895.

Second organ, 1907-1952: In preparation for hosting the U.S. Episcopal Church’s General Convention, the church installed a new, three-manual and echo organ built by Lyon & Healy of Chicago. It gained a new console in 1923, making it a four-manual instrument.

Third organ, 1952-2000: Built by the Aeolian-Skinner Co. of Boston, the organ was housed in the same chamber on the lectern side; however, the console was on the pulpit side, and there was an echo division in the north gallery across the nave.

Fourth organ, 2000 – present: Created by Manuel Rosales of Los Angeles, the imposing instrument was installed entirely in the north gallery. Its Greek-revival casework, constructed of Honduras mahogany, was designed by Philadelphia architect, John Blatteau.

Chapel organ (built 1837, installed 1988 – present): This restored vintage instrument was originally created by Henry Erben of New York for St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Ohio. The solid Spanish mahogany case is the only known example by the builder. St. Paul’s acquired the organ specifically for the chapel.