Christ Church (Lancaster)

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Photograph taken during the early stages of the restoration of Christ Church

Christ Church or Historic Christ Church of Lancaster Country, Virginia is an historic Episcopalian church. Christ Church is notable for its unique Georgian architecture design. The church is also the only colonial Virginia church which still has its original high-backed pews and one of two which has maintained its original three-tiered pulpit.

[edit] History

The first church erected at the site was a wooden building, the construction of which was funded by powerful landowner John Carter in 1670. Carter died before the construction was completed, but was buried on the church grounds alongside four of his five wives. John Carter’s son Robert, a wealthy vestryman and planter, decided that the parish deserved a more substantial place of worship and, in 1730, funded and supervised the construction of a brick building on the approximate foundations of the old wooden church. The unknown architect endowed the structure with many of the hallmarks of the Georgian style, including a formal, symmetrical layout, pedimented facades, and classical detail.

Pulpit of Christ Church

Among the more noted features of the interior of the church are its high-backed box pews, which held entire families at service, and its unique wineglass pulpit. In accordance with the attempts of the contemporary Anglican church to deemphasize mystery in religious observance, the pulpit is located in the center of the building, and the three levels of lecterns were intended to show the relative importance of the readings delivered there. The bottom tier was for community announcements, the middle for the gospel, and the top tier was reserved for the delivery of the sermon. Christ Church was connected to Robert Carter’s Corotoman mansion by way of a cedar-lined road, in order to emphasize the importance of the benefactor and his family.

The church thrived until the disestablishment of the Anglican church in Virginia in 1786. This event, coupled with the Glebe Act of 1802, which authorized the state to seize church property, crippled the Anglican (now Episcopal) church in the state, and Christ Church lost both money and parishioners. Operating only intermittently in the 19th century, the church fell into disrepair; the Carter family tombs in the yard were subject to weathering and neglect, and vandals stole bricks from the exterior. Still, the church fared better than many other colonial churches, and in 1927 the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities began work on restoration of the site.

Today, Christ Church, owned and operated as a museum by the non-profit Foundation for Historic Christ Church, has been almost completely restored to its 18th century appearance. The church was made a National Historic Landmark in 1961.