Truro Parish
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Truro Parish is sometimes confused with Truro Church. Truro Church was one of the largest Episcopal congregations in the state of Virginia until its December 2006 vote to separate from the Episcopal Church in the United States and become part of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA). The current Rector of Truro Church is Bishop Martin Minns with oversight of CANA in the United States and Canada.[1]
Truro Parish was a colonial parish of the Anglican Church in Northern Virginia. It was created in 1732 when Hamilton Parish was divided along the Occoquan River and Bull Run. The parish originally contained three churches: Occoquan (the parish seat), William Gunnell's, and a chapel "above Goose Creek". The Occoquan church was later known as Pohick Church. In the period after the American Revolution when the Episcopal Church struggled to rebuild in Virginia, Truro Parish almost disappeared, but a small remnant continued at Pohick church.
Truro Church began as Zion Church in 1843. The congregation occupies land that was once part of Truro Parish, but has no institutional tie to the earlier colonial parish. In 1934, after building a new church building, the congregation changed its name to Truro Church because it evoked memories of the original colonial parish.
Truro Parish was created by the General Assembly of Virginia on November 1, 1732. It included what is, at present, Arlington, Fairfax, and Loudoun counties, and the independent cities of Alexandria, Fairfax, and Falls Church. The parish was named after Truro Parish (now the Diocese of Truro) in Cornwall, England.
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[edit] History of Truro Parish
Truro Parish initially covered all of the land north of those rivers up to the Potomac, and westward all the way to the Blue Ridge Mountains at Ashby's Gap. The parish originally contained three churches: Occoquan (the parish seat), William Gunnell's, and a chapel "above Goose Creek". The exact locations of the second two are unknown, but the Occoquan church was later known as Pohick Church, which still stands. In 1733, work was started on a new church "near Michael Reagan's"; this was at the site of the present-day Falls Church.
On June 11, 1749, the parish was divided in two, with the newly-formed Cameron Parish constituting the portion north and west of Difficult Run and Popes Head Run. George Mason, author of the Virginia Articles that presaged the Bill of Rights, was elected to the parish vestry that year.
In 1753, the first church service at the new town of Alexandria was recorded.
George Washington was appointed to the Truro Parish vestry on October 25, 1762. His father, Augustine Washington, had served on the vestry for a few years, starting in 1735.
Truro Parish was further split on February 1, 1765. The new boundary ran through Washington's estate. The northern portion of Fairfax County became Fairfax Parish. Fairfax Parish built two identical churches, one in Falls Church and the other in Alexandria. At the division in 1765, George Washington chose to participate in Truro Parish, and was elected to that vestry in that year. He served until 1784 when he resigned. Truro Parish rebuilt Pohick Church in 1767 and granted George Payne permission to build a in the northern part of the parish near Washington's estate. Washington paid for pews in Pohick, Payne's and Christ Church, Alexandria.
In those early years, there were only two churches in Truro parish: a chapel above Goose Creek (in what is now Loudoun County) and the original Pohick Church near Occoquan, in southern Fairfax County. In 1766, a new church was established “on the middle ridge near Ox Road,” the present site of Jerusalem Baptist Church off Route 123. The Truro Parish vestry contracted Edward Payne to build this new church and it became known as “Payne’s Church.”
In the early 19th century Truro Parish nearly collapsed. All efforts to keep the Episcopal Church alive in the southern half of Fairfax County were concentrated on Pohick Church, and that body is the successor to the colonial parish. Similarly in the northern half of the county, the vestry of Fairfax Parish abandoned Falls Church and concentrated its efforts on Christ Church, Alexandria, which became one of the leading parishes in the diocese. Other congregations formed in the old colonial bounds of Fairfax Parish in the 19th century, including a group that gathered in Falls Church in 1836 and began restoring the long abandoned colonial building.
With the outbreak of war with England in 1776, Payne’s Church fell into disrepair and was abandoned. The Jerusalem Baptist Church later took possession of the building until the outbreak of the Civil War when Union troops demolished the church, disassembling it brick by brick and using the materials to build chimneys for their tents.
There was no Episcopal Church in the City of Fairfax until The Rev. Richard Templeton Brown, rector of The Falls Church, organized a congregation in 1843. The congregation first met at the historic Fairfax Courthouse and then moved to the private home of Mrs. William Rumsey, a Baptist from New York. There were fourteen communicants. A year later, a plain white frame church was built on the present site of the Truro Chapel and was consecrated as Zion Church in 1845.
As Union troops advanced into Virginia at the outset of the Civil War, the congregation was forced to abandon Zion Church. During the Civil War, Zion Church was first used as a storehouse for munitions and then was destroyed. The house that is now the Gunnell House (at that time a private residence) was used as the Union headquarters by General Stoughton until 1863 when he was captured in the middle of the night by Confederate Captain John Mosby. Graffiti written by the officers stationed in the house was found on the walls in a closet on the third floor and is now on display at the Fairfax Museum.
In 1882, the house was purchased for use as a rectory. At that time it was half the size it is today and was enlarged to its present form in 1911. It served as the residence of the rector of the Episcopal Church in Fairfax until 1991 when it served first as a home for single mothers and their babies (NOEL House) and then as the offices for Truro Church.
At the close of the Civil War, the congregation of Zion Church re-formed and began to meet in the Fairfax Courthouse. Zion Church was rebuilt and consecrated in 1878.
Zion Church remained in active use from 1875 through 1933, when a new church (now the Chapel) was built to serve the growing congregation of 100 parishioners, under the leadership of the Rev. Herbert Donovan. Designed to replicate the old Payne’s Church on Ox Road, the new church was consecrated on May 1, 1934, as Truro Episcopal Church. The old Zion Church building was used as the Parish Hall until it burned down in 1952.
[edit] Truro Parish (1948-2001)
The Rev. Dr. Raymond Davis was installed as rector of Truro in 1948. He said that he would be pleased if he could, just once, fill all one hundred seats of the little brick church. Not only were all the seats filled, but the growing congregation began to burst at the seams as the great suburban expansion of Northern Virginia began in the 1950’s. In 1959, a new and larger church was completed with a seating capacity of 500. The congregation first worshiped in the new church on Palm Sunday, 1959, and when the mortgage was paid off in 1974, a new Truro Church building was consecrated. (The old church building is now known as the Chapel.)
In 1967, a small group of Truro parishioners (who had been meeting together for Bible study and prayer) began a mission church called the Church of the Apostles, now located east of Truro on Pickett Road.
In 1976 the Rev. John W. Howe was installed as Rector. Under his leadership Truro continued to experience physical expansion as well as spiritual renewal. The church seating capacity was expanded by 300 through the addition of the transepts in 1983. Truro also expanded its engagement in mission around the world. Another mission church, the Church of the Epiphany, was established in Herndon, Virginia in 1985, with The Rev. Bill Reardon as rector.
In 1991 The Rev. Martyn Minns was installed as Rector of Truro. He emphasized a clear evangelical call to worldwide mission and outreach to the poor, as well as faithfulness in teaching preaching biblical Anglican Christianity and raising up the next generation of disciples for Christ. Under his leadership the Lamb Center was established, offering social services, prayer, and practical encouragement to the homeless in Fairfax, and the work of TIPS Truro’s International Programs and Services was expanded. A new mission church, Christ the Redeemer Church, was launched in western Fairfax County with The Rev. Tom Herrick as vicar in 1994. Most recently, Truro birthed another mission church in Loudoun County, the Church of the Holy Spirit in 2001, with The Rev. Clancy Nixon as vicar. The Rev. Martyn Minns was elevated to Canon in 2002, and then to Bishop by Archbishop Peter Akinola in 2006. He is now The Right Reverend Martyn Minns, Bishop of CANA.
[edit] Truro in the 21st Century
Following the Protocol for Departing Congregations[2] created by the Diocese of Virginia, Truro Church embarked on 40 Days of Discernment [3] to consider its future in The Episcopal Church (TEC). This time of discernment led to a parish vote where the entire membership voted on whether to remain in the Episcopal Church or in the worldwide Anglican Communion. On Sunday, December 17, 2006, the parish voted overwhelming (92 percent majority) to withdraw from the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia and remain in the Anglican Communion by joining the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), a mission initiative of the Anglican Church of Nigeria (a province in the worldwide Anglican Communion), under the leadership of the Rt. Rev. Martyn Minns, Missionary Bishop of CANA. Joining Truro were eleven other parishes in the Diocese of Virginia who also voted to leave the Episcopal Church and join CANA. CANA is a member of the Common Cause Partnership[4], which also includes the American Anglican Council, the Anglican Coalition in Canada, the Anglican Communion Network, the Anglican Essentials Canada, the Anglican Mission in America, the Anglican Network in Canada, the Anglican Province of America, Forward in Faith North America. and the Reformed Episcopal Church.
