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Ship of Fools: Pohick Church, Lorton, Virginia, USA
The Mystery Worshipper
Shipmate
Ship of Fools: Pohick Church, Lorton, Virginia, USA
Communion in the courtyard – but no one received!
Read the full Mystery Worshipper report here
Comments
But however taken aback Washington might be by Rite II language, my guess is he’d be even more taken aback by a female rector and celebrant.
* I note, too, that they, like clergy in some other Episcopal services I have observed during Coronatide, have adopted the practice I’ve seen for years among Presbyterian ministers of wearing a stole over “street clothes” in some less formal situations.
The photo shows what a beautiful place this is, BTW -
I did a little looking, and found this transcript of a Q&A between clergy and the Bishop of Virginia. It includes this:
I didn't realise that in this case the people couldn't receive.
My bad.
One assumes it looked much the same in George Washington's time. It is easy to see why Washington loved this church.
As to the service: I can sort of understand that the altar party did not take because the rest of the congregation could not, but that is a case for the Spiritual Communion to be said by that congregation. We first came across St Alphonsus's in an ultra-high Anglican Church in another state here.
The Prayer of Spiritual Communion was recited by all. It was printed in the service leaflet and I mentioned it in the report.
I get 2 photographs. One has the altar and altar party in front of a building with round arches, which I thought would be the church. That's at the top of the page when you click on Mystery Worshipper. The other is on the page as you scroll down from that, a collection of thumbnail photos for churches recently visited. There's one for Pohick Church. I click on that, and get to a page with a photo on the top and the report below. That photo has a garden in the foreground (with what look to be daffodils in flower) and an attractive brick building behind - 5 windows upstairs, and a symmetrical ground floor with 2 windows either side of a door with a pediment over it. That's the building I thought may have been the rectory.
My comment about reciting the Spiritual Communion was not as clear as it ought to have been. I was more talking of the practice being followed at a pretty low-church service such as this, and the use I'd come across at the Anglo-Catholic one. The service here looks and sounds to have been very similar to the old low-church practice in Sydney, rather than the Moore College style now more generally adopted.
It certainly has a look of 18thC Non-Conformity to it, to these English eyes, and I can't help feeling that John Wesley would have liked it very much.
@Bishops Finger, the style of the church was fairly common, though not universal, for colonial and early post-colonial churches in the US, including Anglican/Episcopal churches. What is perhaps less common is that the church wasn’t remodeled or replaced in the 19sup C by a building with, say, a steeple.
Usual liturgical drill in VA is Rite II HC in alb and stole, celebrated facing with a minimal of ceremonial. Although crucifers and acolytes seem to have caught on, they are not kept that busy. I would usually describe Virginia Churchmanship these days as being 'Low, but pretending to be higher.' There are exceptions, but they are few and far between. The last MP hold outs went during the last decade.
Washington would not have had a problem with it, as he wouldn't have turned up - he was a MP man, and is generally accepted to have communicated once in his whole life. Martha Washington, on the other hand, was a communicant. There is an extant letter from the Rt. Rev. William White that attests to much of this.
A quick question. I'd assumed that a Parish House was a rectory, but from Nick Tamen's post, there's a difference. Is the Parish House the office, meeting rooms, hall etc?
My first contact with Virginia was back in 1994, so I have been a lot of the changeover during my sporadic contacts with the Commonwealth over the past 25 years. Virginia's Churchmanship in the 19th century was strongly Evangelical and had a distinct whiff of the old Princeton theology about it. It was pretty much a one party system more so than any other diocese. That broke up in the 20th century, but one of my colleagues likes remind us that there was still at least one of the tutors at Virginia Seminary who celebrated from the North end in the 1960s!
The parish house movement started in the 1870s. I want to say with the Rev. William Rainsford and St George's, NYC, but that is probably false. However, that parish was well-known by 1880/5 for the sort of extensive social programmes you cannot have without the aforementioned structure. I associate them with a sort of muscular broad church/liberal approach to Episcopalianism, but everyone else caught on to the idea and by the early 1900s you pretty much had to have one to be taken seriously in the urban context. Small towns probably did not get into them until either the 1920s or the 1950s, but they are very much a thing especially on the East Coast.
Okay, now I’m going to have to ask what exactly you mean by “McCommunion.” I’m assuming it’s not a compliment.
That was certainly my experience when I visited this church several years ago.
Come to think about it. There was a period before The War Between the States when surplice was unusual in Virginia, and at that point there was very little to distinguish the Episcopalians from the Presbyterians, except for the BCP, fewer committees and bishops as Princeton theology, black gowns and central pulpits were the order of the day. By the end of his term Bishop Whittle (in office, 1876-1902) lamented the degree to which Tractarian ideas such as surpliced choirs and disuse of the pulpit gown were beginning to gain traction in the diocese. Going off the various rogue's galleries of rectors that I have seen, I doubt if cassock, surplice and scarf has been general for the communion service since the 1920s here, though there were still 'some' as recently as the 1970s. Cassock, Surplice and stole were general for communion a generation ago (mid-1990s) when I had my first contact with things Virginia, and the braver (or more foolhardy) souls had experimenting with cassock-albs, and chasubles since the 1970s. I would imagine that these days most bigger town parishes use albs and chasubles; in country churches alb and stole is more common.
Of course, chasubles are banned in Sydney - originally by the Abp's direction, then by Synod ordinance.
Although I personally much prefer the Eucharist to Morning Prayer, I wondered why they didn't simply have Morning Prayer under the circumstances.
I did, BTW, write to them asking what had become of the consecrated elements, but to date have received no answer.
Now that some (at least) of those churches are again open, they will probably be having the sort of Covid-friendly (!) Eucharist described.
I’ll repeat, though, what I noted and linked to up thread from the Q&A between the clergy and Bishop of Virginia, where the bishop said that the practice of the priest consecrating the elements but then not receiving This was in response to someone who’d seen a streamed service like the one from Pohick, so it seems to be happening elsewhere in TEC.
Meanwhile, mention was made of “fasting from the sacrament.” I heard an interesting discussion on that concept recently. Rather than annoy Miss Amanda by pursuing some discussion about it in this thread, I’ve started a new thread about it here.