Holyrood Church: Restoration and Renaissance in Washington Heights

On a recent Sunday afternoon the Holyrood Episcopal Church on 179th Street and Fort Washington Avenue bustled with activity. Members lingering after the Spanish language mass, the second service of the day, dotted the aisles and pews discussing work weeks and congregation issues. Young children ran about playfully, weaving hide-and-seek fashion amongst adults as a parishioner led me through the sunlit vaulted main room to a back office.

Peeking into the kitchen I glimpsed a group of well-dressed adults sharing comfortable conversation and refreshments around a long family-style table.

In the hallway we bumped into singers from the Cornerstone Chorale just arriving for their winter concert performance later that day. The acoustics are great for musicians and singers. Someone informed me that Mariah Carey shot a video here once. The choir’s rehearsal songs were rousing soundtrack for the remainder of my short visit.

But though Holyrood appeared a vibrant Northern Manhattan community hub at first glance, The Reverend Martha Anderson, the priest in charge of the congregation for over five years, shared that the church had experienced fluctuating stages of expansion and shrinkage throughout its long history and was now at an all time low point.

A bilingual church for over forty years, Anderson emphasizes that the congregation works as a unified entity. “Even though we do services in Spanish and English, our governing body, the vestry, is intentionally made up of members representing both groups,” she says.

And while boasting a modest 250 individual members, a lean 20 to 30 of them attend the Sunday morning English language mass and another 20 to 50 attend the Spanish language mass.

“It’s just a matter of waiting it out,” Anderson offers as explanation for the church’s current low attendance. She believes the numbers reflect a crisis that the larger Episcopal Church and other more liberal protestant Christian denominations are experiencing nationally.

In fact, overall church affiliation is up markedly in the U.S. since its founding. According to “The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy” by Roger Finke and Rodney Stark (Rutgers, 2005) 17% of U.S. citizens belonged to a church. Today 62 percent of American citizens are affiliated with churches.

But Anderson is correct. The increase in American church attendance and affiliation is associated with more conservative, evangelical denominations. Denominations considered moderate or progressive are largely in decline. According to the most recent “Religious Congregations and Membership” study published in 2000 by the Glenmary Research Center, The Episcopal Church lost 5.3 percent of its membership since their last study published in 1990 (It’s published every 10 years).

Sergio and Martha Martinez, adult siblings who’ve been congregation members since they emigrated as children from Ecuador with their parents in the late seventies, aren’t as confident in Holyrood’s ability to bounce back as is Anderson. “My sister and I feel that we are the last hope for keeping it going,” says Sergio, a property manager who relocated to New Jersey, but devoutly returns every Sunday with his wife and children for services and to meet with his sister and parents who still live on 181st Street.

Though the Martinez’s parents were associated with Roman Catholicism in Ecuador, they chose the conveniently-located Holyrood for their family church, just two blocks south of their Washington Heights home.

When I ask Martha, a bilingual school psychologist, what keeps her coming back she explains the church is part and parcel of her. “The Episcopal Church is in our hearts,” she says speaking for herself and her brother.

If Martha and Sergio, both members of the vestry, are the future of Holyrood, Charles Rainford, is certainly its past. And its present. Sergio enlightens me. “He is the backbone of this church.”

A parishioner for over forty years and a member of its vestry, the age-defying eighty-one-year old Rainford, with ponytail streaming down his back and bright brown eyes, has seen the church through ups and downs and seems unfazed by this outward flux. Devotion unwavering, he echoes Martha when asked what keeps him connected to the church. “It’s just my church,” he says serenely.

Anderson relies heavily on the vestry to run the church since she and the other paid employees – an organist, office secretary, and sexton – all work part-time. Anderson is also a pediatric nurse practitioner and runs a school-based health center in a public middle school in Brooklyn.

The vestry has a lot on its plate in the near future. It’s in the midst of navigating the completion of a one million dollar faÃ?§ade restoration begun in 2002. To finance the job, the church received a grant and no-interest loan from the New York Landmarks Conservancy and a generous bequest from deceased parishioner, Adele Garmont. But this is just a drop in the old church’s repair bucket. The project only addresses the worst damaged parts of the delicate, white terra cotta details that cover the brick structure. As with any family home, necessary repairs constantly drain church funds.

Added to the monumental task of navigating the restoration project, the church must launch a formal search for a priest to replace Anderson whose last day will be Easter Sunday. Anderson knowingly assures me the parish will incur even greater expense to pay the next clergy member’s salary.

For income to cover salaries and church upkeep Holyrood depends on several streams: yearly tithes from parishioners, rental fees for parties, meetings, rehearsals and performances, and rental fees from the non-profit organization Alianza Dominicana that occupies the building’s basement. The organization educates and advocates for immigrant Dominican families needing social services for mental health and mental retardation.

Holyrood is an historic Northern Manhattan landmark. Before settling at their current location in 1915, the Holyrood congregation, intact since 1893, had two previous Washington Heights houses of worship, their first on Broadway (then known as Kingsbridge Road) and 182nd Street.

Despite earlier doubts, Sergio seems buoyed by our discussion and reveals that he and the church are poised to wait out current hard times. “Even though we’ve lost a little luster, this church is a cornerstone in the neighborhood. I see how important unity is – We’re here now, we’ll continue to be here.”

And when this cynical reporter questions Anderson about the Episcopal Church motto, ‘The Episcopal Church welcomes you,’ she assures me, “Truly, that’s what we mean. Everyone would find someone else to connect to here.”