When current vestry member Chris Oldstone-Moore began to look at the history of Christ Episcopal in preparation for its 175th anniversary celebration this year, he was struck by how much the history of the church and city were linked.
As the Wright State University professor of history delved deeper, he found even more connections.
Builders: 1834-1883
On his birth in 1810, Ludlow was delivered into a Springfield community that was on a mission.
“They believed that God called on individuals like them to build new things for themselves and their communities, and in doing so, cooperate with God’s providential plan,” Oldstone-Moore writes.
In Ludlow’s history of early Springfield, he wrote that in 1818, the seat of the newly formed Clark County, needed building up:
“The town was more noted for mud than anything else.”
Those slogging through it could count on complimentary sips of whiskey at most stores. To many, the need for the civilizing force of religion was apparent on too many Springfield citizens’ breath.
Historians of the industrial revolution say frontier settings like Springfield’s were ripe for something else, too. With little need for capital, men with a penchant for business had open fields to plow.
Beginning as pharmacist, Ludlow’s “rise to wealth really began when he entered into banking by helping organize one of Springfield’s first banks,” Oldstone-Moore said.
There Ludlow gained enough influence to be invited on the vestry of the Parish of All Souls.
He was on the building committee when the first Christ Church was consecrated in 1844, and the second on May 5, 1874.
“The (latter) building was the culmination of the theological vision he expressed,” writes Oldstone-Moore. “For Ludlow, Christ Church was the material manifestation of God’s providence in Springfield.”
Good Churchmanship: 1883-1919
By the time of Ludlow’s death in 1883, “Christ Church’s vestry was a Who’s Who of Springfield’s (wealthy) High Street,” Oldstone-Moore writes. “With Ludlow sat such notables as Benjamin and William Warder (and) Asa Bushnell” of industrial giant Warder, Bushnell and Glessner.
With their muddy town a distant memory, Springfield’s elite were “living in mansions modeled after English homes,” Oldstone-Moore writes. “Their sons are going to Princeton. They’re going to that next level of social status.”
Their church would follow.
Services became more liturgical. Music flourished. Candles glowed and colorful vestments blossomed. But not everyone was thanking God for what was being done in the name of Good Churchmanship.
“To lot of people — and maybe even Ludlow would have found it this way — it struck them as Catholic,” Oldstone-Moore said.
A letter by the Rev. W.W. Steel, rector of Christ Episcopal from 1887-91, shows he was called “Pope the Tenth” and criticized for his “ritualism” when he pushed hard for such a shift in the church.
The parish split in two, the less formal adherents migrating to the Church of the Heavenly Rest, a mission church Christ Episcopal had built on Plum Street.
A report in the Jan. 7, 1894, edition of the Springfield Sunday News indicates that Steel accomplished his goal: (Christ Church) “represents more wealth than any other in the city and is attended by the ultra-fashionable.”
The use of ultra seems not altogether complimentary.
After the split, Ellen Bushnell made one major donation to counter-balance the trend and one to continue it.
The first was a beautiful but practical stone Parish House in her husband’s memory.
As their son, John, said at its April 24, 1907, dedication: “Better than stained glass or carven marble is this building, within which shall center ... varied church interests.”
A dozen years later, Mrs. Bushnell donated an Ernest Skinner pipe organ as a memorial and for “spiritual uplift and blessing to all our people.”
The instrument was of such high quality that when internationally known French organist Marcel Dupré made his first American concert tour, Christ Episcopal was one of his stops.
“The organ,” wrote Oldstone-Moore, “was the culmination of the ‘Good Churchmanship’ of Springfield Episcopalians.”
Practical Christianity: 1920-1934
As fine as the organ was, the Parish House was more central to the next phase of church life.
“The early 20th century was a clubby era, when socializing by sex was much more common,” Oldstone-Moore writes.
That socializing went on in the Parish House.
Often neither starting nor concluding with prayer, and leaning heavily on parliamentary procedure, the men’s activities tended to be like Kiwanis or Rotary club meetings linked to the education and self-improvement movements of the time rather than to faith.
“They would set up science labs, they would set up microscopes,” Oldstone-Moore said.
In contrast, he said, “the women would always start their meeting with prayer, then they would always close with prayer.”
Oldstone-Moore also found that through mission work, women also found “a way to be involved in the larger affairs of the world.”
During the period of Practical Christianity, the gymnasium in Christ Church served the dual practical purposes of recreation and community outreach.
The Parish House served the community as a clinic during the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919 and during World War II.
Now: The era of outreach
“The great industrialist era is not just gone from Christ Church, it’s gone from Springfield,” said the Rev. Charlotte Collins Reed, current rector of Christ Episcopal. “Now we’re a bunch of college professors and teachers.”
But Reed said there are strong links with the past.
“I think one of the common themes has been a focus on good music,” she said.
Witttenberg University professor and concert pianist Christopher Durrenberger directs an active parish music program.
Having inherited a gracious stone church, “the beauty of worship and the beauty of holiness (also) are something we still value,” Reed added.
But “right now,” she said, “outreach and the desire to serve kind of permeates” parish life.
Support of Interfaith Hospitality Network, mental health programs and campaigns for clothing school children are examples. A 175th anniversary activity is another.
To celebrate the anniversary, church youth took slate discarded when the church roof was replaced, cleaned it up, then created anniversary keepsakes to sell. The proceeds funded involvement in Habitat for Humanity’s Church Build.
“We were able to take something of which we had an abundance with really no value and made it into something we could use,” Reed said.
If John Ludlow were to imagine what the providence of God might look like in a green era, it might look just like that.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368 or tstafford@coxohio.com.
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