SINCE ANCIENT TIMES, WE HAVE SOUGHT TO CREATE MEANING AND SIGNIFICANCE IN THE PLACES AND SPACES AROUND US, A PRACTICE THAT HAS CONTINUED ACROSS TIME, GEOGRAPHY, CULTURES, AND BELIEF SYSTEMS.

Archeologists exploring a cave in Spain made waves in 2016 when they found evidence of what may be the world’s earliest known religious service: A series of earths, blackened by fire, surrounded the remains of a Neanderthal toddler. Each hearth contained an antler. Nearby lay the skull of a rhinoceros.

As expedition leader Enrique Baquedano, director of the Regional Archaeological Museum of Madrid, explained to his colleagues at the time, these findings indicated that, some 40,000 years ago, humanity’s ancestors designated a specific place to mourn and remember the dead through ritual.

Still today, we live amid places of worship for denominations and faiths, from Adventists to Zoroastrians. We travel to see the cathedrals of Europe, the Shinto shrines of Japan, the synagogues of Israel, and the great mosques of the Middle East. We ride past tiny clapboard churches on backcountry roads and pass big brick steepled edifices on city streets.

All seem to indicate that something in the human soul compels us to pay reverence to the Divine and to set aside a time and a place to do it.

Sacred spaces that enhance the experience of worship can range from “intimate” to “awe-inspiring,” said church architect Eugene Barrington of Cumming, Ga. They foster the feeling of connection to God, clergy, and fellow worshipers, making all “the difference between participating in worship and attending worship,” he said.

The style of a church’s building can reveal a congregation’s perception of God as a mighty force above the world or a servant among the people, said Hank Houser, an Episcopal layman and Atlanta architect who specializes in churches.

“We sit in awe of a transcendent God in spaces that are generally very tall and where we feel small,” he said. “The procession is considered a journey toward a destination.”

“Churches that reflect God’s imminence tend to be more horizontal… the seating is more circular. A worshiper might catch glimpses of God’s presence in other people’s lives. The emphasis is on coming together as a community to glorify God,” he said.

While denominations may have general characteristics in common, each congregation is different, said architect Barrington. “Churches are as unique as people are.”

Susan J. White, a professor at Brite Divinity School, in an essay called “Can We Talk About Sacred Space?” wrote that a church can be considered sacred when it “has been, is now, and (God willing) will continue to be used by faithful Christian people who are striving to live according to the gospel, who gather to hear the Word of God and to learn what it means to act upon it, who seek a ministry of reconciliation and who seek to draw the cathedral into that ministry in the name of Jesus Christ. It is a sacred space because it has aligned itself to the powerless by giving sanctuary to those in trouble. It is sacred space because all of these things together make it a valid sign, an authentic witness to the sacrificial self-giving love of God for the world.”

The architecture of Holy Family Episcopal Church near Jasper, Georgia, combines clear glass windows with building materials from nature for a sense of worship as an integral part of God’s creation.

The Church of the Holy Family – Jasper

The Rev. George Yandell can always tell when a hawk flies by during his homily. A hundred and fifty pairs of eyes suddenly shift in unison to the clear glass window that rises nearly three stories behind the altar, a synchronized sea of heads turning to follow the flight pattern.

Even without the wildlife, the view from the Church of the Holy Family, Rev. Yandell’s church, is striking. On a clear day, Sharp Top Mountain is visible in the distance.

Nature’s distractions “are just part of the game,” said the rector. “I’m used to it.”

The Church of the Holy Family in Jasper, at the Southern end of the Blue Ridge Mountains, feels as if it grew organically in a clearing amid a forest. In some ways it did.

Exposed wood and stone reflect the elements that surround the building, and the clear glass windows on three sides of the building bring the outdoors inside. Needlepoint kneeler pads depict the flora and fauna of the area—a parishioner might take communion on a rabbit, an owl, or a duck—and the baptismal font looks like a tree trunk. Windows on one side look out on a field with a plaque commemorating the Cherokee who once played recreational games there.

The church has purposefully left that patch of land undeveloped. “We try not to disturb it, to honor them,” said Andy Edwards, a member of the church’s grounds committee.

Cherokees were forcibly removed from the area in 1838 and relocated to what is now Oklahoma, in a 1000-mile journey on foot known as the Trail of Tears. A small remnant stayed behind or returned to the Southeast.

A desire to recognize the Native American heritage of the area also played a role in the design of the building itself. Although the sanctuary design is in the cruciform, or Latin cross, Gainesville, Georgia, architect M. Garland Reynolds Jr. incorporated elements of the longhouse—a large rectangular space shared by several families, though this is actually more typical of tribes in the northeastern part of the country. Round wooden columns down the sides of the sanctuary call to mind the poles that held up the bark roof of the longhouse.

“Some people think it looks like Noah’s ark,” said longtime member Carolyn Williams, 74.

For personal meditation for anyone who wants to come, the 40 acres of churchyard at Holy Family offer a labyrinth, a fountain garden, and 2.8 miles of hiking trails, one with rustic stations of the cross along the way. On a summer day, the towering pines and poplars offer respite from the beating sun, and birdsong fills the air. There’s even a pond where people from the community occasionally come to fish. Deer and wild turkeys share the land.

Holy Family draws members from several surrounding counties including residents of the resort communities of Bent Tree, Big Canoe, and The Preserve. It was founded in 1986 by a small group of Episcopalians who had no nearby place to worship. They met at various places around town, including a funeral home, before buying the current site, about 2. miles from Jasper, a town of almost 4,000 in north Georgia.

“The funeral home was the best deal,” said church member Edwards. “The guy that owned that took care of us. He even furnished coffee.”

The congregation bought eleven acres of its property in about 1991. When adjacent property became available, the church postponed plans for a sanctuary and education building to buy the additional land.

Besides the church building, which was dedicated in 2002, there’s a conference center that is used by the larger community for yoga classes, music practice, quilting parties, and day camps. Another building—“Pete’s Porch”—hosts Alcoholics Anonymous meetings almost daily and was the home of a food pantry that outgrew its space and now operates in downtown Jasper with the support of other churches. Holy Family also founded an emergency children’s shelter, a counseling center, and a medical clinic, which have become communitywide enterprises. Annual barbecues and low-country boils sponsored by the church as fundraisers for outreach projects have become popular features on the Pickens County calendar.

The church is there for worship and succor for Episcopalians in the area, for neighbors in need, and for anyone who just wants a walk in the woods.

“It’s a blessed place,” Edwards said. “It really is a Holy Family.”

Holbrook Campground – Alpharetta

For most of the year, Holbrook Campground lies deserted—rustic brown cabins scattered, silent, and empty around a field with a pavilion in the center. But in midsummer, it springs to life like the mystical village Brigadoon in the old Broadway musical.

Streams of worshipers, from grannies and grandpas to toddlers, set up in the cabins, known as “tents” (from the days when families actually camped), and make their way to the pavilion, called the “tabernacle.” They hug and back-slap, chatter and laugh with friends they may not have seen since the year before.

“WHAT THIS PLACE MEANS IS COMMUNITY AND CONNECTION.”

— Rev. Glenn Hannigan

When the Rev. David Laycock, pastor of Macedonia United Methodist Church, located across the road from camp, is finally able to call his flock to order, their voices fill the night air with the rhythm of old hymns, chosen from the Heavenly Highway hymnal, published in 1956. Toes tap on the sawdust floors as the music accelerates with lively accompaniment by piano and electric organ. “Revive us again,” the people sing, as if they mean it literally.

Cardboard fans, courtesy of two nearby funeral homes, are spaced out on the pews, but no one needs them on this opening service evening. The air is cooled by rain, which dampens the grass and pitter-pats on the tin roof, and by ceiling fans that spin quietly from the wooden beams above.

July is camp meeting season in Georgia, squeezed historically between planting and harvest, the only stretch of time that farmers could get away from their fields. The Holbrook camp in Cherokee County has been meeting since 1839, when, so the story goes, blacksmith Jesse Holbrook was paid for shoeing horses with 40 acres of land, and then turned around and sold it to local Methodists for $20 an acre. A few counties away, Salem, in Newton County, is a few years older.

Camp meetings have been a part of the American landscape since the late 18th century, imported to the colonies by Presbyterians from Scotland and Ireland, many of whom settled in the South. In Methodist circles, circuit-riding preachers would spread the word about services.

“There’s history here,” said the Rev. Glenn Hannigan, opening night preacher at Holbrook. “What this place means is community and connection.”

Drawing upon the Gospel of Mark’s account of a man who has been paralyzed, whose friends lower him through the roof of a house to be healed by Jesus, the Rev. Hannigan talks about the crucial importance of relationships. “The Lord intends for us to have a heart for others,” he said.

Inspirational and moving sermons like Hannigan’s are one reason Anne Pyle Atkins has never missed a Holbrook camp meeting in all her 61 years.

Atkins’ grandparents married at Holbrook during a camp meeting 100 years ago. As a child, little Anne chased lightning bugs, caught frogs, swung in tire swings, tossed water balloons, and rode bicycles around the campground—all idyllic activities she sees children still partaking in today. As a preteen, she committed herself to Christianity during an altar call at Holbrook.

Every year, Atkins reconnects with friends from those early days. Her family “tent” was rebuilt in 1997, raised from one story to two, the sawdust floor exchanged for cement. When her children, Austin, 26, and Hannah, 21, were teenagers, the one-bathroom cabin sometimes held as many as 18 of their friends. Sometimes hosting that many teenagers under one roof could be a chore, she confesses, but perhaps all the hassle was worth it, as today many of those teens still attend as adults.

Anne said she and her husband, Gary, keep coming back because “this is very much holy ground, and there’s a sense of peace here. It’s an opportunity to soak in and feel like you’re sitting at the feet of Jesus for a week. You can’t do that in everyday life. Or most of us don’t.”

Dorothy Brown, a retired art professor at Georgia College and State University, created the icons hanging in St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Milledgeville, where she is a parishioner.

St. Stephen’s Church – Milledgeville

On a hot summer’s day, Mary and Dan O’Connor, touring the South from Dayton, Ohio, have found themselves in the nave of an old Episcopal church that they discovered through a AAA book. They were drawn to this place by the guidebook’s dramatic tale about Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s troops.

The story goes that St. Stephen’s Church, which was constructed in 1843, was co-opted for use as a barracks for the 107th New York Infantry during Sherman’s March to the Sea, in November of 1864. Soldiers burned the pews for warmth and vandalized the organ by pouring molasses on its workings. When the troops blew up a nearby arsenal, it obliterated the church’s then-flat roof and its windows.

The O’Connors sat enrapt. “We love history,” Dan said.

“IT’S IMPORTANT FOR AN OLD CHURCH TO STILL BE ALIVE.”

— Carol Grant

Today, the rebuilt St. Stephen’s is an exquisite example of the style known as “carpenter Gothic,” a North American variation with wood construction instead of stone but featuring pointed arches, steep gables, and towers.

Most of the chancel furniture was built from walnut lumber over a decade by communicant John Wilcox, beginning in 1874. Wilcox’s greatgreat-grandson is a current parishioner.

As for the organ, the pipes were cleaned of molasses, but it is said that the quality of sound never recovered. In 1909, the 11-year-old daughter of the church organist, a girl named Nylic Bland, decided to take matters in hand. Nylic’s name was an acronym of New York Life Insurance Company, her father’s employer. She decided that if New Yorkers had damaged the organ, as they did in the fall of 1864, then New Yorkers should repair it. She wrote a letter to her father’s boss, the head of the company, and he graciously responded with a telegram: “Buy an organ. Send me the bill.”

Of course, the church today is much more than its past. “It’s a vital church,” said Carol Grant, whose children are fourth-generation members. She lists activities for children, college students, and older adults, as well as services for people in need. “It’s important for an old church to still be alive,” she said.

“I feel closer to God here,” said senior warden Mildred Brazley. “It’s security.”

Meanwhile, the church makes an interesting stop on the city tour. Out-of-towners like to be shown where the Civil War soldiers’ horses left their hoofprints in the floor.

St. Stephen’s is a regular stop on historic tours of Milledgeville, the capital of Georgia from 1804 until 1868.

Whitworth Prison – Hartwell

Chaplain Cynseria Jenkins’ congregation files into a concrete-block gymnasium, wearing identical khaki pants and shirts marked “Georgia Department of Corrections.” But as service begins, the drab surroundings at Whitworth Women’s Facility, a prison near the northeast corner of Georgia, slowly morph into a church filled with light and rejoicing.

Jenkins stands under a basketball goal, praise music blaring from a nearby boombox, and tells her parishioners to rise up, stand on their feet, and shake out the tension. They laugh, clap, and do as she says. Soon, they are enthusiastically singing along with the recording—“God my creator; God my leader…” Many carry notebooks and Bibles. Some fan themselves with papers.

Jenkins calls out the scripture and some stand for the reading from Psalm 103. The service is active and alive. “Bless the Lord, O my soul…who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit...” It is a message of hope, a promise that good can come, even to these 442 women doing time.

Jenkins moves on to the story from the book of Acts about a blind Saul/Paul, who had persecuted Christians and was challenged by God. He had to go through the darkness before he could live in the light, she explains.

In the beginning, she reminds them, “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and the darkness moved away.” God, she assures them, can do the same in their lives. She takes the name of the prison, Whitworth, and transforms it into Women of Worth.

Among her congregants is a mother of three, 31 years old, incarcerated for involuntary manslaughter because, she said, “I was hanging around with the wrong crowd.” She’s taking theology courses offered on the prison campus by New Orleans Baptist Seminary, because she says she feels called to counsel youth and women who have been abused once she gets out of prison.

“The best thing about the service is that it gets me away from the things I focus on that keep me depressed,” she said. “I worry about what my kids are dealing with at home.” Concentrating on shaping a life outside these walls, she said, “keeps me closer to God.”

Another inmate, 42, is here at Whitworth for a second time after violating probation by using drugs. “I want to show my kids I can do better,” she said.

She clutches a letter she received a few days earlier from her 13-year-old daughter, who had been so angry with her for landing in prison again that the daughter hadn’t been in touch for two years. Tears stream down the woman’s face. “She told me she was sorry,” she said. She tucks the letter into the pages of her Bible for safekeeping.

Another woman, only 24, is also in prison for a second time, for assault. Although she said she found God in prison during her first stint, she said that “something was missing.”

Incarceration is only the latest chapter in what has so far been a trouble-filled life. She was abandoned by alcoholic parents at 10 years old and gave birth to a daughter at age 13. She believes that this time, when she is released, she will stay free.

“Babe, I’ve done grew up on the inside,” she swears. “The sermon today, about light in the darkness, spoke to me.”

Chaplain Jenkins, “Chap” to the women, said she herself has known brokenness and hurt. Though she was never arrested and never struggled with addiction, that doesn’t mean that bad things haven’t occurred in her life. “Brokenness, hurt, some of the things they’ve been through, I’ve been through too.”

Jenkins finishes the service with a prayer. “Give them light, Lord,” she entreats. “Give them light that they can see, see what you would have them do, see your movement in their lives.” And the church resounds with “Amen.”

During the summer months, many vacationers of various denominations attend Boat Church on Lake Rabun in north Georgia.

Boat Church – Lake Rabun

You could call them Boaterians, or maybe just Boatists, these congregants who gather upon the glimmering waters of Lake Rabun each Sunday morning from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day. They skim their way to services in pontoon boats, ski boats, kayaks, canoes, even an occasional Jet Ski, to float with their neighbors in worship.

The mirror effect of the water’s surface multiplies the beauty of the surrounding hills and the houses tucked back in the trees. Ripples lap the shore in the wake of the watercraft.

Singles, couples, and whole families with dogs sit in their boats—about 40 of them speckling the surface—while about 70 landlubbers perch on backless benches in a boathouse and a scattering more sit on towels or folding chairs on the bank. The minister, musicians with guitars and a keyboard, and a youth choir conduct the service from a big boat in front of the boathouse.

“Some weeks the youth do better than others,” explains the Rev. Jerry Noffsinger, associate pastor of Clayton First United Methodist Church. “Today is good.” Participating youth are rewarded after the service with snacks and free swimming until noon.

In its earliest days, this church took its aquatic service directly to its congregants, with a preacher traveling from dock to dock in a boat.

Boat church in its present form evolved when the church acquired a barge made of four oil cans with boards strapped to the top, powered by a small motor. Sound was piped through a public address system rigged up to a car battery.

Betty and Guy Hall, a couple in the church, donated their boathouse for people who wanted to come in cars, and the first “land-and-sea” (or lake) service was held Memorial Day weekend in 1972.

A donated pontoon boat eventually replaced the old barge, and a series of more effective sound systems carried voices clearly into the boathouse and to the farthest boats. Brief printed bulletins tell the order of service, and stapled songbooks with a few old hymns are available for worshipers on land. Each segment of the service is announced so the boaters can follow along.

“THIS IS A SPECTACULAR WAY TO WORSHIP GOD; TO HEAR GOD’S WORD ECHOING ACROSS THIS MAGNIFICENT CREATION.”

— Frank Lastra

On this early summer morning, with temperatures headed to the 90s, Rev. Noffsinger is preaching from the book of 1 Thessalonians. “Finally, brothers and sisters,” he reads, “we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that, as you learned from us how you ought to live and to please God… you should do so more and more.”

Being righteous isn’t always easy, he said, but it comes easier and more naturally with practice. Drawing an analogy from his experience on the lake, he said living as God would want is like learning to water-ski. “Most of us crash,” he said, “but eventually you get up… if you try enough.”

After the benediction, boats line up to drop offerings into baskets on long poles extended by the youth. Boaters who can reach far enough over the lapping waves shake Noffsinger’s hand. Laura Rhodes, a Presbyterian, has been coming with her husband in their ski boat since buying a vacation home in the area about 15 years ago. They now live on the lake full time.

“You don’t have to get dressed up, don’t have to put makeup on,” she said. “You see children still in pajamas. It’s a way to worship without having to go very far.”

But, she said, “it’s also very spiritual, being on this beautiful lake with the majestic mountains in the background.”

Clayton resident Frank Lastra, a Methodist, watches from the boathouse. He’s been coming to boat church for about 20 years. “This is a spectacular way to worship God,” he said, “to hear God’s word echoing across this magnificent creation.”

Youth (and young at heart) from Clayton United Methodist Church who help lead worship services on Lake Rabun get to stay and enjoy the water after church.

Christ Church – Norcross

The simple, elegant sanctuary of Christ Church, or Iglesia De Christo, in Norcross, is the home of one congregational body that worships in two languages. Both English and Spanish services draw people from various countries of origin—some from Africa and the Caribbean worshiping in English, and others from about a dozen Latin American countries worshiping in Spanish.

Senior warden Daphne Gray, 69, grew up Anglican in Jamaica. When she moved to Gwinnett County almost 30 years ago, she felt “extremely welcome,” she said. At the time, only a handful of international transplants were members, but that has changed dramatically over the years.

Gray now lives in Cobb County and teaches school at another church, but drives across the metro area to Norcross every Sunday. “I love the energy in the church,” she said, “I love the music. I like how the service is done. It’s such a comfortable feeling.”

“Comfortable” is also the first word that springs to mind for Yamileth Silva, 17, who attends the Spanish language service.

Two years ago, the church hosted Silva’s quinceañera, a Latina tradition celebrating a girl’s 15th birthday and passage into maturity—similar in theme to bat mitzvahs in the Jewish tradition, for girls turning 13 years old. “It’s a huge moment that is a landmark of your life,” she said. “Doing it in a place where I felt welcome and comfortable made it even more special.”

Rector Cecilia “Ceci” Duke, Associate Rector Irma “Mimi” Guerra, and Deacon Letty Guevara strive to make the two congregations feel like one church. The Rev. Duke calls the team “the three amigas.”

“I think when I first came here, the Spanish service was viewed as more of a mission,” she said. Ten years later, she said, “It’s more one parish.”

Letty and Mimi participate in the 10:30 a.m. English service; Ceci, in turn, is part of the 1 p.m. Spanish service. The two services are similar except that an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a depiction of the Virgin Mary as Mother of the Americas, is placed beside the altar for 1 p.m. worship.

Just as many participants in both services have forged new lives in a new country, the church itself has built a new identity. The building that is now home to the parish used to be owned by a Baptist congregation. When the Baptists left, about 20 years ago, Christ Church relocated from a smaller building a short distance away.

To tailor their current home to the Episcopal liturgy and make the church more accessible from the parking lot, designers flipped the sanctuary, putting the altar where the entrance used to be and the narthex where the Baptists had their pulpit. There’s now a big arch on the wall behind the altar, and builder and parishioner Bo O’Kelley with his team built arches and routed Celtic crosses over the clear glass windows.

Another parishioner, a woodworker, built the lectern and crafted a big wooden mahogany cross that is now suspended behind the altar.

Outside, the Episcopalians added a rise in the roofline with a cross on top, some large metal framework in the shape of an arch, and memorial gardens, which were recently redone.

“It definitely gave it a more Episcopal feel,” O’Kelley said.

On a summer Sunday morning, the Rev. Duke stood in the very Episcopal-feeling sanctuary to address the congregation. She told of her childhood refuge, a hemlock tree in the yard of her family home. She urged her flock to “find your evergreen tree—your place of quiet refuge—your time and space to be in the Divine Presence.”

Yamileth Silva wasn’t in the pews for Rev. Duke’s sermon that particular day, but she had already found her place of refuge. It is the church itself. Sunday at Christ Church, she said, “is a break from a chaotic world.”

Holy Cross in Decatur was built as a “church in the round,” a controversial decision at the time but now a feature that is well loved by present-day parishioners.

Holy Cross Episcopal Church – Decatur

The architectural style may be “church in the round,” but the Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross is technically an octagon. The altar and lectern sit in the center, surrounded by pews. Posts and beams form four arches under the tall ceiling. Sunlight streams through a small skylight in the center of the sacred space, illuminating a cross suspended over the altar, and multihued panels of glass infuse the salmon brick walls with jewel tones.

Worshipers can enter from several points along a hallway that surrounds the sanctuary—a fitting metaphor for the different ways people have arrived at this Decatur church over the years.

In its earliest days, Holy Cross’ congregation was white; then integration and white flight shifted it to majority African American. In recent years, immigrants hailing from Africa and the Caribbean have joined the fellowship. Today, its membership includes black, white, brown, native-born, and newly arrived.

As they gather for worship, congregants share smiles, looking into one another’s faces across the space instead of at the backs of heads. That’s the blessing of this configuration, said the Rev. Dennis Patterson, Jr., the priest in charge. And when he’s preaching, walking around the space as he does, he can read the responses on his parishioners’ countenances and feel a direct connection.

When he arrived at Holy Cross three years ago, he found himself rethinking how to do liturgy for such a nontraditional space. One of the first dilemmas he faced was how the processional would work, without a long center aisle leading to an altar. (Solution: The procession enters through the main doors and glides halfway around the room, then marches into the center space from the back of the altar.)

By now, Patterson said, he has adapted to the space, and preaching in the round feels completely normal.

Holy Cross was founded 65 years ago as a mission of Holy Trinity Church in Decatur. The first worship services were held at the old Southwest DeKalb High School. At the time, South DeKalb County was experiencing kudzu-like growth as a result of the post-World War II baby boom.

Rich’s, the iconic Atlanta department store, opened its first suburban store at nearby Belvedere shopping center, and some schools would go into double sessions every day to accommodate the children while new buildings were under construction.

Worshipers at Holy Cross can enter from various portals around the sanctuary and sit at different angles from the altar.

From the high school, the church moved to its current plot of land, worshiping in an old government surplus building nicknamed “the barracks.” In 1961, the congregation built its first official home of its own. By 1966, it was self-sustaining and became a full parish with its own rector.

The next year, plans for the current building with the octagonal sanctuary were revealed. Response was immediate and mixed. Some members were vocal in their preference for a more traditional space. As the church history booklet, prepared for its 65th anniversary in 2019, described this transition: “The plans for the current sanctuary were not initially well received by the congregation when the architects shared their vision.”

Despite some parishioners’ misgivings, plans proceeded, and in 1971, the Atlanta Constitution (pre-Journal merger) featured a sizable photograph of the sanctuary, filled with worshipers, and the caption “Services In-the-Round.”

“IT’S INCLUSIVE, IT’S COMMUNAL, AND YOU DON’T HAVE A SENSE OF HIERARCHY.”

— Roland Wallace

Both old-timers and newcomers now embrace and appreciate their worship space. Roland Wallace married into the church in 2011 and said the sanctuary was one of the first facets of Holy Cross that attracted him.

“It’s inclusive, it’s communal, and you don’t have a sense of hierarchy,” he said.

The setting seems especially fit for a congregation that proudly represents and welcomes such a diverse array of races, cultures, and nationalities.

Senior warden Karen Williams, who grew up Baptist and came to Holy Cross three decades ago, said she finds great meaning in facing other parishioners and experiencing the eucharist in the center of the sanctuary.

The ability to sit in different sections of the church and view the suspended cross from different perspectives makes Williams think about her faith in different ways.

“Sometimes you see just a small rectangle, sometimes you see the whole thing,” she said. “I think about the people who saw the stations of the cross live. I think about Jesus carrying the cross, about his being crucified on it, about the soldiers bartering for his garments, and then the Roman soldier saying, ‘This is the Son of God.’”

Speaking and singing with different accents, sharing food and personal stories, the people of Holy Cross have formed a well-rounded community in this church-in-the-round.

“I think the different perspectives of the cross is a hidden sermon,” the senior warden said. So, too, with the different perspectives of Holy Cross.

Christ Church — Macon

The story of Christ Church in Macon is inextricably entwined with the complex history of Georgia and the South as a whole.

The “mother church” of the Diocese of Atlanta was located on land that had recently been taken from Muskogee (Creek) Native Americans; it accommodated separate worship spaces for enslaved African Americans and their white enslavers; when the Confederacy needed ammunition during the Civil War, it gave its bell to be melted into cannonballs; and, a century later, it hosted meetings to support the civil rights movement.

Today the Christ Church congregation is busy trying to live out its mission as a church that “gladly welcomes all people as we worship and serve our risen Lord, Jesus Christ.”

Episcopal missionary Lot Jones could never have imagined what the church would be like today. When he left the bustling port city of Savannah in 1825 for the new town of Macon on the Ocmulgee River in middle Georgia, Jones found a burgeoning community on territory that, until four years earlier, had been occupied by Creek Indians. The tribe, severely weakened in a war against Andrew Jackson’s troops, ceded and vacated its land in 1821.

Jones inspired local Episcopalians to establish the first church of any denomination in Macon, and within a few years they had raised $400 to buy land at the corner of Walnut and Third Street. They constructed a building that opened in 1834 and called it Christ Church.

As Macon flourished, parishioners outgrew their first building, but remnants of it remain. When it was razed in 1851, bricks were saved for the new church, which is still in use.

The most prominent exterior feature of the current Gothic-style building is a large central tower “crowned with battlements and corner finials,” as described by John J. McKay, president of the Middle Georgia Historical Society, in a successful application for its inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. McKay praised the stucco-over-masonry building for “unpretentious simplicity,” “judicious use of decoration,” and “unaffected dignity of its design.”

The sanctuary today is replete with mementos of the past. Parishioners walk under the same wooden arches and rest their feet on the same wide pine boards as those early members. Plaques bearing the names of Ayers, Ellis, and Cutter are reminiscent of the time when families had to rent their pews.

But there are also some shameful reminders of a bygone era. As in many Southern churches, enslaved African Americans were once confined to a gallery above the main worship space while their white enslavers worshipped below. And some of the church’s fine stained-glass windows were donated by parishioners who accumulated their wealth through the dehumanizing exploitation of slave labor.

Members acknowledge the church’s past, as the parish continues to move beyond it.

“OUR CHALLENGE IS TO BALANCE OUR HISTORY WITH LOVING LIKE JESUS INTO THE FUTURE.”

— Julie Groce

Today the choir sits above the congregation in a section of what used to be the “slave gallery,” and people of different backgrounds worship joyfully side by side and work together in the church’s ministries.

“Our challenge is to balance our history with loving like Jesus into the future,” said church historian Julie Groce. “I think we represent the diversity of the Episcopal Church.”

One aspect of this movement toward an inclusive future has been the parish’s embrace of the LGBTQ+ community, and the heartfelt celebration of same-sex marriage. Hal Brickle and Craig Bush recently tied the knot at Christ Church. Brickle said he had been hesitant to broach the question of a wedding because he and Bush would be the first gay couple to have a traditional ceremony in the sanctuary with all the usual accoutrements of organ, choir, and eucharist. But he and his husband received so much support from the entire congregation that he felt it “meant I was truly a member,” one who was fully accepted “as a whole person.”

The church has remained in its historic building downtown even as its membership has increasingly commuted in from different parts of the area. While generations of long-time families came because of tradition, they, and members who came later, are proud of the church’s willingness to address contemporary issues and needs.

“I find it enormously meaningful to worship here,” said Groce. “I’m so aware of the people who have come before us. But we really do embrace our role as a downtown church, with our service to the homeless and hungry. We have not chosen to move. We are still here.”