New York Avenue Presbyterian Church
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The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., is a congregation of the Presbyterian Church (USA). The church has played an important role in the history of the United States during many crucial junctures.
The Scottish artisans building the White House worshipped on its grounds; they and their families formed a worshipping community that eventually merged with another to form The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, located just three blocks from that original worship site.
President Abraham Lincoln worshipped regularly at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church during the American Civil War. Lincoln rented a pew for $50 a year.[1] Lincoln and the pastor, Rev. Dr. Phineas Gurley, developed a relationship in which they frequently discussed theology.[2] Gurley presided over the funeral of Lincoln's son, William Wallace Lincoln, in 1862, and then over the funeral of Lincoln himself in 1865. Rev. Gurley had an "insider's" perspective of Lincoln's faith, and reported it as follows:
I have had frequent and intimate conversations with him on the Subject of the Bible and the Christian religion, when he could have had no motive to deceive me, and I considered him sound not only on the truth of the Christian religion but on all its fundamental doctrines and teachings. And more than that, in the latter days of his chastened and weary life, after the death of his son Willie, and his visit to the battlefield of Gettysburg, he said, with tears in his eyes, that he had lost confidence in everything but God, and that he now believed his heart was changed, and that he loved the Savior, and, if he was not deceived in himself, it was his intention soon to make a profession of religion.
The Reverend Peter Marshall preached many famous sermons during World War II from its pulpit. (The original church was torn down in the 1950s and replaced with an enlarged structure which slightly resembles the old one.)
The Reverend Dr. George MacPherson Docherty preached a Lincoln Day sermon on February 7, 1954 to a congregation that included President Dwight Eisenhower. The sermon, titled "A New Birth of Freedom," prompted the U.S. Congress to amend the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States, inserting the phrase Lincoln used at Gettysburg, "under God."
Martin Luther King, Jr. preached at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s.
In 1962, the church started a tutoring program known as Community Club; the program is one of the oldest continuous tutoring program in Washington, DC. Originally started as a social club for returning GI's in the closing days of World War II, the club evolved to become a social and academic support service for middle and high school students in the downtown neighborhoods close to the church. The program has assisted approximately 1,800 students since its inception.
The current pastor (since 2002) is Rev. Roger J. Gench, formerly senior minister of Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Maryland. Gench's wife, Frances Taylor Gench, is a nationally known Biblical scholar and faculty member at Union Theological Seminary & Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, Virginia. The church's assistant pastor is Tara Spuhler-McCabe.
[edit] External links
- The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church website
- Where Lincoln Prayed: February 12, 2008 article in The Washington Times
- Phineas Gurley and Abraham Lincoln
- Abraham Lincoln and New York Avenue Presbyterian Church
- New York Avenue Presbyterian Church: Lincoln's Church
- Community Club Homepage
