Trinity, Columbus is on a mission in the capital.
In January, Trinity Episcopal Church in Columbus hosted a state-sponsored event celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The featured speakers included the Rev. Joel L. King, an Ohio-based Baptist minister who was Dr. King’s cousin. The Rev. Jed Dearing, Trinity’s newly arrived associate rector, was scheduled to preach the following Sunday, and he asked the Rev.King what challenge he would place before him.
“Ask why they are making me, in my 80s, fight the same fight around voting rights and education. Is that the world they want to go back to?” King said. Dearing took his advice, preaching on the importance of the church’s ongoing work of justice.
Trinity, which sits across the street from Capitol Square, faces a distinctive challenge. “We seek to be open, to be a place of prayer for everyone, and yet to maintain a relationship with government, given our proximity to the statehouse,” Dearing said.
One way Trinity turns its “resource of location” toward the cause of justice is by offering hospitality to activists seeking to influence the state and local governments. After George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, the church became a safe space for protesters, offering water and restroom facilities. More recently, on the Sunday following the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, parishioner Harriet Donaldson was moved by a prayer about gun violence offered during the liturgy.
“Here we are across from statehouse, why aren’t we doing something to get conversation about this issue?”she said recently. “Everyone in the legislature should hear this prayer. I want to march over to the statehouse and say ‘this is ridiculous, pass some laws to stop the violence.’”
In August, when the city planned to bulldoze a nearby encampment of unhoused people that had sprung up on city-owned land, Trinity and 15 other organizations organized an event to draw attention to the needs of those living in the encampment. By the end of the following week, the city had found housing for everyone.
“There is an energy around standing up for neighbors, advocating – attending something a little more on the fringes,” Dearing said. “We don’t always see the breadth of resources beyond church and the ways collaborative action can make a difference.”
Trinity also makes its space available to programs that serve those in need. The parish’s In the Garden ministry provides a homemade hot lunch for the hungry each Sunday afternoon. The program, which is supported by a grant from Episcopal Community Ministries, also draws new volunteers to the parish.
“In the Garden brings in suburban churches, making them aware of the struggles of downtown,” Donaldson said. “Families don’t live downtown, so it has to be activism or cultural events that brings folks in.
Pre-COVID, Trinity was open during colder months from morning through mid-afternoon as a respite location and warming station. With the availability of vaccines, that work has resumed with more limited hours, both to maintain safety protocols and because neighboring organizations have taken on similar programs.
Keeping the church’s doors open is not necessarily easy, said long-time parishioner Debbie Wiedwald, “yet we are committed to being welcoming to all.” Trinity recently held an adult education series asking “Who is Our Neighbor?” One session featured members of the Homeless Outreach Team from the Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District. “Trinity continues to grow, evolve, get better,” Wiedwald said. “We are getting to know the needs of the downtown community, offering both homeless ministry and early music performances, to meet the needs of everyone connected to downtown.”
This summer, the parish hosted the diocese’s first Pride Eucharist and served as a step off point for the Pride march, offering hospitality as members of the LGBTQ+ community took the lead both in liturgical planning and behind the scenes. “Both here in the diocese and as part of my seminary experience at[Church Divinity School of the Pacific], the question we are learning to ask is what the queer community teaches us about who God is and the building of community and family,” Dearing said.
Recently, the parish partnered with Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church and University Center on the Ohio State University campus to host the documentary filmmakers of “Are We There Yet.” The new film explores the Doctrine of Discovery and its impact on the church through the lenses of white supremacy, religiously motivated violence and the efforts of the Standing Rock Sioux to protect their land against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Participants demonstrated what Dearing called a “hunger for deepening theological language on these issues” during a 40-minute question-and-answer period.
Dearing credits longtime rector, the Rev. Richard Burnett, who retired in 2021, with shaping the parish for the work of advocacy through liturgical formation. The church’s custom of walking the Stations of the Cross around the Statehouse on Good Friday was a call to recognize “that Jesus on the cross is our persecuted neighbor,” he said. The tradition continued in Holy Week 2022 with the Rev. Stephen Applegate, who arrived in August 2021 as Trinity’s interim priest-in-charge.
The formative power of Trinity’s justice and advocacy work was recently brought home to Dearing during a brief exchange with a student at the nearby Ohio State University. The student had grown up in the parish but stopped attending services until their involvement in campus activism brought them back.
“My involvement in advocacy comes from something I learned at church,” the student said. “I needed to come back and connect with what that was.”
Read this story in the Winter 2022 edition of Connections Magazine.
