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St. James' Episcopal Church: Austin: September 23, 2007.

Article Excerpt
One seldom encounters the Nicene Creed and the gospel-country classic "Sweet, Sweet Spirit" in the same worship service. But Austin's St. James' Episcopal Church, "an inclusive multicultural community," is not your average Anglican assemblage. In the early forties, when a small group of African American Episcopalians found themselves unwelcome at the city's all-white churches, they enlisted the Reverend John D. Epps, the dean of the Colored Convocation of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, to help them form a "Negro" congregation. Today, the five-hundred-plus-member church is fully integrated, flourishing, and such an exemplary parish that its former rector, the Reverend Greg Rickel, was installed this past summer as bishop of the Diocese of Olympia, which includes Seattle and the rest of western Washington. As an even more visible sign of its vitality, the church, which had outgrown its facilities on East Martin Luther King Boulevard, recently moved into spacious new quarters a few blocks away, on Webberville Road.

Although most of those present on the day of my visit, especially the white folk, were dressed quite casually, and the choir robes were...

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