Little Fork Church Notes From History – February 22, 2024

Moving two historic documents within the Church
February 11, 2023 Little Fork Teaching Moment By Rev. Stacy Williams – Duncan Transcript
Please be seated for a teaching moment.
I was surprised that when we took the two pictures down, the two frames that used to hang on either side of the altar, no one came and panicked about it. Now, that might be because I had permission from Bob Lee and Dave Jones and the rest of the preservation foundation to take them down. Um and for our teaching moment today, I just want to bring them back and tell you something that I’ve learned as we refrained and looked at them closely. Something I learned about the history of this place and this process. So, Dave, if I has I I don’t know which is going to go on which side but Dave, If I hand this one to you, will you hang it, will you hold it up there just so people can see where it’s going tto go eventually. And Bob, if I hand this one to you, will you do the same? And I won’t unwrap this when we can just hold it up. So, before I, that’s where they’re going to move to and they’re moving for a very practical reason No one who’s not a member of this congregation would ever dare go into those front pews and go up and get close enough to those to read it. I’ve watched, I’ve been with many many groups in this room as they’ve come and visited and you could just leave em there at the pews if you want and they always sort of like look at them but they’re not big enough to read from a distance. So, if we move them here, this and people can get close enough to see them and read them. I want to just note what these two pieces are and then tell you a piece about what I’ve learned. This piece over here is the declaration of the recognition of being on the National Historic Register. And it says exactly when that happened and who was the secretary of the interior and it’s that documentation. That piece here is much more interesting. When you realy get in and read this one. I’m going to actually, yeah, Dave, let me actually read exactly from this. The certificate of consecration of Little Fork Church, Saint Mark’s Parish, Culpeper County has been lost. No record of the consecration said church can be found in the diocese and records in the minds of some, doubt exists as to its actual consecration. And so, when the building was restored, the bishop at that time came and did sort of a the facto consecration to document the consecration of this church but they postated it back to when the church was finished. When I took that, right? So, when I first arrived here and I looked at all the dates, I remember saying, well, the church was finished in early seventeen seventy-six. The Declaration of Independence, you know, came out in July of seventeen seventy-six. It was probably not even went so far as to sort of assume. It was probably one of the last churches consecrated before the revolutionary war started. But there’s no record of that. So when I drop those off of the framers, I started on a little bit of a wild goose chase or a little bit of digging as to why that might be the case. And really, it’s one of those things in history that we’re not going to have a definitive answer, but let me share a couple of things with you that I learned. That I think could be helpful. First of all, tht I think could be helpful. First of all, Even now. You don’t just finish something and call a bishop and schedule a consecration the next week. Bishops are busy people and you have to get on their calendars and sometimes it can be several months after something happened before a bishop can be there. And that would have been even more true in colonial America. There were very very few bishops in the United States. Almost all of the bishops were actually in England. They would come and they would visit here for periods of time but then they would go back to England and well, the Declaration of Independence may have come about in July of seventeen seventy-six. We all know that there was discord earlier than that. And so one of the things that starts to happen in the colonial period is that England starts to control whatever they can control. And the ordination of priests and explicitly the consecration of bishops is something that the Church of England starts to hold back and so there is a very good chance it is not ill logical at all to assume. But this church probably wasn’t consecrated. Between the time it was finished. And the beginning of the revolutionary war. Because I’ll remind you that at the point of the revolutionary war, every priest serving an American church in this country had a choice to make. Would they break their ordination vows that included loyalty to the king and go back to England or would they stay here and prioritize their or or their vows to serve their local flock? I mean this is such a big piece of the separation of England and what became the United States there’s a period of time where we have no new priest in this church, in this country, or in this property. We weren’t quite a country yet but in this in the United States, what became the United States? In fact, we don’t actually have new priests until Scotland decides that they can stick it to England and ordain a bishop for the United States. So, like, I mean, this is all a piece of our history and I just found it fascinating to dig in that piece and to think about why that might be the case for this congregation Now, theologically, I had a great conversation this week with a friend that said, remember that a sacrament which we would consider the consecration of a church, part of that, a sacrament is just an outward invisible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. And so the reality is that this place was consecrated with the prayers of the people who gathered here. This place was consecrated with the lives of the soldiers in multiple wars who lived on this property. This place has been consecrated with the Methodist Church who worshiped here when the Episcopal Church was not using the building. This place has been consecrated the outward and visible sign of a deem and spiritual grace Over and over and over and over throughout the centuries. And so it will be great to have these two pieces back hanging where people can read them and access them and thank you to the Preservation Foundation for having them reframed and making sure that they had archival conservation glass in them now which we discovered they did not upfront. Oh. A little bit of teaching about the history today.