Nation’s Spiritual Capital Ramble
This full-day ramble takes us to historic houses of worship across Washington D.C., many of them architectural monuments which express the desires of diverse faith groups to contribute to our national story.
I’ll pick you up at your Washington D.C.-area hotel or an agreed meeting spot. Then we begin at St. Paul’s Church, Rock Creek, the city’s oldest church. The first house of worship was built on this spot in 1721, but the current Episcopal church dates from 1775. The surrounding lands deeded to the church by a local planter became one of Washington’s most distinguished cemeteries.
We continue to two sites in “Little Rome,” a local name for nearby Brooklandville, the home of the Catholic University of America. More than 20 Catholic religious orders have established monasteries and seminaries around the campus of our nation’s pontifical university since its founding in 1887.
We will visit the most unique of these many communities, the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land. Since the 13th century, Franciscan friars have had custody of pilgrimage places in the Holy Land associated with the ministry of Jesus (72 sites in all). Beginning in the 1890’s, numerous full-size replicas of holy places in Palestine were constructed on the site. Its principal church contains a model of the shrines marking the places of Christ’s death and resurrection at Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher as well as a model of Rome’s Catacombs. Shrines associated with the ministry of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary are situated in a beautiful hillside garden.
Next stop is the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, North America’s largest Catholic church. Three popes have visited the basilica, which is constructed in a Neo-Byzantine style and includes 82 chapels dedicated to the Virgin Mary, many of them representing the cultural heritage of different Catholic nations. We will enjoy a guided tour of this unique site.
Capital Jewish Museum, which is constructed around Adas Israel, the city’s oldest synagogue, is our next stop. The museum contains numerous exhibits about Jewish life in the Washington DC area, as well as the synagogue’s worship area, restored to its appearance at the time of its dedication in 1876, when Ulysses S. Grant became the first U.S. President to attend a Jewish worship service.
Next we visit Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church. Founded in 1838, the congregation is the city’s oldest Black church. The current building, completed in 1886, hosted the funerals of abolitionist Frederick Douglass and Rosa Parks, whose heroic 1955 protest in Montgomery, Alabama helped to spark the Civil Rights Movement.
We continue to St. John’s Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square, near the White House. This “Church of the Presidents,” designed by the architect of the Capitol, has hosted visits by every U.S. President since James Madison, and regularly hosts a worship service on Inauguration Day. The church was also the site of a controversial media appearance by President Trump during the 2020 protests following the death of George Floyd.
Our next stop is the Islamic Center of Washington, the city’s first mosque and the largest mosque in the Western Hemisphere when it was dedicated by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1957. Marked by Fatimid and Mameluke motifs from the golden age of Islamic architecture, the mosque is filled with treasures donated by the governments of several Muslim nations.
We continue up Massachusetts Avenue for brief stops at the city’s two Orthodox cathedrals. First we visit the Orthodox Church in America’s Cathedral of St. Nicholas, which features extensive frescoes patterned on those of the Cathedral of St. Demetrius in Vladimir, Russia. Next is Saint Sophia Cathedral, the center for the city’s Greek Orthodox Church, named for the great ancient church of Constantinople.
Our final stop is a guided tour of Washington National Cathedral. Chartered by Congress in 1893, the church was built in the English Gothic style of the 14th century, using traditional construction techniques. This cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington hosts services at important occasions in national life and contains the tomb of President Woodrow Wilson, the only U.S. President to be buried in Washington, D.C., as well as a stained glass window that contains a moon rock.
This ramble is a full day adventure, and will include lunch at an interesting local spot (at the traveler’s expense). It can be modified to include sites from the traveler’s own religious tradition, if desired, and the guide, an Episcopal priest, is happy to offer fitting prayers at different sites if desired.
Includes admission to all sites. Please contact me to schedule ramble for groups larger than seven.
