Christ Church

Before the American Revolution, the Church of England was Virginia's established church and part of the colonial government, with the colony divided into parishes whose residents paid taxes to support church activities. Although Virginia was colonized in 1607, settlement northward moved slowly, and Alexandria was not established until 1749. By 1753, Alexandria had a chapel of ease for worshippers living closer than the main Anglican church seven miles west. In 1765, a new parish in northern Virginia was created, and inadequate buildings at Falls Church and Alexandria were replaced by two new churches designed by James Wren from one set of plans and completed just before the Revolutionary War. After the war, government support for religious institutions ended, but Alexandria's Christ Church prospered through the support of local residents such as George Washington and the clerical leadership of David Griffith, Bryan Fairfax, and William Meade. On April 21, 1861, after resigning his commission in the United States Army, Robert E. Lee attended Sunday morning services there. During the Civil War, when the Union Army occupied Alexandria, it seized many churches for use as hospitals or stables, but Christ Church was largely preserved with its interior intact because it had been George Washington's place of worship. After the war, in 1869, a Mother's Mission was established to assist poor women in the area, and three years later parishioner Sallie Stuart led efforts to create missions of the newly formed National Women's Auxiliary to the Board of Missions throughout Alexandria. Throughout U.S. history, the church has been visited by many American presidents and world leaders, including Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, who came on January 1, 1942, just weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, to commemorate the World Day of Prayer for Peace.

Alexandria, Virginia · United States