Christ Church New Bern

History of Christ Church Parish

by the Rev. C. Edward Sharp, rector 1962-1991

The history of Christ Church and City of New Bern has been very closely tied together since their Beginnings in the early 1700's with Christ Church being officially established in 1715. The first Christ Church building was completed around 1750 and shortly after Parson Reed came to Christ Church as its first full time rector. He was rector at the start of the Revolutionary War and its hard aftermath. A significant event in the history of Christ Church was that the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina was formed in 1817 with diocesan offices in New Bern. In 1821 a new church was built – repaired on the site of the present Church. Another armed conflict "The Civil War" had a very disruptive effect on the congregation and rector of Christ Church. During the reconstruction era Christ Church called a Native Son Rector and a church fire engulfed the church roof and interior which left only a good portion of the thick brick walls remained standing. The last major events for the church in the nineteenth century were that another Diocese was formed and Christ Church became part of the Dioceses of East Carolina and also a new Parish House was built as part of the Christ Church complex. Christ Church performed a significant role during World War I and during the recovery from the disastrous fire in New Bern. The 250th anniversary of Christ Church in 1965 occurred a few years after Reverend Ed Sharp began nearly three decades as rector of church growth. Starting in the mid 1970's there has been a Renewed Church Vitality from the "Southern Surprise", the revitalization of New Bern and Craven County, which has carried us into the new millennium toward our 300th Anniversary in 2015.

Beginnings

"I divided the village like a cross and in the middle I intended a Church." This statement of Baron Christopher de Graffenried gives us some idea of how he visualized New Bern. The church should be the center of town, and from its position, the center of town life. De Graffenried and his group of Swiss immigrants landed at the site of New Bern in September 1710, five to six months after the main body of Palatines had arrived. It was in April of the following year, 1711, that deGraffenried wrote to the Bishop of London who had oversight of the church in the colonies: "Humbly request your lordship to accept of me and my people, and receive us into your Church under your Lordship's patronage, and we shall esteem ourselves happy sons of a better stock; and I hope we
shall always behave ourselves as becomes members of the Church of England and dutiful children of so pious and indulgent a father as your Lordship is to all under your care, in all obedience, craving your Lordship's blessing to me and my countrymen here." In one sense, Christ Church began in New Bern in 1711 when the Bishop of London received the settlers who were Calvinists and Lutherans, into the Church of England. But the official beginning came in 1715 with a legislative act of the Colonial Assembly dividing North Carolina into nine parishes. The parish of Craven, one of the nine, was designated as the "Neuse River and the branches thereof''. Twelve men were named as vestrymen of the parish. When New Bern was incorporated and laid out as a township on November 23, 1723 by an act of the Assembly, a clause in the charter provided a site for the church. This was the same site that had been set aside for a church by Propriety Governor Colonel Thomas Pollock to whom deGraffenried had mortgaged local lands for funds to finance the New Bern settlement. Occasional services were provided in New Bern and in surrounding area by the Reverend John LaPierre for approximately 20 years after 1735. Mr. LaPierre was a French Huguenot who was ordained a priest by the Bishop of London in 1707 and was sent to South Carolina in the Charleston area where he served the French parish of St. Denis for 20 years. In 1728, he moved to the Cape Fear area of North Carolina, but he found little work, and he was reduced to labor in the fields to eke out a living, LaPierre moved to Craven parish in 1735 where he exchanged his Cape Fear properties with John Fonveille of this parish for 360 acres of land several miles west of New Bern. It is reported that he resided there in great poverty while ministering to a wide territory until his death in 1755.

In 1739, 1740 and 1741, the vestry empowered by the Assembly, laid special taxes for the building of a church, and each time there seemed to be a shortfall. Bricks for the church were made from clay taken from a hill near the town along the current Walt Bellamy Drive toward Pembroke Road. The lot designated for the church by the town charter was found to be inadequate, and that lot was sold to assist in purchasing four more spacious lots (still in the center of the town) at our present location. The church was finally completed around 1750.

Parson Reed Comes to Christ Church

The vestry attempted to get a rector after they had built the church. There were very few clergy in the colonies, and the vestry failed in their first efforts. Nothing came easy in those days! Finally, in 1752, the vestry appealed for assistance to the Bishop of London or to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel there. As a result of the communication to London, the Reverend James Reed arrived in New Bern the next year with his family. His wife probably died here for we know that he later married Hannah Stringer, widow of Dr. Francis Stringer, a surgeon and legislator.

In 1752, the year before the arrival of Rev. Reed, the parish received special gifts from King George II, consisting of a five-piece set of communion silver made in 1752, a folio Book of Common Prayer published in the same year at Cambridge, and a large folio Bible printed at Oxford in 1717. Each piece of silver and the two sacred books were inscribed with the Royal Arms of Great Britain. All of these royal gifts are still in the possession of Christ Church, and the communion silver has been in regular use in the parish for nearly two and a half centuries. James Reed had his work cut out for him in a way of life with many deprivations and few comforts. His salary was often not paid in full. He was responsible for holding services at Christ Church every Sunday except when he was at the chapels at remote points in addition to St. John's Church in Beaufort. One of his primary concerns from the beginning was the need for public schools in a province where life was rough an there were few opportunities for education except for the wealthy. He foresaw a bleak future for a province of uneducated people, and Mr. Reed addressed the General Assembly on several occasions on this subject. His concerns were always sympathetically received, but public money was never made available for establishing schools. Finally, James Reed, himself, led in establishing a school in New Bern which opened on January 1, 1764, under Thomas Tomlinson, an experienced and capable schoolmaster who had just come to New Bern from England. In 1766, the school was incorporated by a legislative act of the General Assembly -- the first school to be incorporated in the Province. After a long struggle, the first school building was completed in 1768 on the corner of New and Hancock Streets. Everything seemed to come to a halt during the Revolutionary War, and the school was reorganized after the war in 1784 as the New Bern Academy. The increasing opposition in the Province to English rule made life difficult for James Reed, who was commonly and fondly called "Parson Reed" by parishioners and the townspeople. At his ordination as a priest of the established Church of England, he had made the normal pledge of loyalty to the English monarch, and Parson Reed was a convinced Royalist. He was deeply troubled by the defiance and unrest in his parish. In January of 1774, he wrote to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) in London, which provided financial assistance for his living, "I must ingeniously confess I am heartily weary of living in this land of perpetual strife and ontention...without the benevolence of the Society , it would be quite intolerable."

The Revolutionary War and its Hard Aftermath

In July of 1775, the rebelling Continental Congress ordered "a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer to humble ourselves before God". James Reed refused to perform divine service on that day, and an angry vestry of Christ Church suspended him and stopped his salary. After two months, the vestry relented and Parson Reed returned to an uneasy ministry, which continued until his death in 1777. He was buried in the churchyard next to the Middle Street fence.

There was no regular minister in Christ Church after James Reed's death until 1785 when Leonidas Cutting came to New Bern from Maryland, and he served here for seven years. He was a native of Norfolk County, England, and he had been educated at Cambridge where he took three degrees. The post war years were extremely difficult. There were intermittent epidemics of small pox and yellow fever in the 1780s with many deaths. The church building had deteriorated, and the congregation had dwindled. Dr. Cutting had urged the construction of a new church, but this was not accomplished until much later in the early 1820s.(A sketch of the new Church is shown.)

The Reverend Thomas Pitt Irving became Rector in 1796 and served until 1813 -- nearly 17 years. A Princeton graduate, to he came to New Bern in 1793 as principal of the New Bern Academy. He was ordained by Bishop William White in Philadelphia in 1796 and became rector of Christ Church in that year in addition to his school duties. He was brilliant and versatile, a noted orator and author, and he had a special interest in drama,
which he encouraged at the academy. He had to deal, however, with three major disasters in his early years in New Bern: the burning of the frame school building (1795), the burning of the Palace main building (1798) where classes had been held after the school fire, and the yellow fever epidemic (1798-99). The east wing of the palace was used for classes after the palace fire, and Thomas Irving led in the rebuilding of the academy (1808-10) on the original site, a fine brick structure recently restored, which served in the education of New Bern children for more than 150 years. While in New Bern Thomas Irving taught many boys who became outstanding citizens of North Carolina and other states: Judge William Gaston, justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court; the Reverend Francis Lister Hawks (grandson of John Hawks, supervising architect of Tryon Palace), clergy man,  educator, and renowned historian who became the first president of the University of Louisiana; Francis Lister's brother, Cicero Stephens Hawks, who became t he first Episcopal Bishop of Missouri; Richard Dobbs Spaight, Jr., who served as Governor of North Carolina, and George E. Badger who served as superior court judge, US  senator, and Secretary of the Navy.

The yellow fever epidemic in 1798-99 devastated New Bern, and the number of deaths was so great that many of the dead were buried in trenches in the churchyard. The churchyard was soon filled with graves, and the church created Cedar Grove Cemetery in 1800. This cemetery was turned over to City of New Bern in 1853.

Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina formed in 1817

The Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina was finally formed in 1817 in New Bern in old Christ Church. There we only three Episcopal priests in this region at that time, and the Christ Church rector, Jehu C. Clay, and the two  clergy from Wilmington and Fayetteville, and six lay delegates (two from Christ Church) composed the organizing diocesan convention. The new diocese was put under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Virginia.

The Reverend Richard Sharpe Mason became the rector of Christ Church the next year in 1818 as a deacon of 22 years of age. Born in Barbados in the West Indies in 1795, he was graduated from the University of  Pennsylvania at 15 years of age. He had been ordained deacon by Bishop White in Philadelphia a few months before coming to Christ Church. Two years later in 1820, he was ordained a priest in St. Paul's Church, Edenton,
by Bishop Richard Channing Moore, Bishop of Virginia. During the tenure of Richard Mason as rector, the second brick church building was erected after the need had been expressed three and one half decades earlier. The same general area as the original church was chosen, but the new church was placed more in the center of the churchyard already filled with graves and facing Pollock Street instead of Middle Street as did the old church.

As early as January 1778, the southwest corner of the church lots at the corner of Middle and Pollock Streets had been designated as a true beginning for the plan of the town of New Bern. A cannon captured during the Revolutionary War from the British ship-of-war, Lady Blessington, by an arms privateer owned by John Wright Stanly, a local patriot and church member, was planted on that corner and used in the laying out of the town during the early 1800s by Jonathan Price. The cannon remains on the corner to this day.

A New Church is Built -- And Repaired

The plans for the new church called for a strong brick structure with some of the characteristics of Gothic  architecture. High arched windows were planned, with side and rear galleries. Special mention was made that there was to be an organ. The cornerstone was laid by Dr. Mason on July 5, 1821, in an impressive ceremony attended by a large crowd who had processed from the old church to the new site. The new church was
consecrated on February 1, 1824, by Bishop John Stark Ravenscroft, the first bishop of the newly formed Diocese of North Carolina. Within only a few years, the new church needed extensive repairs according to an evaluation made in November 1832. The heavy brick church had been built over old graves with inadequate foundations not deep enough in the earth, and the structure's roof and tall landmark tower were too heavy to be borne by the side walls with shallow foundations. The repairs were soon undertaken, and the roof was removed in order to put the walls back in their proper position. A new lighter roof of cypress shingles was put in place, and it was this roof which ignited when the church burned in 1871.

Another Armed Conflict: The Civil War

The Reverend Alfred Augustin Watson became rector of Christ Church in the fall of 1858. In mid-July 1861, he joined the Confederate Army as chaplain, but at the request of the vestry, he temporarily retained his local rectorship. Later, during the Civil War, he became the assistant rector of St. James Church in Wilmington, and he succeeded as rector there in December 1865. When he left New Bern, Dr. Watson took the church colonial communion service with him to Wilmington for safe keeping. It was moved afterwards to Fayetteville and placed under the care of Dr. Joseph Huske, grandfather of a later rector of Christ Church, It is said to have been overlooked there by Federal soldiers because it was hidden among a great deal of worthless rubbish in a closet.

New Bern fell to Federal troops on Saturday, March 14, 1862. The next day, General Ambrose E. Burnside, commander of the conquering troops, ordered all local churches opened with army chaplains officiating at services that returned thanks "to God for the signal victory He granted the patriot armies." Throughout the war (and post-war occupation), Christ Church and other local churches were used by the Union forces from time to time. Christ Church did not have a rector during the war.

Dr. Watson, who was an ardent Southerner, gave this description of the use of the church by Federal authorities: "The intruders, in violation of all church principles, canon law, and religious liberty, took possession of the edifice and placed one of their own chaplains in it. By far the principal part of the congregation," he said, "withdrew from the town at the time of its capture." Dr. Watson said most New Bernians migrated upstate during the war, not returning until the end of the conflict. It was one of the first instances of"displaced persons" in the history of America, and New Bern was one of the first American towns to be the headquarters of an enemy military government.

Native son Rector and a Church Fire

Christ Church was blessed in having as its first postwar rector the Reverend Edward M.
Forbes whose calming influence did much to heal the wounds of war and reconstruction. He became rector on January 1, 1866, and continued for 11 years. He was the second native New Bernian to become rector, and he had been left lame after a partial paralysis experienced early in his life. He was small in stature --only 5 feet in height-- yet he was nevertheless generally regarded as a giant in intellect and compassion.

In June 1866, Mr. Forbes assisted the Black members of Christ Church in organizing their own church, St. Cyprian's Church, and within two years St. Cyprian's reported 102 members. Apparently, it was not uncommon after the Civil for Black members of established churches to withdraw and form their own churches.

On the evening of January 10, 1871, Mr. Forbes resigned as rector of Christ Church, and later that night the church burned with the shingle roof igniting from the sparks a bakery fire across Pollock Street in the area of the present James Reed Lane. The flames engulfed the church and left only a good portion of the thick brick walls standing. The roof and the steeple had collapsed, the interior gutted by the fire, and church bell was a huge hunk of molten metal. Mr. Forbes withdrew his resignation the next morning, determined to devote his energies to the reconstruction of the church. Refusing to become discouraged since they had often lived with hardship and disappointment, parishioners began planning at once the rebuilding of the church, incorporating the surviving walls. The Presbyterians offered the use of their church for worship on Sunday nights, and the George Street chapel in the old west wing of the Palace was also utilized. Societies, clubs, and members began raising the essential funds. It is important for us to remember that this undertaking occurred barely six years after the conclusion of the Civil War; when New Bern was still in the throes of federally imposed Reconstruction with its impoverishment and deprivation. A number of parishioners wrote friends all over the country soliciting aid. One of our own parishioners, Mary Moulton Barden, has in her possession a letter written by Mrs. Robert Edward Lee, wife of the beloved general, to Mary's ancestor, Mary Bayard Devereux Clarke, literary genius and talented poet, saying that she (Mrs. Lee) was enclosing ten dollars for the church construction project.

After four years of hard work and dedicated devotion, the church was re-built and ready for the Diocesan Convention on May 19-21, 1875. Two days following, on Sunday, May 23, the church was consecrated by Bishop Thomas A. Atkinson. Despite a number of additions, changes, and remodeling arrangements through the years, the basic form of the church remains practically the same today as it was in the beginning with the church
completed in 1824. The beautiful handmade brick in the church walls, dating to 1824, are perhaps the most beautiful brick in all of New Bern.

Two days after the church was consecrated, feeling that his work here was now done, Mr. Forbes again submitted his resignation as rector, but it was unanimously rejected by the vestry. Less than two years later he again resigned, but he agreed to continue as acting rector until a successor could be obtained. After giving up his ministry at Christ Church, Mr.Forbes assisted for a while at St. Cyprian's Church. The last years of his life were spent as rector of St. Paul's Church in Beaufort. He died there on September 25, 1893, at the age of 82, and following a funeral service the next day in Christ Church, his body was laid to rest in Cedar Grove Cemetery in his beloved New Bern.

Another Diocese is Formed

Our last major event in the life of Christ Church in the latter part of the 19th Century was the organization of the Diocese of East Carolina at a convention meeting here on December 12-13, 1883. This was the second diocese to be formed in Christ Church, a rare record for any parish. Bishop Atkinson had advocated for several years a division of the Diocese of North Carolina into two dioceses. The vast area between Manteo on the coast and Murphy in the mountains presented great travel problems. A plan for division was approved at the diocesan convention in 1882, and permission for the organization of a new diocese was granted in October 1883 by the General Convention of the Episcopal Church meeting in Philadelphia.

At the organizing convention of the new diocese in December 1883, Dr. Watson, former rector, but then of St. James Church in Wilmington, was elected president of the convention after divine service and Communion. The name "East Carolina" was chosen for the new diocese which would consist of the 33 easternmost counties in North Carolina between the borders of Virginia and South Carolina. Dr. Watson was then elected first bishop of the Diocese of East Carolina, and he was consecrated bishop the following spring in Wilmington.

Parish House is Built

As early as 1893, the need for a parish house had been discussed by parishioners. A special meeting of the vestry was called on February 17, 1903, to consider building possibilities. A motion was adopted to begin a campaign to raise $10,000, with half of that amount to be used to build a parish house and the remainder for church improvements. Drawings of a proposed building were submitted the next month by the noted New Bern architect, Herbert W. Simpson. Progress on the parish house construction was slow, and in November, 1904, the work was halted for lack of funds. It was finally completed to the extent that it was used for the annual Sunday School Christmas program in 1905. This old parish house building, in addition to the church, is included in the National Register of Historic Places.

The funds which were raised in the campaign for church improvements early in the first decade of this century were used for nave and chancel improvements and the removal of the organ from the balcony or gallery to the chancel, with the pipe chamber located in the present Baptistery. [A photograph from this time shows the organ located on the left; the pipes were only moved to the chamber on the right when the chancel was altered several years later and a new organ was purchased. --Edit.]

A movement in Christ Church to advance and increase the role of women in the Church anticipated by a decade the passage of the Suffrage Amendment to the Federal Constitution. On November 28, 1910, it was voted to follow"an old-time custom" in permitting "such ladies as were contributors to the church to be allowed to cast ballots" for vestrymen. However, the next year the vestry decided that future elections should be held in compliance with church canons, which required that voters should be baptized male adults in special registrations. The diocesan canon was changed by 1913, still ahead of the Constitutional amendment!

A centennial celebration of the organization of the original Diocese of North Carolina here in 1817 took place on May 17, 1917, in Christ Church. The bishops of the then three dioceses in the state -- East Carolina, Asheville (now Western North Carolina), and North Carolina -- were present to lead the event. A bronze tablet was unveiled on the wall in the church leading into the parish house as a gift from the three dioceses. The tablet contains the names of the three clergy and six laymen who met in Christ Church on April 24, 1817, to organize the diocese.

Disastrous Fire in New Bern

As the bell of Christ Church had been the first to ring in the news of the signing of the World War I Armistice on November 11, 1918, so was the parish house the first public door to be opened for the hungry and suffering victims of a disastrous fire in New Bern on December 1, 1922. The fire burned 40 blocks primarily in Black residential areas. It caused damage estimated at $1,000,000 and left l,000 persons homeless. St. Cyprian's
Church did valiant work during the time of disaster under the leadership of its highly respected and extremely able rector, The Reverend R. I. Johnson. The church was temporarily converted into a Black emergency hospital, and a locally famous baby born there was named "St. Cyprian Emergency." The need for a hospital for Black residents
became so apparent at that time that efforts toward that goal were undertaken. Fifteen years later Good Shepherd Hospital opened on West Street in June 1938 on property left to the diocese by the Reverend E. M. Forbes. It operated under the sponsorship of the Diocese of East Carolina until it became an adjunct of the new Craven County Hospital in 1963 before finally closing in 1967.

The Reverend Charles E. Williams, who served churches in Washington and Tyrell Counties in northeastern North Carolina, was requested to serve as supply priest of Christ Church early in 1934 during the terminal illness of the incumbent rector, the Reverend llbert Brayshaw. Upon the death of Mr. Brayshaw, Mr. Williams resigned as
supply priest, but within a few days on July 10, 1934, he was called to be the 26th rector of Christ Church. He served for 28 years, longer than any previous rector until that time. His ministry here began in the midst of the Depression which was followed by the years of World War II and the Korean War. Mr. Williams was known as a faithful pastor who had a special love for children. He encouraged Mrs. Anna Gillikin and Mrs. Celia Ferebee to open a kindergarten at Christ Church, which operated with great success for many years before the establishment of kindergartens in public schools. Near the end of his tenure, the long-needed classroom wing of the parish house was built in 1958-59.

Mention must be made here of the heroic and selfless ministry of one extraordinary lifelong member of Christ Church, Dr. Lula M. Disosway. During the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s she served as a medical missionary for the Episcopal Church in China from 1926 to 1941. When she was forced to leave because of the Communist victory in China, Dr. Lula went immediately to Alaska for the church in 1941 and served there until 1948 when she returned home to New Bern to care for her mother in declining health. She resumed her medical mission in 1954 at Good Shepherd Hospital where she served as medical director until the hospital closed in 1967. From that year until her death in 1973, Dr. Lula served as director of the pre-natal and birthing clinic of Craven County Hospital. Dr. Lula was an unsung, rare, and special Christian woman whose life was literally spent in service to others. We shall not see the likes of her again.

250th Anniversary of Christ Church

The Reverend C. Edward Sharp was called to be the 27th rector of Christ Church in September 1962 after the retirement of Mr. Williams. Three years later, in 1965, during the 250th anniversary year of Christ Church, three special events took place. The annual convention of the Diocese of East Carolina met in Christ Church on February 10 and 11. Three months later on May 9, a diocesan service celebrating the 20th anniversary of the
Rt. Reverend Thomas H. Wright as Bishop of East Carolina was held in the New Bern High School Gymnasium. The speaker was the Rt. Reverend John Hines, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. A service celebrating the 250th anniversary of the parish was held in the church on October 24, 1965. The speaker was The Rt. Reverend
Bernard Markham, Bishop of Nassau and the Bahamas representing the Church of England, who gave life to and nurtured Christ Church in its early years. The bishops of the three dioceses of the state -- East Carolina, North Carolina, and Western North Carolina -- accepted invitations to take part in the celebration.

In 1967 the foundations of the colonial church completed in 1750, consisting of brick and ballast stone, were uncovered but left undisturbed as a low brick wall was erected over them to provide an outline of the shape and form of the old church. This unique design and method of historic preservation was drafted and supervised by Morley J. Williams, a local landscape architect who had extensive experience in historic preservation in Virginia. The old church site with its stone altar has been used for worship services from time to time for 50 years.

After more than a century and a half, the burial of the dead was resumed in the churchyard when the vestry made provision for the burial of the cremated remains of parishioners under the floor of brick pavers on the site of the Colonial Church. The first burial occurred there in December of 1984.

An extensive program of church renovation took place in 1967-68 which included the installation of a new electrical system and heating and air-conditioning systems. A new pipe organ, incorporating several parts of the old, was installed in the balcony as a memorial to Miss Margaret Constantine who left a generous bequest to Christ Church. The old pipe chamber adjoining the chancel was renovated and converted to a Baptistery with the installation in the back wall of a secure display case for the colonial communion silver, prayer book, and bible. A new slate roof was put on the church in 1977, and a complete restoration of the steeple and historic crown of the church was accomplished in 1989. A slate roof was also added in the 1980s to the old parish house building. A carillon of bells cast in France was added to the four-bell Westminster peal in the church bell tower in 1996, a gift of a former parishioner, Dr. Albert Howard, honoring his wife, Joyce. Also in 1996 the City of New Bern honored the memory of the first rector of Christ Church by giving his name to a beautifully landscaped pedestrian walkway, James Reed Lane, which connects mid-block Pollock Street across the street in front of the church to a parking area behind the stores.

Renewed Church Vitality from the "Southern Surprise"

During the course of Ed Sharp's nearly 29-year tenure as rector, especially during the last two decades prior to his retirement in 1992, New Bern blossomed into a "southern surprise", as described on the city official letterhead. The economy picked up with the addition of new industry and business ventures, and the restoration and face-lifting of many old buildings, homes and public facilities in the downtown and historic district. Also the development and growth of Craven Community College, the evolution of the local hospital into Craven Regional Medical Center, the building of The New Bern Craven County Library with completely modern facilities, and the development of several new suburban housing areas and many more factors have made New Bern an
attractive "southern surprise", which has drawn many people (both retirees and younger professional and business people) from all parts of the country to live here. As a consequence Christ Church and all New Bern churches have benefited by this healthy increase in population. This growth has continued during the slightly more than four-and-one-half-year tenure of the Reverend Robert S. Dannals, who became rector on
September 1, 1992, and even throughout the thirty months period of Interim Rectors the Reverends Walton Petit and James Coleman, prior to the calling of our present rector, The Reverend Doctor Patricia M. Thomas in November 1999. The Reverend Warren Lee Domenick, Jr. is the Assistant to the Rector. The growth has been accompanied by a renewed vitality at Christ Church with the initiation on several new outreach programs including the church's very active role in the establishment of Merci Clinic to provide free medical care to those in need, a special sharing relationship established between Christ Church and the Church of the Incarnation in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the continued support of the ecumenical local ministry of Religious Community Services including providing food for needy, the increasing support of Habitat for Humanity, the support of the relocation of Bosnian and other refugee families in New Bern, and the continued support of an ecumenical ministry in Haiti. Also the Church has experienced a renewed growth and vitality in several internal programs, such as, Foyers--a social activity, Koinonia--a neighborhood support program, an expanded and imaginative Christian Education program, an enlarged program of youth ministry, and an extensive program encouraging lay ministry.

All these activities and programs have assured the good health and vitality of this 285 year-old parish as it begins the new millennium with its rich historic past and continues to enrich its history as it progresses toward its tricentennial Anniversary in 2015.

References

1 Carraway, Gertrude S., Crown of Life-History of Christ Church, New Bern, North
Carolina 1715-1940 , New Bern, NC, Owen G. Dunn, 1940
2 Mary H. Baker's article, "Christ Church", Journal of the New Bern Historical
Society (Vol. 1, No. 2)
3 Unpublished Christ Church Brochure by The Reverend C. Edward Sharp, "Christ
Church History, An Overview of Nearly Three Centuries", 23 March 1997.
4 Watson , Alan D., A History of New Bern and Craven County.
5 Green, John B., III, A New Bern Album, The Tryon Palace Commission, New Bern,
1985
6 The Nomination of New Bern Sites to the National Register of Historic Places,
available in the Kellenberger Room of the New Bern/Craven County Library.
7 Sandbeck,Peter B., The Historical Architecture of New Bern and Craven County,
North Carolina, The Tryon Palace Commission, available in the Kellenberger Room
of the New Bern/Craven County Library.
8 Rouse, R.K., Colonial Churches in North Carolina, 1961, Kannapolis, NC.
9 Carraway, Gertrude S., Historic Christ Church, New Bern, North Carolina 1715-
1977, Theo. Davis Sons, Inc., Zebulon, NC, 1978.

an Episcopal Parish in the Diocese of East Carolina
Christ Church, 320 Pollock Street, P.O. Box 1246, New Bern NC 28563
252-633-2109