Christ Church was organized as a parish in the late 1820s and early 1830s. Its founding members were people of great Christian zeal and sincere religious faith, but they were also part of a social class that overwhelmingly relied on slave labor for its own maintenance, comfort, and wealth. Follow this link to see what the Isaac Project has learned about the ties between Christ Church and slavery in the early years of the parish.
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In 1841 a woman named Mary Jane became the first person of color to be baptized at Christ Church. Others would follow. Although Mary Jane lived her life enslaved and forced to labor for a wealthy Christ Church couple named Joseph and Ann Minnick, all three persons were part of the same parish community as well as the mystical Body of Christ. Indeed, Mrs. Minnick had sponsored Mary Jane at her baptism. This tension between intimate connection and unbridgeable power hierarchies was characteristic of race relations during the early decades of the history of Christ Church.
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The first known gift to Christ Church is a set of silver communion chalices, given in August 1831 on the occasion of the opening of the new Episcopal church. The donor was a widow named Rebecca Green Sims, whose life story reveals some of the ways in which the founding and funding of the infant church was bound up with an American economy based on global trade, colonization of the interior of North America, and the forced labor of chattel slavery.
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The original Christ Church was built in 1830 at the northwest corner of Spring and High Streets (now Church Street and 6th Avenue). Demolished in 1892, the old building’s understated Gothic form won high praise from contemporaries for its beauty, simplicity, and elegance. Enslaved laborers were almost certainly responsible for erecting its stone walls, for the fine woodwork within, and other aspects of its construction. Follow this link to see what the Isaac Project has learned about the role slavery likely played in the building of Christ Church’s first sanctuary.

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The interior of the old Christ Church, built in 1830, was relatively small and simple. Its space was defined by features that could be found in churches of various denominations across the South and the country, things like stained glass windows, wooden furnishings and ornaments, and box pews. Those box pews in particular, each rented to the highest bidder, shed light on how the church’s interior reflected the antebellum social order outside its doors. Follow this link to see what the Isaac Project has learned about slavery and architectural space in Christ Church’s first sanctuary.

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The Isaac Project is named for an enslaved Black man who lived in the early nineteenth century. Enslaved by a member of Christ Church, Isaac was baptized by the parish rector in 1842. He has come to symbolize the Isaac Project’s quest to unravel and understand the complex relationship of the church with anti-Black racism, white supremacy, and systems of oppression. But who was Isaac himself? What has the Isaac Project discovered about him?

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In the early 1890s, Christ Church relocated form its first home—a modest Gothic structure at Church Street and 6th Avenue—to the larger, grander edifice the congregation still calls home at Broadway and 9th Avenue. The construction of the new church coincided with a low point in race relations in the South, part of which can be witnessed in the segregated building trades responsible for the new building. Follow this link to see what the Isaac Project has learned about the construction of Christ Church’s current sanctuary in the Jim Crow era.

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The interior of Christ Church is a grand, beautiful house of worship. Though it has seen some changes since it was completed in 1894, it continues to embody the vision and values of the men and women who brought the church building into being. Some of those values were rooted in the white supremacy of the late 19th century, a mix of cultural, social, and legal frameworks known as Jim Crow. Follow this link to see what the Isaac Project has learned about how late 19th century race relations shaped Christ Church’s present building, practically and symbolically.

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The struggle to end racial segregation remade Nashville in the 1950s and ‘60s. Christ Church’s rector during these years, Rev. Raymond T. Ferris, showed himself to be a committed ally of the civil rights movement. The church’s vestry, however, repeatedly made clear its support for the racially segregated status quo and resisted opportunities for biracial fellowship. Follow this link to see what the Isaac Project has learned about Christ Church’s conflicted relationship to the early years of the civil rights movement in Nashville.
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In the summer of 1967, St. Anselm’s Episcopal Chapel and Student Center (now St. Anselm’s Episcopal Church) operated a summer education program for children in North Nashville. The “liberation school,” as it became known, became the subject of controversy when a Nashville police captain testified before the U.S. Senate that the program was using federal funds to teach Black children to “hate whitey.” Follow this link to see what the Isaac Project has learned about race relations in late-1960s Nashville, the evolving state of the civil rights movement, and Christ Church’s response to protests for and against racial equity.

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