St. John's Episcopal Church - Thibodaux

Last night, Lisa Fox at My Manner of Life challenged me to a pictures-of-our-churches duel. It was too late, and I was too tired to do it last night, but Lisa got a second wind and posted her pictures late yesterday. I saved my efforts for this morning. Lisa has the clergy and the congregation in hers, but our church is so small that the people would be recognizable, so I waited until they had left to take my pictures, because I was not sure they'd want to be on the internet.

 

Here's my church, here's the steeple (belfry), open the door, and all the people have left. The parish was founded in 1843 by Rt. Rev. Leonidas Polk, and the church building was completed in 1844. The church originally had a porch with columns, but the porch was enclosed and is now the narthex. An extensive renovation was completed in 2001, but the on-going maintenance costs continue to be high.

As a youth, Bishop Polk, known as the Fighting Bishop, attended West Point and when the Civil War began, he joined the Confederate Army. He wasn't a very good military strategist, but he cared well for his troops. He was shot in battle in Georgia and is buried there.


The view of the sanctuary of the church shows the stained glass window of St. John the Evangelist, holding a chalice with a snake coming out of it. According to legend, the emperor Domitian offered poisoned wine to John, but he blessed the wine and the poison came out of the cup in the form of a snake.

The beautiful needlepoint kneeling cushions at the communion rail were a years-long project of the Episcopal Church Women of St. John. I was asked to do background fill for the needlework, but once I saw the lovely work that other more talented women had done with the designs, I declined, because I knew my needlework skills were not up to par even to do the background.

 

The unusual kneelers in the church are in a fixed position, halfway between up and down. The undocumented story is that they were built in that manner to accommodate women's hoop skirts, which makes sense to me. Or else, the position may represent halfway between Catholic and Protestant custom, the Via Media, so to speak.

 

In the choir loft are the pipes and other innards of our old organ. The pipes that you see in the picture are decorative only. The true sounding pipes are behind them and are visible only on the sides of the organ from a position in the choir loft and cannot be seen from the nave.

The organ, which dates to the late 19th century, was originally in an Episcopal mission church in the Northeast, and the church authorities wanted to get rid of it and were willing to give it away to anyone who would dismantle it and cart it away. Jim Hammann, who restored the organ, took it apart, transported the parts to New Orleans, rebuilt the organ, and installed it in our church for quite a reasonable price, or we would not have been able to afford it.

 

The cabinet of the organ console is completely new, since the original was unsalvageable.

UPDATE: From Ormonde Plater at Through the Dust:

After his death in 1864, Polk was buried in Augusta, Georgia. In 1945 his body and that of his wife were disinterred and buried in Christ Church Cathedral, New Orleans. They are on the right, or downtown, side aisle near the organ console. Worshippers returning from the altar rail have to step around them. (Bishop Iveson Noland, who died in a plane crash in 1975, and his wife are in the opposite aisle.)

I once asked the bishop how come we got the Polk bodies back from Georgia. He replied: "The UDC did it." That's United Daughters of the Confederacy, at that time more powerful than an altar guild.

Thanks, Ormonde. I did not know that. I'm happy to pass on the information to my readers. Next time I visit Christ Church, I'll be sure to look for the grave marker.

Note: To lend perspective to the chunk of time that blogging takes from my life, this post took approximately three and a half hours, with breaks for breakfast, to load the dryer and fold the clothes in need of immediate folding or they would be wrinkled, and have an argument with Grandpère about his negative attitude versus what he calls my don't-care attitude. Just so you'll know how much time a post like this takes. Of course, I may work at a slower pace than other blogggers. I don't know how Lisa did her wonderful post in the late hours last night, because we are in the same time zone, and I was way too tired and would have made a botched mess of a post, had I done mine then.