Christ Church Accokeek stands at 600 Farmington Rd. W. in Accokeek, on a 12-acre parcel at Farmington and Bryan Point roads. Established in 1698, it is known as the oldest structure in the Accokeek area still in active use and as a home of Bible-based, traditional Anglican worship. Its brick worship hall, built in the mid-18th century and rebuilt after an 1856 fire, still centers Sunday worship at 8:00 and 9:30.
Two Sunday Gatherings in a 1698 Parish
Two Sunday worship services are held at 8:00 and 9:30 in the historic church at 600 Farmington Rd. W. An embedded YouTube worship player provides an online option for the congregation. The parish's identity is Bible-based, traditional Anglicanism. It understands itself as a parish of Jesus Christ's one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church within the Anglican tradition, and it is a congregation of the Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic in the Anglican Church in North America. Christ Church also affiliates with the American Anglican Council and seeks to live biblically faithful lives.
Two parking areas serve the property. One runs along the north side of the brick school building, while another sits along the western boundary beside Farmington Road. The main entrance to the church is on the south side, reached through a small gabled vestibule.
From Prayer Meetings to St. John's Parish
Prayer meetings began in 1698 at the present church location, and a frame building soon followed. By 1730 and 1732, Accokeek Village had a place of worship where the Rector of Broad Creek held services three times each month. The brick phase of the church was completed in the 1740s and opened in January 1748. The congregation was recognized as separate in 1823, then separated from Broad Creek Parish and formed St. John's Parish in 1869. The church had stood on private land until December 1843, when William Henry Lyles and his wife, Eliza, deeded the southern part of their Cherry Mount farm to the Vestry.
The congregation continued through the colonial and Revolutionary eras, the War of 1812 and the Civil War. Its identity is therefore rooted in both the early Church of England tradition and the later development of Anglicanism in America. The present congregation carries that history forward as an active Accokeek parish rather than treating the old building as a monument apart from worship.
The Fire That Refined the 1857 Church
Much of the building's character comes from two major construction periods. The 18th-century walls are solid Flemish-bond brick, some walls measuring 24 inches thick, and they rest directly on clay subsoil without modern footings. Bricks are fused at their ends from being placed too close to the fires in old white-oak kilns. When the church burned on Christmas Eve 1856, those thick walls remained standing.
The congregation rebuilt in 1857, reusing the old brick shell and adding courses of brick toward the roof. The redesign brought the present Italianate details, including a bracketed cornice, hood molds over round-arched windows and a framed entrance vestibule. The influence of the Oxford or Tractarian movement helped shape a more ornate expression of the Holy Service. A chancel was added at the east end, stained-glass windows appeared over time, conventional pews replaced the colonial box pews and all faced east, and a bell tower changed the church's western roofline.
A rose window was installed in 1925 in memory of the Rev. Charles Curtis and his wife, Margaret. Fundraising for the window was led by Rosalie Underwood Smith and Emma Gallahan, who traveled by horse and buggy to gather contributions. Central heating and new organs came later, followed by a major preservation effort in the late 1960s. That work installed new pews, created a wide center aisle, concealed pipes and wiring, laid hexagonal brick tiles in the center aisle, replaced the balcony stairs with a circular stairway and renewed the belfry.
One especially tangible object is an 18th-century silver chalice and paten set used during special services. Churchwarden John Edgar gave the pieces to the church, and London goldsmith John Barthelot made them in 1752 or 1753. An early pump organ also remains on the ground floor of the church.
Inside the Brick Nave
Christ Church is a high, one-story rectangular building with a slate-covered gable roof. Its western end faces Farmington Road through a centered tripartite window with diamond-paned glass. Above it is a wooden cupola with a louvered opening on each face and a gilded cross at the peak. The south facade contains the principal doorway and four tall diamond-pane casement windows. At the opposite end, a projecting sanctuary and two lower wings give the church a distinctly ecclesiastical profile.
Inside, a large open nave leads into the sanctuary beneath exposed dark-brown roof trusses. Hexagonal brick tiles cover the front, rear and center aisle, while dark-stained random-width boards remain beneath the pews. Wide vertical wood wainscoting wraps the lower walls, and plaster covers the upper surfaces. Clear diamond-pane windows line the north and south walls. At the east end, a tripartite stained-glass window adds yellow, blue, green and red panes above the chancel. A gallery crosses the rear of the nave, reached by a spiral stair, with slender supports painted to resemble fluted metal pillars with papyrus-leaf capitals.
The 12-acre property also contains a two-story frame rectory south of the church and the brick building that once housed Canterbury School. A brick walk circles the church through burial grounds with mature cedar and deciduous trees. The oldest marked grave dates to 1775.
Scripture-centered Formation
Christ Church's formation work has placed Scripture and the practices of Anglican faith at the center of adult learning. Confirmation classes have addressed Holy Scripture, Holy Baptism, Holy Communion, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the summary of the Law, and the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds.
- Learning to listen has included attentive listening, thoughtful reflection, confession and forgiveness, the Passion of Jesus Christ and the Resurrection.
- Bible courses have considered how God speaks personally and collectively, moralistic therapeutic deism, rugged individualism, total wisdom, dualism and secularism.
- Self-examination lessons have focused on confession and repentance.
Sermon and class recordings preserve audio and teaching handouts so the parish's biblical teaching can be revisited.
Father Brian Vander Wel's Road to Accokeek
The Rev. Father Brian Vander Wel, the church's 43rd Rector, grew up in the Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and graduated from Calvin College in 1990 with a bachelor of arts in philosophy. In 1992 he began lay-campus ministry at the Church of the Ascension in Pittsburgh through the Coalition for Christ Outreach. There he encountered strengths in the evangelical, catholic and charismatic traditions, and his commitment to Anglicanism deepened. He was confirmed an Episcopalian in January 1993.
Father Brian entered Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in 1996 and graduated in 1999 with a Master of Divinity with Honors. He was ordained as both deacon and priest that year by the Right Rev. Robert Duncan. After temporary and short-term ministry in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, he became Assistant to the Rector, later Associate Rector, at Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville in 2001. He was elected Rector of Christ Church Accokeek and began serving in January 2007. His pastoral commitment is centered on people knowing and loving God through his Son, Jesus Christ.
Restoration, Integration and Parish Life
The middle of the 20th century brought physical renewal and a confrontation with racial segregation. When the Rev. Roland Jones became Rector in 1958, the church and parish hall lacked adequate heat, the bell tower was rotten, paint was peeling and the floors were vulnerable to termites. Parish members responded with volunteer work. They installed central heating, repaired roofs, scraped and painted woodwork, removed and replaced trees and built new sidewalks. New members joined the work, the congregation grew and the parish became self-supporting. A new parish hall was constructed, and the parish organized Canterbury School.
The same period also exposed segregation within the congregation. Black communicants had been required to sit in a rear pew and receive Communion after white members. About two months after becoming Rector, Jones quietly told them they could sit in any pew and informed the Vestry. No objection followed, and he later participated in the March on Washington. These episodes belong to a wider story in which the parish has repeatedly reconsidered what its biblical faith means in public life.
The parish hall served Sunday School students, parish activities and annual parish suppers for many years. Canterbury operated as a college preparatory school from 1961 until it closed in May 2000. Although the school is no longer part of the parish's work, its history reflects the congregation's long involvement in education and the use of its buildings for community life.
A Churchyard That Keeps the Story
The burial grounds surrounding Christ Church have been in use since the Revolutionary era. The oldest known burials are William R. Webster, who died in 1775, John Webster in 1783 and Joanna Cox in 1797. Their stones stand immediately to the right of the present entrance. Many local residents and rectors are also buried among the mature trees and old markers.
Civil War Medal of Honor recipient Charles Baldwin lies near the east wall, and other church figures buried there include Patrick Henry Bealle, a descendant of Patrick Henry of Virginia. Their graves connect the active church to the families and history of Accokeek. The old brick church, reconstructed sanctuary, parish buildings and surrounding churchyard form one continuous landscape.
At the center of that landscape is a working Anglican parish with two Sunday worship times, a 1698 foundation and an emphasis on biblical faithfulness. Christ Church Accokeek remains both an active house of worship and the oldest church structure in the Accokeek area still serving its original congregation.