St. Matthew's and St. Joseph's Episcopal Church (Detroit, Mich.)

Church formed in 1971 from the merger of two Detroit, Michigan, Episcopal parishes.

From the description of St. Matthew's and St. Joseph's Episcopal Church records, 1884-2005. (University of Michigan). WorldCat record id: 85778213

In 1971, two of Detroit's most historically significant and influential Episcopal churches merged to form St. Matthew's and St. Joseph's Episcopal Church.

St. Matthew's, the older of the two congregations, claims the distinction of being the third oldest Black church in the state of Michigan. Established in 1846 by the Reverend William C. Monroe, William Lambert, and other former members of Second Baptist Church, St. Matthew's Mission (as it was then called) played an active role in the education and spiritual support of the Black community of Detroit. The church, along with Second Baptist, was prominent as one of the stations on the underground railroad that shepherded fleeing slaves northward, out of the South and, from Detroit, across the border into Canada.

During its first decade, the membership of St. Matthew's was small and subject to sudden fluctuation, particularly as its members felt threatened by provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law that could have returned them into bondage. Monroe, more than anyone else, maintained St. Matthew's as a viable church body, and when he resigned as vicar in 1859 to depart for Liberia as a missionary, St. Matthew's Mission experienced further decline. In 1864, the mission liquidated its assets. Some of the faithful continued to meet at Christ Church as the Sunday School of St. Matthew's, but in reality, from 1864 to 1880, the mission had ceased to exist.

In 1880, the mission was revived, formal ties being established with the Michigan Diocese of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Services were first held in a rented hall. Then in 1881 the mission was moved to the site it would occupy for the next ninety years at the corner of St. Antoine and Elizabeth. In 1882, J. Mott Williams became the first regular pastor of the reorganized congregation.

Throughout the nineteenth century, St. Matthew's, within the hierarchy of the Episcopal Church, was an organized mission. Then in 1907, following formal application and consideration by the Convention of the Diocese of Michigan, St. Matthew's obtained parish status, administratively responsible to the diocese and now governed by a vestry board chosen by its members.

Although beset by continual financial worries, St. Matthew's grew in membership and importance to the community. After World War II, however, the church began experiencing the effects of shifts in the city's population. In addition to the movement of some of its members from the city to the suburbs, urban renewal was a further source of community disruption. To survive, church leaders realized that they would have to revitalize their ministry, and perhaps most importantly, find new facilities. By the late 1960s, under the leadership of St. Matthew's rector, the Reverend Quintin E. Primo, Jr., negotiations were opened with St. Joseph's, another similarly struggling parish, to discuss the possibility of a merger.

The origins of St. Joseph's Episcopal Church can be traced to a commemorative chapel which Mrs. Lucetta Medbury gifted to the Episcopal Church in 1883. At first used only as a Sunday school, the members of St. Joseph's Memorial Chapel soon began considering whether to formalize its relationship to the Episcopal Church. Following consultations with the bishop, who gave them directives on the required number of members and the amount of pledge money needed, the members of St. Joseph's Memorial Chapel, on October 25, 1884, came together to form a new church to be called St. Joseph's Memorial Mission. The Reverend William J. Speiers was the Mission's first rector, followed by E. Breddon Hamilton and Louis Arthur.

In the 1890s, most of the members of St. Joseph's merged into St. Paul's which Bishop Charles Williams had designated as his cathedral. In 1906, some of the church's former members decided to re-establish St. Joseph's at a different location, in the rapidly-growing area along Woodward Avenue, north of Grand Boulevard. This parish grew, and in 1926, moved into its new facility on Woodward Avenue between Holbrook and King Streets.

The church in the coming decades acquired a reputation of being open to the needs of the people of the neighborhood. As the parish changed, the rectors of the church struggled to integrate their membership - and with success. In the 1960s, in the midst of the Vietnam War, St. Joseph's supported the principle that their church could be a sanctuary to young men who opposed the war as morally reprehensible. About this same time, moved by the requests of homosexual Christians for a place to worship, St. Joseph's opened its doors.

There were costs to each of the liberal stands the church chose to make - costs in terms of time, money, and membership. In 1970, when the then rector Robert Morrison resigned, the vestry of St. Joseph's began considering a merger with St. Matthew's, and invited their rector, Quintin E. Primo, Jr., to serve as priest-in-charge of St. Joseph's.

The merger was completed in 1971, with the St. Matthew's congregation moving over to St. Joseph's church facility. Primo served as rector of the merged congregation from 1971 to 1972, when he became Bishop of Chicago. He was replaced by the Reverend Orris G. Walker, Jr.

From the guide to the St. Matthew's and St. Joseph's Episcopal Church (Detroit, Mich.) Records, 1884-2006, (Bentley Historical Library University of Michigan)