The Episcopal Church in the Los Angeles area dates back to 1864, but Saint Barnabas in Pasadena dates back to “Great Migration” of African Americans from the South, which started at the beginning of the twentieth century. In more recent years a significant number of Afro-Caribbean immigrants to California from Latin America (especially Costa Rica and Panama) have joined Saint Barnabas.
The African Americans who came to Pasadena were confronted with prejudice and forbidden from worshiping at All Saints Church in Pasadena. Not to be denied, on June 16, 1909, a meeting was held at the home of Mrs. Georgia Weatherton on South Fair Oaks Avenue “to organize an Episcopal mission,” soon known as Saint Barnabas Guild. Saint Barnabas Church itself was founded in 1923 by eight women. The Saint Barnabas Congregation was admitted into union with the Episcopal Convention as a mission in 1932.
In the early 1930s, the Dobbins family donated the present property at 1062 North Fair Oaks Avenue and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Fleming made a gift of the current sanctuary, which was dedicated by Bishop Stevens in June 1933. The parish hall was a wood frame building already located at the site.
Saint Barnabas was granted parish status at the Annual Convention of the Diocese of Los Angeles in December 1988.
In 2002, Rev. Antony Glenn Miller invited the congregation to enter and leave the church through the front doors on Fair Oaks as a sign of focusing more intentionally outward into the community instead of turning inward onto the churchyard. He arranged for a team to make dinner once a month at the Union Station Homeless Services Center in Pasadena and developed a Saint Barnabas webpage.
The Parish Hall was built to be a blessing to the Northwest Pasadena/West Altadena community. In that spirit, three A.A. groups use the Parish Hall during weeknights, a Spanish speaking Catholic congregation uses the Chapel on Sunday afternoons, and a Spanish speaking Pentecostal congregation meets in the parish hall on Friday and Sunday evenings.
The Saint Barnabas Church Family celebrates its West African based tradition of a matriarchal spiritual core by paying homage to our “Sheroes and Queens” who left a huge impact on the church family with a gorgeous Memorial Rose Garden. This memorial epitomizes the nature of the Saint Barnabas Church family: once a family member, ALWAYS a family member.
Source: stbarnabaspasadena.org
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