St. John’s Episcopal Church is located at 301 W. Liberty St. in Winnsboro. | Martha Ladd
WINNSBORO – If you want to know who your neighbor is, you might want visit St. John’s Episcopal Church for a four-part Lenten Series beginning Sunday, Mar. 10 at 4 p.m. The church has invited speakers from the Episcopal, Jewish, Muslim and Greek Orthodox faiths to offer insights and observations about their faith and how love is the starting point for interfaith dialogue.
“With love as the common thread to each of these faiths,” a church flyer states, “Rev. Canon Alan Bentrup from the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina will open the series at the March 10 Sunday service.”
Other presentations are scheduled for March 17 (Rabbi Eric Mollo), March 24 (Imam Omar Shaheed, Masjid As-Salaam) and March 31 (Rev. Fr. Michael Plantis). A reception will follow each presentation.
At the same location for the past 130 years, this series is one of the ways St. John’s continues to serve its congregation and the town of Winnsboro.
Twelve years after the Episcopal Church was founded in Fairfield in 1827, the first church building was constructed in 1839, at Garden and Fairfield Streets. Burned to the ground first by Union soldiers in Feb. 1865 and again in 1869 by a fire started in a nearby stable, the building was rebuilt twice in two locations in Winnsboro.
Today the picturesque red brick church stands at 301 W. Liberty Street, on a treed lot with decades old shrubs that flower prolifically in the spring and summer.
“Temples made with hands could be destroyed…but the Church is eternal in the hearts of men,” Bishop Howe said at the laying of the current church’s cornerstone in Nov. 1888.
For information about the church or the Lenten series, call 803-815-1499 or 405-777-8440.
