Downtown Trinity Episcopal Church

Vibrant, welcoming, traditional yet contemporary, superb musical tradition, Open and Affirming… Trinity is an amazing worship community which exemplifies all the best in the Episcopal Church. Many of us «fled» here after bad experiences elsewhere, and found both welcome and challenge.
Trinity means community. Being disabled, getting here has seemed difficult, but every step has been rewarded by the warm and generous «welcome home» Trinity gives. This is community, and I find I can’t live fully without it.
At Trinity you do not need to leave your brain at the door. You can wonder, be uncertain, even doubt. But you can also be silent here, and know God, and worship as community and as an individual.
In the BBC series The Ascent of Man, Professor Brownowski, standing with his feet in the pond where ashes were dumped from the crematorium at Auschwitz, said «This is what comes of too much certainty.» We live surrounded by certainty: certainty that this group is evil, that that religion or party has the only answers, that this interpretation is the one true one.
Trinity doesn’t do this. Peter Abelard said, «By Doubting We Come To Question, And By Questioning, We Perceive The Truth.» If we are not so confident of The Truth as Abelard was, in the 21^st century we can hope thoughtful people are learning to be wary of too much certainty. But Trinity expects only that we that we are all on a quest to discover what God means to each of us, in our different ways and with our different experiences of life.

In the 20-​odd years I’ve been a member here, I’ve watched Trinity grow steadily into a parish with increasing age diversity. We are much «younger» than we were in the 1990s. Like T. Ramsey, I urge you to visit. Serious commitment to music and liturgy and «good works.» We’re usually open for drop-​ins to pray, just sit and be quiet, or explore on Mondays 9 – 3, Wednesdays 12 – 3, Thursdays 9 – 3, Fridays 12 – 3. It’s beautiful all the time, but on a sunny late morning, it’s breathtaking!

The red doors pulled me into Trinity as I passed it everyday on my way to work downtown and inside its just as beautiful if not more. The stained glass windows on the interior are very pretty, and the liturgy is anglo-​catholic in style. The music programs at Trinity tend to focus on older music that features the organ. I eventually have become a parishioner here and recommend it for a place to visit if you’re at one of the downtown hotels or looking for a church home in the heart of First Hill.