![]() Thomas, and parish musician Annie Hopson. Back: Carol Brodeur, server and senior warden of St. Timothy Holder, Loretta Bowers, Teresa Bowers Parker, Dan Parker, and Johvan Bowers. Holder considers that evening a turning point for the parish. Thomas for its midnight Christmas Mass, resulting in an eclectic mix of mountain gospel, African American gospel, and traditional Methodist music, all within the frame of the 1982 Hymnal and the Book of Common Prayer. In 2017, Holder invited several local artists and musicians to join St. Thomas’s earliest foray into what Holder calls “liturgical bluegrass” happened serendipitously. “If we have any authenticity and appreciation for this ground, this beautiful area, the mountains, the people we agree with and disagree with, might music have something to do with being a little closer and more appreciative?” Holder said. What would it look like, he wondered, to embrace Appalachian music and the spirit of its people in the context of Episcopal liturgy? Upon his return to eastern Tennessee, he again considered the question of contextualization. While in New York, Holder spearheaded a liturgy infused with hip-hop - a project that drew teens and young adults to his South Bronx parish. Thomas marked a homecoming for the Elizabethton native. After his earlier career in state and national politics and subsequent work as a priest in Alabama, New Jersey, and New York, Holder’s call to serve St. When Holder arrived in 2015, weekly attendance at the 108-capacity church had ebbed to a low. Thomas Episcopal Church has focused on integrating bluegrass music into the Anglican liturgy, and the resonance of the two traditions has helped revitalize the parish, says its rector, the Rev. Guitar, fiddle, mandolin, banjo, dulcimer, and harmonica often ring out alongside the organ and piano from the 1861 brick building in the historic district of Elizabethton, Tennessee. Leslie Burrell and her children, Lucy, River, and Sawyer, participate in Appalachian ministries at St.
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