Across the globe last week, churches around the world celebrated Ash Wednesday, marking the start of Lent, the 40-day season of fasting and prayer that concludes with Easter. Every year, pastors and priests mark the foreheads of church members’ with ashes in the shape of a cross, a symbol of human mortality and an outward sign of devotion.
At the Trinity Reformed Church in Ridgewood, the holiday had appealed to at least thirteen locals, who gathered last Wednesday to worship together and observe Ash Wednesday.
As church members shuffled in from the snowy street, they were greeted by Hilde, Pastor Thomas Goodhart’s dog, who attends all the church’s services and has since become a beloved part of the congregation. For the next hour, they sang hymns and read liturgy together before filing to the front of the church to receive their ashes. As Goodhart brushed ash crosses on each person’s forehead, he quietly repeated the same phrase: “From dust you came and to dust you shall return.”
“Part of Ash Wednesday is the reminder of our mortality and the limitations of our humanity that we all experience,” Goodhart told me, “The ashes can remind us that we are not alone in this, we have one another.”
“For me Ash Wednesday is peculiarly hopeful.”
While Goodhart has led Trinity Reformed Church for the last fifteen years, the church itself has existed in New York City for over 170 years. The congregation dates back to 1853, when Reverend Carl August Julius Pohle, a German immigrant, had started the “Deutsche Evangelishche St. Petri Kirche,” along with twenty-one other immigrants living in the area. The church’s original name translates to the “German Evangelical St. Petri Church” and Goodhart says he’s unsure of its original location. (Not to be confused with the South Bushwick Reformed Church, which dates to the same era but is still around.)
Goodhart believes the church’s original location was on Bushwick Avenue, back when Bushwick was its own, separate town. The town would not merge with the City of Brooklyn until 1855, which itself would not become part of New York City until 1898.
The church’s location there, however, was disbanded in 1919, according to Goodhart.
Over the next few decades, the small congregation of German immigrants would move from Bushwick to Williamsburg to the Lower East Side and later back to Bushwick. In 1925, the church, now known as “Trinity Reformed Church of Brooklyn,” settled on 60th Place in Ridgewood, nestled between Palmetto and Woodbine Street.
“Architecturally, it’s very common of its time and there are similar structures throughout the tri-state [area] including an Episcopal church in Woodhaven by the same architect,” Goodhart writes me in an email. “When built, there was hope to eventually have a bell tower on the corner of the building that would have actually connected to the parsonage next door. More importantly, there was hope to build a two-story extension that would have come off of the building into what is now the backyard, that would have been classrooms. We have the blueprints for both,” he adds.
“Given the time period in which it was finished—just prior to the Depression followed by the war—these additions were not made,” he admitted. It was decided that “it was more important to spend the money on the immigrant community at that time.”
Two church bells, nonetheless, remain from the congregation’s previous Williamsburg location, that now stands on a cement slab at the entrance to the churchyard, “where the tower was intended to be built,” according to Goodhart. Etched onto one of them is the phrase “Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe und Frieden auf Erden und den Menschen ein Wohlgefallen,” which translates to “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom God favours,” a line from Luke 2:14.
“Incidentally sometime maybe thirty years ago or so the bells were stolen and taken to a scrap yard. Fortunately, the proprietor felt something was amiss and tracked down the church and returned the bells to us,” Goodhart recalls.
Though no longer a German-speaking church, the group is still deeply influenced by those immigrant roots. They include German liturgy and prayers in some of their services and many of their church members are first and second generation immigrants, from a variety of countries. But Goodhart told me that the church provides a space for those in the neighborhood to find supportive community and deep connection, no matter their country of origin.
“Although we are a small congregation, our membership comes from all over. Essentially, it comes down to belonging,” said Goodhart. “Some years ago, Trinity adopted a welcome statement which we open each worship service with: whoever you are and wherever you are on life’s journey, God loves you, and you are welcome here.”
Trinity Reformed is located at 66-30 60th Place, in Ridgewood. The congregagtion meets for general worship every Sunday at 10 am and also hosts Bible studies, prayer meetings and various 12-step programs throughout the week.
Images taken by Corrie Aune.
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