Story of our Sanctuary
In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Episcopalian church attendance in central Contra Costa County was growing rapidly and taxing the capacities of nearby St. Stephen’s Church in Orinda and St. Paul’s Church in Walnut Creek. The Diocese of California felt it was time to build a church that would serve the community of Lafayette.
The result was St. Anselm’s, which features a unique “Church in the Round” structure that calls forth the idea of Jesus as Fisherman.
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- The design of St. Anselm’s follows that of the Chapel of St. James the Fisherman in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Bishop Pike, who attended church there during his summer vacations, loved the design and encouraged the new congregation to adopt it as a model.
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- A priest of the mid-20th century summed it up well when he said “The Church is first and foremost a family. Therefore we sit facing one another, rather than looking at the backs of one another’s heads as does an audience; we are a congregation, those called together.”
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- William Sims, an original church member, fabricated the central cross and the processional cross of molten bronze and silver on steel. They were fashioned by melting down metal objects donated by church members. The Lenten cross was built of wooden cross pieces held together with angled carriage bolts, and the crown of thorns was made of barbed wire.
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- The original small organ was later replaced by a larger pipe organ. In 2013 we acquired a Moller organ from Temple Emanu-eL in San Francisco, is a significant upgrade from our previous organ.
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- To retire the construction debt to the Diocese and become a self-sufficient parish, church members decided to have a major fund-raiser in 1976. Congregants “bought” church pillars, and small plaques on the pillars still record the “sales.”
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- The welded steel Stations of the Cross were created by Fran Moyer, an award-winning California artist, are mounted on the west and south walls of the sanctuary. They depict the 14 events that tradition indicates occurred as Jesus carried his cross from Pilate’s palace to Golgotha. Moyer chose welded steel as her medium because, in her words, “fire and steel were expressive of the enormous theme.” The project was commissioned and donated to the church by Mary Lou Martin, a former parishioner.
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- New York artist Glidden Parker designed the striking floor-to-ceiling stained glass window on the north side of the church. Its title is “The Atonement”, a major subject of St Anselm’s writings. The window was commissioned and donated to the church by several families, including the Ward family.
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- In keeping with the nautical theme, the font is a giant South Pacific clamshell. It is from the island of Mindano in the Philippines and was brought to us by Dick and Anne Ward. Dick was was one of our first Senior Wardens and Anne is an 8’oclock parishioner
It was decided that the Glenside-Burton Valley Estates area would be a suitable location. The original purchase price for the entire parcel was $35,000. The startup congregation totaled 59 members. Bishop Pike decided that the church would be named for St. Anselm because he had been an early Archbishop of Canterbury. The first service was held on February 8th of that year. St Anselm’s quickly grew in size and by October 29th had 355 communicants.
During the early years, the congregation worked to raise funds to build a sanctuary on the property they had acquired. Until the sanctuary was completed, the congregation and church school met all over Lafayette: in the Park Theatre, at the Chapel of the Valley Mortuary, in the garage of the vicarage, and in various local doctors’ offices. Construction began in May of 1960 and the first service was held on September 25, 1960. The church was officially dedicated on October 22, 1960, by Bishop Pike, assisted by Rev. Clarence Stacey and the Right Rev. Henry Shires, the retired suffragan bishop. The total cost was $131,000, a very reasonable price for a church building at that time.