While the Columbus Spring Pilgrimage often revolves around antebellum homes and historical houses, a few of the city’s houses of worship opened their doors for this year’s season.

On Sunday, the Preservation Society of Columbus hosted its Progressive Church Tour, bringing visitors to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Annunciation Catholic Church, Main Street Presbyterian Church, the building that formerly hosted First Baptist Church and Temple B’nai Israel.

While Pilgrimage used to include some church tours, society founder Gaines Gaskin said this was the group’s second year putting together a progressive version of the tour including multiple locations.

“We just wanted to share all of the historical churches, and there are so many,” Gaskin said. “We were just so excited to be able to do it.”

Last year, Gaskin said, the progressive tour started with just three sites, but this year, the tour grew to include even more diversity in its offerings.

Heather Williams, of Columbus, was one of the tour attendees. She said she wanted to show her husband the church she started attending during college, Annunciation Catholic Church. But she was also using the tour to learn something new.

“I saw this tour pop up and I thought that’s a great time for (my husband) to just go and see it,” Williams said. “And then I was also interested in seeing the Jewish temple.”

Each stop on the tour was manned by a docent or preservation society member who led the tour group through the church’s history.

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

At St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, docent Steve Pieschel told The Dispatch he has been a member for more than 40 years. He has given tours of the church as a part of Pilgrimage for about 20 of those years.

“I like to teach people about the church and its history,” Pieschel said. “The history is very interesting to me. Its connection to the town, the area, to the change from antebellum politics to post-bellum politics.”

Pieschel told the group the episcopal church was originally built on the north side of town. After a false start in 1837, a new version was constructed next to the Stephen D. Lee Home in 1838.

After disagreements with Lee, Pieschel said, the church relocated once more to its current location on College Street in 1860.

The sanctuary included dark wood beams, vaulted ceilings, and stained glass windows that were restored in 2010.

Annunciation Catholic Church

Just a few blocks down College Street, docent Karen Henry waited for the group at Annunciation Catholic Church. Henry said she has been a parishioner at the church for about 40 years, and she has helped with tours for about 20, sharing an appreciation of Catholicism with all kinds of visitors.

“I’ll share it with anybody,” Henry said.

Henry called Annunciation a “bellum” church, since its cornerstone was laid in 1863 during the Civil War, but the building wasn’t completely finished until the 1900s.

Henry said the church started a historic restoration in 2009, raising money to get a new roof and drainage. During the restoration, the church also hired a forensic architect to help restore the sanctuary to its original colors, finding a pale pink and vine design under a layer of seafoam green that had been added in the 1960s.

“We’re very proud,” Henry said. “It’s been a community effort – not just Catholics, but a community effort – to raise the money to do these things.”

Main Street Presbyterian Church

At Main Street Presbyterian Church, docent Bess Swedenburg was waiting to tell the group about her church. She has been attending Main Street for 76 years, and said she has given tours “as long as we’ve done tours here.”

“I’ve worshiped here all my life, although I was not born on what is called the cradle role,” Swedenburg told The Dispatch. “I was not. But this church means so much to me. More than I can say. This is my spiritual home, my place of worship.”

Swedenburg said Main Street Presbyterian’s congregation was organized in 1829 by missionaries from the Mayhew mission. By 1838, a church building had been built, though the church relocated to its current location in 1884.

The church has expanded since, including adding a memorial annex, the Bateman building and opening a school in 1969, Swedenburg said. In 1973, the church split, which led to the creation of the First Presbyterian Church of Columbus, Mississippi, she said.

Formerly First Baptist Church

At the church building that formerly hosted First Baptist Church on Seventh Street North, preservation society member Betty Bryan shared a brief history of the church.

Bryan said the church was originally formed in 1832, and the first sanctuary was built on the church’s current site in 1838. That building was torn down, and a second building was constructed on the same spot in 1908 following a Gothic Revival-style structure.

“It was called one of the finest Baptist church buildings in the South,” Bryan said.

Local historian and preservation society board member Susie Shelton said that a large number of Black people who were enslaved used to walk from their homes to worship in the Baptist church.

At one point, she said, there were more enslaved members worshiping there than white members. In 1851, she shared, there were 527 members of the church total, and 402 were Black.

In 2022, First Baptist Church sold the historic 81,000 square-foot property downtown to a developer, with the congregation moving to a new location on Bluecutt Road. Since March 17, the non-denominational Revive Church has been meeting in the Seventh Street North building.

Temple B’nai Israel

The final stop on the tour, Temple B’nai Israel on Second Avenue North, was hosted by docent Amy Lasky. Lasky said she has been a part of the temple’s congregation for about 15 or 20 years, but this was her first time giving a tour of the temple for Pilgrimage.

“We feel very honored to have been asked,” Lasky said. “We feel like we’re a big part of the history of Columbus, and so we’re happy to be included in a tour like this.”

Lasky said the congregation originally started due to a high number of Jewish families immigrating from central Europe to Columbus in the early 1830s to the 1850s.

The congregation rented a space from a Methodist church, she said, before registering with the state in 1875 and then purchasing the land and building from the Methodist church in 1900.

The congregation tore the first building down to build a more modern wooden building, Lasky said. Then, in the 1960s, they decided to rebuild again. Using the bricks from the Methodist church, congregation B’nai Israel built the temple that can be seen today.

Lasky said lay leader Bonnie Oppenheimer currently leads the temple’s services, reading the Torah portion during the congregation’s weekly celebration of shabbat.

“I think that … things that people don’t know and understand, they can be a little afraid of,” Lasky said. “There’s so much anti-semitism, and so many things that are just blatantly false information about the Jewish religion and the Jewish people that I feel like I want people to feel welcome and to know what we do here.”