Sunday Services at 8 a.m., 9 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. · Details

  435 Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta, GA 30308  ·   404-873-7600  ·         Give

St. Luke's Episcopal Church
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Our History

St. Luke’s story is one of vision, rebirth and service. The church was founded in the 19th century as a refuge for those fleeing the ravages of war. Almost a century later, the "little refugee church" made an intentional decision to remain in downtown Atlanta as other churches were heading for the suburbs. These two "births" are vital to the DNA of the community that continues to worship and serve in Atlanta to this day.

Our history begins with Dr. Quintard. Dr. Charles Todd Quintard was born and raised in Connecticut and earned his medical degree in New York. He then moved south, and while a professor in the Medical College in Memphis became friends with the first bishop of Tennessee. Deciding to leave medicine, he studied for holy orders and was ordained a priest in 1856. When the Civil War broke out Dr. Quintard accepted a post as Chaplain of the Army of Tennessee although he had originally been a unionist. In 1863 the Army of Tennessee began a defensive struggle against Union forces and eventually retreated to Atlanta, bringing Dr. Quintard with it.

As the Civil War raged around it, Atlanta had a growing refugee population. Dr. Quintard decided a second Episcopal church was desirable, and with zeal in 1864 oversaw the building of the first St. Luke’s, a wooden structure with a school house appearance. It was consecrated by Bishop Stephen Elliott April 22,1864, at Broad and Walton Streets. Only four months later it was heavily damaged by Union artillery shelling and later that year was totally destroyed during the burning of Atlanta.

Dr. Quintard became the second bishop of Tennessee soon after the Civil War. As such, he spurred reconciliation between the northern and southern factions of the church. He was known as an opponent of racism and classism. While bishop, he also served for several years as head of the University of the South at Sewanee.

In 1870 the parish was reestablished as St. Stephen’s. On January 8, 1872, the vestry approved a motion made by Dr. John Milton Johnson “that the present name of our parish be changed to that formerly established – St. Luke's. Dr. Johnson had been confirmed in the 1864 St. Luke’s and then served as senior warden for the reestablished parish. The second church building in 1875 was at the corner of Spring and Walton Streets. Financial challenges ensued, and in 1880 Bishop Beckwith accepted St. Luke’s’ offer to become his cathedral church, feeling that would help strengthen the parish. A new cathedral building was erected at the corner of Pryor and Houston Streets. In 1894 the church returned to regular parish status. During this period when financial challenges were ongoing, faithful leadership from the vestry and clergy were notable. One senior warden, Z. D. Harrison, served a total of 37 years!

As the city grew and parish members moved northward, the vestry in 1904 sold the third church building in 1904 for $40,000 and secured a lot on Peachtree Street for $18,000. P. Thornton Marye, a parish member and architect of such landmarks as the Fox Theatre and Terminal Station, created the modified late English Gothic building in which we have worshipped since its consecration in 1906.

The stained glass windows were designed from a master plan and installed over a 60 year period. They are the work of Franz Mayer and Co. of Germany, known for its red and rich purple hues; Heaton, Butler and Bayne Co. of England, known for its subtle green glows, and Willet Stained Glass Co. of Philadelphia, known for its predominantly blue tones. The windows reflect events in the life of Christ from Nativity to Ascension. The smaller aisle windows below each larger one tell an Old Testament story complimentary to the life of Christ event above it. The Ascension Window next to the pulpit was moved from the 3rd church location when the current building was erected. Also moved was a smaller window, called Chorus of Cherubim, now located in the Bell Tower corridor.

The mural above the altar, known as “Christ as the Good Shepherd,” was created by noted muralist Edwin Howland Blashfield and installed in 1913. The effort to fill the blank space over the altar began with Helen Turman, who was referred to Blashfield and traveled to New York to meet with him. He at first declined, but later was persuaded to accept the commission for $5,000, a bargain price. The women of the church raised the money. The mural is considered still to be important as a fine work of art and a symbol of the visual arts in early twentieth century Atlanta.

Dr. Cary B. Wilmer served as rector from 1900 to 1924, the longest tenure of any rector to date. It was under his leadership that St. Luke’s began to earn its reputation for being a voice in Atlanta for moral and social justice.

Additions to the campus over the years have been made to accommodate church growth. The first was in 1924 and another in 1959. A green space of some 4 acres south of the church constituting “The Park at St. Luke’s” was created in the late 1980s in a joint venture with the Georgia Dept. of Transportation. A memorial garden was also created on the north side of the church. A $10 million renovation of the sanctuary was completed in 1999. A new bell tower was dedicated in 2000, which includes 10 change ringing bells. A columbarium is in the lower level of the bell tower.

The Alston Memorial Organ was installed in 1963. It has been modified and expanded since, and contains about 5,000 pipes. The music ministry has a long and influential history in the city. Organists from around the world have played and performed concerts from the organ. The church has a history of talented organists/choirmasters and choristers. The longest serving was Dr. Hugh Hodgson, 1929-1969, who was also the chair of the Department of Music at the University of Georgia.

St. Luke’s is committed to serve as a beacon of outreach and social justice in downtown Atlanta and beyond. It is known as a place which encourages members to live out their baptismal covenant through a variety of outreach ministries. In 1949 the Atlanta Cerebral Palsy School was begun in the Parish House by parishioner Anne Lane and her friend Rebecca Frazer. It is now The Frazer Center, located in the Cator Woolford Gardens on Ponce de Leon Ave. A soup kitchen begun in 1973 has grown to include daily meals, a job assistance program, health referral services, and a mailroom. Known now as Crossroads Community Ministries, it operates from the church campus. Bill Bolling started the Atlanta Community Food Bank in the church basement in 1979. Currently it distributes food to the needy through a network across the country with an independent annual budget in excess of $40 million. The Training and Counseling Center provides pastoral training and mental health services to the community and operates from the historic Edward Gay home on the campus, with several satellite locations around town. The church provides space and support for the Boyce L. Ansley School, providing a formal school atmosphere for children experiencing homelessness. It is named for a long-time parishioner who shared its vision, and is managed by parishioners and others through an independent board.

With about 2,000 members, St. Luke’s sees itself as a dynamic community of faith, striving to live out the Gospel in the heart of Atlanta.

--this history prepared by the Archives Committee in 2019

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The Rev. Winnie Varghese
Rector
404-873-7610 
The Rev. Elizabeth Shows Caffey
Senior Associate Rector, ​Liturgy and Education
The Rev. Dr. Horace L. Griffin
Associate Priest for Pastoral Care
404-873-7609 
Matthew Brown
Director of Music
404-873-7620 
Mark Simmons
Director of Membership & Stewardship
404-873-7624 

The Rev. Winnie Varghese

Rector
404-873-7610 |

A national leader in the Episcopal Church, the Rev. Winnie Varghese is known for her inspired writing, teaching and preaching. Before becoming the 23rd rector of St. Luke's, she served as Priest for Ministry and Program Coordination at Trinity Church Wall Street in New York City.

Prior to Trinity, Winnie served as Rector and Priest-in-Charge at St. Mark’s in the Bowery in New York. Winnie was also Chaplain at both Columbia University and University of California Los Angeles. She is a native of Dallas, Texas and is married to Elizabeth Toledo, a public relations executive. They have two grown children.

Winnie serves on the Board of Trustees of Union Theological Seminary, she chaired the General Convention’s Committee on the State of the Church from 2015 to 2018, and she served on the Board of Trustees of the Episcopal Divinity School, 2013-2016. She is also a published author, editor, and podcaster.

Winnie’s parents immigrated to the United States from India, and Winnie spent part of her early childhood years there. She attended Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA and earned her bachelor’s degree from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She then attended Union Theological Seminary and graduated with her Master of Divinity degree in 1999. She was ordained to the deaconate in Los Angeles in 1999 and to the priesthood six months later in 2000.

The Rev. Elizabeth Shows Caffey

Senior Associate Rector, ​Liturgy and Education

Elizabeth has served at St. Lukes since February 2015. Elizabeth has a passion for liturgy and a love for all things community. Her focus is around fostering opportunities for spiritual development and growth. Before seminary she developed and subsequently directed the Johnson Intern Program at Chapel of the Cross, an Episcopal Service Corps program in Chapel Hill, NC while also working as the family coordinator for Chatham Habitat for Humanity. She has served at the Church of the Holy Trinity in New York City and All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Atlanta as the priest for outreach, liturgy and pastoral care. The connecting thread through all of Elizabeth’s work has been engaging in compelling questions about God, living as a person of great faith and intellectual inquiry, and responding with action and intention in how we live. She loves camping with her children and dogs, Ana and Fig. Elizabeth is always up for travel and adventure. Having been raised in North Carolina and as an alumni of the University, Elizabeth is an avid Duke basketball fan.

The Rev. Dr. Horace L. Griffin

Associate Priest for Pastoral Care
404-873-7609 |

A graduate of Morehouse College, Boston University, and Vanderbilt in theological studies, Horace came to St. Luke's in July 2017 after a twenty-seven year vocation as a college and seminary professor and hospital chaplain. While he has served on a part-time basis at a number of parishes, currently he has oversight for the pastoral care ministry and provides leadership for the fifteen Community Ministries here at St. Luke’s.

An award-winning author of the groundbreaking, Their Own Receive Them Not: African American Lesbians and Gays in the Black Church, he was ordained to the Episcopal priesthood in 2005 and has passionately devoted his parish ministry to social justice, racial reconciliation and LBGTQ equality in the Church.

His fundamental belief that we are called to love God and treat all humans with love and equal justice is at the heart of his ministry. When he is not working on making the world a better place, he enjoys music, concerts, and film. He is interested in reading books on religion, African American and Gay history, and First Ladies.

Matthew Brown

Director of Music
404-873-7620 |

Matthew Michael Brown was appointed Director of Music at St. Luke’s in February, 2020. At St. Luke’s, he oversees a comprehensive sacred music program and is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Music at St. Luke’s series.

He has concertized throughout the USA and abroad, and several performances have been heard in radio broadcasts of American Public Media’s Pipe Dreams and the nationally syndicated program, With Heart and Voice. As a concert artist, he has performed in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral, London; Barcelona Cathedral, Spain; Grace Cathedral, San Francisco; Washington National Cathedral; Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, New York; Princeton University Chapel; Assembly Hall of the Mormon Tabernacle; Trinity Church on Copley Square, Boston; Cathedral of St. Philip, Atlanta; Cathedral Church of the Advent, Birmingham; Grace Church Cathedral, Charleston; and Christ Church Cathedral, Nashville. He has premiered works by prominent North Carolina composers, Kenneth Frazelle and Dan Locklair, and has facilitated commissions of new music by Barlow Bradford, David Hurd, Simon Lole, Ned Rorem, and Richard Webster. In 2023, under Matthew's leadership, St. Luke's will endeavor to become a national leader in annually commissioning music by underrepresented composers for traditional liturgies of the Episcopal Church.

He earned degrees in organ performance from the North Carolina School of the Arts and the Eastman School of Music. He also holds the Sacred Music Diploma from Eastman's Institute of Music Leadership. As a grant recipient from the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts and The Robert Carwithen Foundation, he pursued two years of post-graduate organ studies with Dame Gillian Weir. Other major teachers included David Higgs, Jack Mitchener, and Wayne Leupold. Earlier in his career, he benefited from master classes with Marie-Claire Alain, Michel Bouvard, David Craighead, and Ewald Kooiman.

He is professionally affiliated with the Association of Anglican Musicians, American Guild of Organists, American Choral Director’s Association, and the Maurice and Marie-Madeleine Duruflé Association. He currently serves on the boards of The Leupold Foundation, Atlanta's Taylor National Organ Playing Competition, and chairs the Nominating Committee for the Southeast region of the American Guild of Organists. Each summer, he manages the Royal School of Church Music in America’s Carolina Summer Choral Residency at Duke University.

Mark Simmons

Director of Membership & Stewardship
404-873-7624 |
Mark loves people! He has worked in the nonprofit world virtually his whole career with major stints at the American Red Cross and two other communities of faith. Mark’s role at St. Luke’s is to help members and newcomers make connections with people and ministries of the parish, in addition to coordinating efforts to fund the church’s ministries. He finds his work fulfilling and important because it helps him and others connect with something bigger than the self and to make the world a better place.

Mark is a Louisiana native, but considers himself fully Georgian, having lived his adult life here. He dabbles with making pottery, trying new recipes in his wok, and he always has an in-progress book on his nightstand. Mark and his partner, Kippy, have been together many years and live in Cobb County with their wirehaired dachshund. Mark loves being a part of the warm, welcoming, inquiring, and difference-making community of St. Luke’s.
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Sermons

  • Feb 5 | The Rev. Dr. Horace L. Griffin
    The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
  • Jan 29 | The Rev. Winnie Varghese
    Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
  • Jan 22 | The Rev. Nicole Lambelet
    The Third Sunday after the Epiphany
  • Jan 15 | The Rev. Winnie Varghese
    The Second Sunday after the Epiphany: The Feast of Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Jan 8 | The Rev. Elizabeth Shows Caffey
    "You Are Beloved"

St. Luke's Episcopal Church
Atlanta, GA

435 Peachtree Street NE
Atlanta, GA 30308

Tel: 404-873-7600

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Service Times

Sunday Services at St. Luke's

  • 8 a.m. Holy Eucharist, Rite I (in person only)
  • 9 a.m. Family Worship Service with Communion (in person and live online)
  • 11:15 a.m. Holy Eucharist, Rite II (in person and live online)

Bookmark stlukesatlanta.org/live/ for live services, bulletins and updates.

St. Luke's Live


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St. Luke's Episcopal Church
435 Peachtree Street NE
Atlanta, GA 30308

Contact Us
404-873-7600

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