To stand in front of St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church and to look at its traditional-style sanctuary and spire is to hear cars zooming along Greenwich Avenue and watch planes as they head for distant destinations from T.F. Green Airport. There was a time when the hum and whistles of valley mills filled the air. It was a time, too, when Swedish immigrants and Swedish descents came together to build churches. The Church Upon the Hill, as it is known, has witnessed almost 150 years of Pawtuxet valley history from its perch overlooking the river, the Pontiac Mill and the Warwick Mall.

St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church includes the history of two other congregations, as well: Bethany Evangelical Lutheran Church, a Cranston congregation, and Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Gustavus Adolphus Church in East Natick. All three churches were founded as Swedish-language parishes during a time when Swedish immigrants constituted a large portion of the mill laborers in the Pawtuxet River valley.

Financial difficulty in the aftermath of the mills' crushing of labor strikes in the 1920s and of the Great Depression in the 1930s brought about changes for all three congregations, at which point the congregations began to extend beyond the mill villages and switch from Swedish-language services to English ones. The decades that followed brought about even more change as technology developed and people transitioned from walking to church to driving from farther away. For these congregations, adjustment to significant changes in the surrounding community has been a constant reality.

The building is a testament to this: the original church was renovated in the late 1890s before suffering a fire in 1914, after which the congregation pooled funds to build a new church in the same location.

Welcoming the community

In recent times the parish has felt the enduring impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Linda Nelson, co-chair of the 150th anniversary celebration, and parish administrator Karen Hill say that the size of the congregation has decreased notably since 2020, with many members hesitant to resume attending weekly in-person services. Hill notes, however, that other factors affected congregation sizes well before COVID. Sports practices and other youth activities that take place on the weekends have made it challenging for children and young people, as well as their parents, to become involved in the church to the same extent as older churchgoers. On the other hand, the congregation at St. Paul gained a number of members when Bethany Evangelical Lutheran Church, formerly its own Lutheran parish in Cranston, incorporated with St. Paul. Nelson says the transition from Bethany to St. Paul was smooth and that the warm welcome extended to Bethany members was indicative of the church’s dedication to inclusivity and welcoming the wider community. 

Hill and Nelson name the sense of community fostered by the church as a particularly special aspect of their involvement there. Hill explained that this sense of community facilitated stepping into a new role when she became parish administrator.

“I think it helped, because I know the people, and I know their background,” she said.

Hill and Nelson both became involved in the church through their families, Hill as an adult and Nelson as a child, and the church offers a Sunday school program for children of many ages. The community involved with St. Paul extends beyond its congregation, as well: through its free lunch program, which attracts guests and volunteers who do not belong to the church; through Matthew XXV Apartments, a subsidized housing unit owned by the church and where weekly church services are held; and through the many public service projects that the church undertakes throughout the year to support different causes in Warwick and beyond.

COVID-19’s impact on the community at St. Paul was not limited to the number of people in the pews; the pandemic also prompted change in less foreseeable ways. Like many schools and businesses, the church began to rely on new channels of communication so members could attend church services and meetings virtually.

Happy consequences of COVID

When St. Paul began planning its 150th anniversary celebration over a year ago, members had the opportunity to get involved from a distance, which made it possible for Alan Abramson to contribute extensive historical research to the celebration efforts despite living in Vermont. Abramson said he refers to that “as the unintended happy consequence of COVID-19.” He noted that the level of involvement that he has maintained would not have been possible without the church’s adjustment to Zoom and other online communication platforms.

Traveling frequently between Vermont and Rhode Island, Abramson relied on church records, some of them written in Swedish, and on a history of the Swedish community in Rhode Island to piece together the 150-year history of the congregations at St. Paul, Gustavus Adolphus, and Bethany. To learn more details about the church’s recent history, Abramson reached out to fellow members of the congregation. Much of his research about the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s depended on the recollections of community members who were at St. Paul during that time.

During its 125th anniversary celebration, St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church marked the occasion by holding a special service and by hanging framed portraits of its former pastors along the hallway of its office building leading to the sanctuary. This year, the focus is on the history of the congregation itself. Abramson said that he hopes that attendees will be left with a sense of the church’s immigrant roots and its identity as a place where immigrants could find support and a space to share with others.

“The Swedish community is like pretty much all the other immigrant communities,” he observed.

Nelson said that she hopes that the celebration highlights the central role that the church has played in forming its members’ community networks.

St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church and Bethany Ministry 150th anniversary celebration will take place on Sept. 29, beginning with a special service at the church at 2 p.m. Following the service, a reception and then dinner will begin at the Raddison Airport Hotel at 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. respectively. Adult tickets are $35.00; tickets for children aged 12 and under are $3.00. The event will bring current and former members of the community with some attendees flying across the country to join. Hill said that an important message of this celebration is that St. Paul looks forward greatly to its next 150 years.