A welcoming spirit envelops you from the moment you set foot in Church, the divine new cocktail bar in Old Goucher.

Standing behind a wooden pulpit that came from an actual house of worship in Hampden, co-owner Chelsea Gregoire greets guests with a palpable warmth that sets the tone for what Gregoire and co-owners Marisa Dobson and Martha Lucius hope is Church’s legacy.

“Church and the community we seek to foster is based on my philosophy that hospitality is the business of caring for souls,” Gregoire, who holds a Bachelor of Science in religion and a Master of Arts in theology from Liberty University, told Baltimore when plans for the project were announced. “Drinks, food, and a cool space are just vehicles for finding new ways to meet people where they are. Calling my first bar ‘Church’ is a succinct way for me to ask, ‘Where do we go from here? How can we reshape hospitality and Baltimore together?’”

Housed in a 19th-century renovated building, the long-anticipated Church features outdoor seating in the front and back, as well as a dining room, a medium-sized bar (with decorative wooden “organ pipes” above it), and an open kitchen. It has delivered on its promise—all those areas have tended to fill up quickly since it opened in September, so reservations (even for bar seats) are recommended.

Church’s cocktail menu is unlike any other we’ve encountered in the city. First on the list, which Gregoire says will change quarterly, was The Host, a proprietary blend of clear spirits, blanc vermouth, bitters, and a light brine that’s available as a martini or in a bottle with garnish service for three or more people to share. The Four Blessings includes applejack, the Golden Gate features celery gin, and the St. Vincent showcases Bolivian brandy.

We went with a Loose Seal, a combination of Japanese whisky, Szechuan amaro, yuzu, banana, and Thai basil. It was smooth and well made by our bartender, who, like the other employees, was attentive and conversational. Our second beverage, a Bath & Body Works, is a take on a margarita, made with blanco tequila, cucumber, grapefruit, melon, and lined with black lava salt. It was tart but not overwhelmingly so.

In addition to a permanent culinary team, Church employs a chef-in-residence who will change every few months. The program, reads the website, is “an experiment in creating a new kitchen paradigm that fosters mentorship, experimentation, and Church’s vision of community.” The first chef, Dwight Campbell, was raised in Jamaica. His menu, including pepper shrimp and jerk ribs, harkened to those roots.

We tried the rockfish served over a sweet pepper and onion escabeche. The fish was flaky and the escabeche complex and spicy. The best part of the dish was the fried fish skin that accompanied it. (Campbell should bag these delights and sell them as snacks.)

As we left Church that night, we felt that sense of inclusion and community that its owners are striving to create.

We’ll be back. We’re Churchgoers now.

On a humid Thursday evening in early August, Lutheran pastor Emily Scott welcomed 22 attendees to the first meeting of her new church in the room of a local bookstore. Scott led the congregation in a short song and introduced herself by mentioning her preferred pronouns: she, her, hers.

The pioneer congregants followed suit. Specifying pronouns is an unusual thing to see at church, but learning the basic nuances of each individual’s gender identity set the progressive tone for Scott’s nascent LGBTQ-focused church in Baltimore.

“There’s an awareness within the mainstream Protestant world that many churches have been places of exclusion, and that’s something we really need to break out of,” says Scott, a 37-year-old graduate of Yale Divinity School. “I wanted to first make my identity as a queer woman very clear.”

She explains that inclusion, informality, and community were top priorities for her church’s dynamic, and she wants its development to be a community effort. She even delayed choosing a name until she and a more established congregation can collaborate to do so. For now, she calls it “Imagine a Church Baltimore.”

This is not her first foray into church establishment. She is a church planter, according to her website, meaning she creates new spiritual communities from scratch. For the past decade, Scott worked as the primary pastor at St. Lydia’s Dinner Church in Brooklyn, New York, the first church she founded.

Like Imagine a Church Baltimore, St. Lydia’s was dedicated to social justice and paid specific attention to the needs of LGBTQ Christians that she said typically go unaddressed within mainstream ministries. Scott said she loved working at St. Lydia’s but, as it grew into a more stable institution and a national news story (covered by The Atlantic and The Wall Street Journal), she wanted to bring her expertise and enthusiasm to a new community, and she quickly settled on Baltimore.

“Before I moved, I’d been really drawn to Baltimore for a number of years,” says Scott. “Baltimore is filled with people who are invested in the city. I’m really moved by all the community-based activism and grassroots movements.”

Scott’s first service integrated classic elements of church—a sermon, a biblical recitation, and a few more songs—with practices that are seldom found inside typical places of worship, including the discussion of pronouns and queer identities. Imagine a Church Baltimore also has no brick-and-mortar space, so in lieu an official location, Scott borrowed a room from Red Canoe in Lauraville.

This past March, Scott left New York and purposely settled near Lauraville, a neighborhood she said has a notably large LGBTQ community. In order to spread the word about her church, Scott set up shop at Baltimore Pride in June with a photo booth where people could pose against a halo under the words “The Divine Shines in You.” She also regularly runs a booth at the Hamilton-Lauraville farmers’ market on Tuesday evenings, and is active on Imagine a Church Baltimore’s Facebook page, which currently has 136 followers.

“Part of my job is to listen to the community and build something in response to what I hear, so I’m trying to engage with the people here in any way that I can,” says Scott, who credits a large portion of her decision to move here to Bishop Bill Gohl of the Delaware-Maryland Synod. “He is incredibly affirming of LGBTQ folks. It’s rare to find this level of support for a church like mine.”

Scott said Gohl has also encouraged her to use her church for social justice as well as religious refuge for marginalized people, and she said several potential congregants have suggested social justice work within church services as well. Following the first meeting, Scott asked the attendees what sort of church they are imagining: “a place of acceptance,” “a place to welcome new faces and celebrate new friends,” “a place that sounds like shared laughter,” and “music—not only hymns” were some ideas.

The second meeting, tentatively set for September, will focus on names in both a symbolic, identity-focused sense as well as a tangible discussion of what to call the church going forward. However, Scott stresses that Imagine a Church Baltimore is not just a stand-in title or a concise phrase for its congregants to hashtag on social media. It’s a call to action for Baltimoreans who have felt rejected or ostracized by organized Christianity before.

“I’m dreaming about a place that feels free and reflects the broad diversity of Baltimore,” says Scott. “I want to create a place that doesn’t feel defined by respectability but instead by the big, wild, messy way that God made us. Ultimately, it’s the people that come to this ministry who are going to create what it becomes.”

Female Form

January 9, 2016
Cathedral Street

“A labor of love,” says Jillian Storms, leading a tour through the detailed exhibit she has curated, “Early Women of Architecture in Maryland,” at the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Shedding light on a dozen pioneering women whose groundbreaking careers spanned from the 1920s through the 1960s, the exhibit includes portraits, biographies chronicling the steadfastness of their ambitions, and notable accomplishments—such as interior design at the National Academy of Sciences in D.C.—as well as copies of their original drawings and renderings.

Among those profiled: German-born Poldi Hirsch, whose family fled the Holocaust before she went on to study architecture in Switzerland. She later emigrated with her husband, settling in Havre de Grace where she designed a still-standing midcentury office building in which her husband began his medical practice.

Also included are Katherine Cutler Ficken and Rose Isabel Greely, the first licensed female architects in Maryland and Washington, and a reproduction of a Maryland Society of Registered Architects letter to Ficken. Dated May 2, 1938, the note advises that while she was “certainly eligible” to attend the organization’s annual dinner and meeting, as the only women in the society, she should check with her “good father” regarding the propriety of her attendance.

“We had a lot of trouble tracking her down,” Storms says. “She’d adopted a 4-month-old son when she was 45, but she died in 1968 of cancer when he was 11. Our college research assistant was ready to give up when we finally found him. It turned out he’d kept a photo album of her work, including that letter, all these years.”

Day Dream

January 18, 2016
East Pratt Street

“Mom, it feels like we’ve been here all day,” a girl with braids and glasses says, tugging her mother’s arm, not so much in protest, but in amazement at the full slate of MLK Day activities at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum.

At the moment, they’re heading into the museum’s first-floor community space for a reading of The Meeting, a play about a fictional get-together between Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, with local photographer Devin Allen’s wall-sized photos of last year’s Baltimore Uprising serving as backdrop. Other events offered today include screenings of the documentary films, Citizen King, The March, and MLK: The Assassination Tapes, as well as access to the current feature exhibition, “Ruth Starr Rose (1887-1965): Revelations of African American Life in Maryland and the World,” and the museum’s 8th Annual High School Juried Art Show. There’s also drop-in, MLK Day-themed arts and crafts for kids.

Depicting the civil rights leaders’ differing philosophies but shared sense of urgency and mutual respect, The Meeting draws a standing-room crowd—and this is the play’s second presentation this afternoon. Afterward, Larkis Webber, who portrays Malcolm X, and Doug Goldman, who plays King, join Morgan State University professor David Terry for an audience discussion, much of it centering on the influence of the two leaders’ childhood, religious, and regional influences. “I’ve been living this [stuff] for 51 years,” Goldman says at one point. “In the 1970s, I was bused to Hampstead Hill Junior High in Canton. If you missed the bus after school, you ran through Patterson Park until you got to a safe neighborhood.”

“As a Christian, I’m with Rev. King,” adds a woman at the end. “But as a mother, if someone hurt one of my children, then I’m with Malcolm. I’ll ask for forgiveness later.”

The Flock

January 2, 2016
Conkling Street

“I grew up in Fells Point when this neighborhood was called ‘Little Poland’,” says Anthony Monczewski, 70, the grandson of a Polish immigrant butcher, as he steps inside Holy Rosary Church. “They still celebrate Mass here in Polish.”

Dedicated in 1928, the massive Romanesque shrine includes two-story stained-glass windows, marble altars weighing a collective 49 tons, and a 3,000-pipe, mahogany-encased organ. Monczewski’s visit to his childhood church this Saturday is part of the second East Baltimore Christmas Church Tour and one of seven stops celebrating historic parishes while their holiday decorations remain in full swing.

The morning begins with pastries and coffee at the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which celebrated its first Mass in Highlandtown in 1873. Also included: Our Lady of Pompei in “little” Little Italy, St. Leo the Great in Little Italy, St. Casimir and St. Brigid in Canton, and St. Elizabeth of Hungary at Patterson Park.

Inside Our Lady of Pompei, a gorgeous 1923 church built for Italian immigrants and known for its illuminated statue of Mary, pastor Luigi Esposito smiles as he recalls an early sermon. “Father Lou” recently celebrated 50 years of service to the parish, although the Naples native admits to the group that he occasionally stumbled in his Sunday homilies as a young priest. “I was trying to express the idea of the shepherd helping a lost sheep back into the sheepfold—a very common Christian metaphor.

“Well, the Italian word for sheepfold is ovile, so I figured the English word was the one that sounded closest,” he says, laughing, “and told the congregation that we must each help the lost sheep into the oven.”

We tagged along on the Southeast Baltimore Christmas Church Tour for a glimpse inside seven of the city’s oldest immigrant Catholic churches. Organized by the parish communities, with Christmas decorations in full swing, we also picked up a little local history.

These photos were shot by Anthony Monczewski, 70, also along for the tour. A retired Department of Defense employee, Mr. Monczewski is the grandson of a Polish immigrant butcher and grew up in Fells Point near Holy Rosary Church in the neighborhood once known as “Little Poland.”

Open the images below to enlarge and read more about the history of these immigrant churches.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, Highlandtown

Holy Rosary Church, Upper Fells Point

St. Leo the Great, Little Italy

St. Casimir Parish, Canton

Our Lady of Pompei, Highlandtown

St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Patterson Park

St. Brigid’s Parish Hall, Canton