A monthly feature brought to you by the St. Peter’s History Committee. This article was written by parishioner Michael Krasulski.
“You Sustained What Should Have Been Sustained”: St. Peter’s Church and the Long Work of Staying: 1945-1960
This article is the third and final installment in a series reflecting on how St. Peter’s Church has navigated survival in an ever-changing city between the First World War and the 1960s. The first explored the 1918 influenza epidemic and the ways crisis accelerated demographic shifts in Center City. The second examined the 1930s “downtown church problem,” when many Protestant parishes faced shrinking congregations as middle-class families moved to the suburbs and urban neighborhoods changed in composition. This final installment turns to the postwar years, when those long-term forces became impossible to ignore and when St. Peter’s once again chose to remain rooted in place.
As I continue to process the papers of the late Dr. Harold E. Gilbert, gems related to the history of St. Peter’s Church continue to surface. One such find is a 1960 letter from John E. Frazer, a noted writer and advertising executive, to Dr. Gilbert, which offers a striking snapshot of this moment. Writing after attending a St. Peter’s Evensong service for the first time in many months, Frazer describes walking through areas of the neighborhood that had been “torn down and will be rebuilt.” Urban renewal was reshaping large sections of Center City, displacing longtime residents and further thinning the parish’s traditional base, while also creating new homes for future parishioners. What Frazer encountered at St. Peter’s that afternoon — thin attendance, familiar patterns of worship, and the persistence of music and liturgy — reflected a parish holding steady in the midst of profound urban change.
The historical record confirms that the 1950s were a precarious decade for St. Peter’s Church. As documented in the parish history, the years leading up to the church’s 200th anniversary in 1961 were marked by declining membership, financial strain, and uncertainty about the parish’s future. Many families had moved to the suburbs, vestry participation dropped, and Sunday attendance at times dwindled to a fraction of earlier decades. The “downtown church problem” identified in the early 20th century had become, by mid-century, an everyday reality. Several neighboring parishes to the south and west had closed, relocated, or struggled to redefine their purpose in neighborhoods that no longer resembled those they had once served.
Frazer’s letter captures the emotional and spiritual weight of this in-between period. He reflects on years when St. Peter’s carried on with nearly empty pews, sustaining worship and tradition even when the visible rewards were few. His words are less about any one individual than about the parish’s collective perseverance. In the face of demographic change, urban disinvestment, and institutional uncertainty, St. Peter’s continued to show up for its neighborhood, keeping alive a sense of continuity and care that would later make renewal possible.
By the late 1950s and early 1960s, signs of new life began to emerge. New leadership arrived, parish structures were reorganized, and the approaching bicentennial prompted fresh reflection on St. Peter’s mission and identity. The surrounding neighborhood, though still in flux, was beginning to attract new residents. What Frazer intuited in 1960, that those who followed would “reap what you sowed,” speaks to a larger truth about the parish’s history. St. Peter’s did not survive because renewal was inevitable, but because people continued the ordinary, faithful work of worship, presence, and care during years when renewal seemed uncertain.
Read alongside the stories of 1918 and the 1930s, the Frazer letter underscores a consistent pattern in St. Peter’s life. Crises, whether epidemics, suburbanization, or urban renewal, accelerated change and thinned congregations. Yet again and again, the parish chose not to abandon its place. Instead of chasing those who had left, St. Peter’s invested in the neighborhood that remained and the one that was still coming into being.
In our own post-pandemic moment, when churches everywhere are again asking what it means to be present in changing urban communities, this history offers a quiet but demanding lesson. The work of “hanging on” is rarely dramatic. It looks like showing up to half-empty services, maintaining buildings when resources are thin, and continuing patterns of worship when the future feels unclear. Over time, however, that work becomes the soil from which renewal grows.
That was extremely interesting! It’s so easy to forget how much differently the story of St Peter’s could have turned out, and so difficult to imagine what hope realized might look like in desperate times such as these. Our prayer might just need to be as simple as “hold on.”