‘A Light on the Hill’: New book shares story of DC Baptist church that endured through America’s defining moments 

In the heart of Washington, D.C., Capitol Hill Baptist Church has weathered the Civil War, Reconstruction, two world wars, racial unrest, 9/11 and two pandemics.

Yet the church hasn’t moved – physically or spiritually – because of the “ordinary people who worked, prayed, sowed, and stayed,” author and assistant pastor Caleb Morell writes in his new book.

Titled A Light on the Hill: The Surprising Story of How a Local Church in the Nation’s Capital Influenced Evangelicalism, the book is described by Morell as a biography: it’s “the story of a life, the life of a congregation.”

Intertwined with the story of America 

Given the church’s D.C. location, mere blocks away from the U.S. Capitol building, its story is inextricably intertwined with that of America. 

“As a church on Capitol Hill, we’ve really gone through all major events of American history for the last 150 years,” Morell tells The Lion. The book describes influential church members such as Stephen Tyree Early, who was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s press secretary and widely considered to be the first “modern” White House press secretary. 

“He grew up at this church, he was baptized at this church, he was a member of this church until his death,” Morell said of Early. “So you have members of the church who were shaped here, lived here, spent their life here and were shaping significant historic events like FDR’s fireside chats or the U.S. response to Pearl Harbor. And that’s just continued over the years.”

Other big names stand out in the church’s 150-year existence, influencing nationwide evangelicalism, especially in the second half of the 20th century.  

“This church played an instrumental role in Congress passing a bill and calling for a National Day of Prayer back in 1952,” Morell said. “We were the host site for Billy Graham’s crusade on Greater Washington,” he added, noting the mass rally culminated in Graham “speaking on the east steps of the U.S. Capitol building, to which Congress responded by passing a bill calling for a National Day of Prayer,” which has continued to this day. 

Shortly after, in 1956, Christianity Today’s founding editor Carl F.H. Henry moved to D.C. and became a member of Capitol Hill Baptist until his death. A leader of the neo-evangelical movement, Henry was part of a group that was “trying to bridge some of that divide between fundamentalism and mainstream American culture,” Morell said. “They felt that mainline Protestantism was woefully inadequate to address the challenges of the 20th century, particularly communism.” 

Henry also was instrumental in inviting the church’s current pastor, Mark Dever, who founded 9Marks ministry to help church leaders and members build “healthy churches” across the country. 

Despite the big names who have undoubtedly influenced nationwide evangelicalism, Morell said a major takeaway of his research was learning about “the names that no one was familiar with.” 

Those included Celestia Ferris, a “washerwoman and widow who started the prayer meeting out of which this church grew,” and Margaret Roy, who in 1969 became the first African American to join the congregation.  

It’s “really a story of ordinary Christians, some of whom are named in the book, and many others go nameless,” Morell said. “And yet, without them, the church wouldn’t be here today. So, I really hope that it inspires Christians to see the local church as something worth giving their life toward – that even if they don’t make a name for themselves, they are part of shaping an institution that’s going to last and have generational impacts beyond their own life.” 

An idea hatched during COVID 

Morell said his book was born out of the COVID pandemic when he looked through the archives to see how the church had responded to the Spanish flu – and quickly realized how the past could inform current events and how churches can navigate them. He then spent two years poring over newspaper clippings, digging through church archives, interviewing, and digitizing tens of thousands of documents. 

“I hope people around the country will take away that the local church is something worth investing in, and that it’s a good thing to live, as George Eliot says, a quiet ‘hidden life’ and rest in an ‘unvisited tomb,’ if that life is lived investing in things that matter,” he said.  

Morell said he hopes the book can provide a glimpse into evangelicalism to readers of other faith backgrounds as well, noting that much of the media has preconceived ideas of “what evangelicals are all about” or treats them “simply as a voting bloc.” 

“If ever there were to be an example of a church that was consumed by politics, if that were true, surely it would be a Baptist church on Capitol Hill,” Morell said. “And yet when you look at this church, there is real political engagement, there’s real concern for social issues and matters that affect our nation. And yet the most important thing is clearly the Gospel. It’s teaching the Bible, it’s training up pastors, it’s sending out missionaries, it’s evangelizing the lost in our neighborhood. And I hope that this book contributes, in a small way, toward a more accurate historiography of what evangelicalism is and the role it’s played in American history.”