 If you are interested in becoming a member of Holy Innocents, please speak with any of the clergy. Please do not hesitate to contact the vicar or other clergy if you have special needs such as baptism, confirmation, or marriage, or if you wish to consult a priest. Holy Innocents Episcopal Church was founded in 1882 as a mission church for the parish of Saint John the Evangelist, located at Fifteenth and Julian streets. The mission attained parish status shortly thereafter. The current Victorian church building, built for the parish in 1890, is the oldest standing Episcopal church in San Francisco. It was designed by Ernest Coxhead, a noted church and residential architect of the period. He mentored both Julia Morgan of Hearst Castle fame and Bernard Maybeck, who designed San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts. Holy Innocents is a superb example of Coxhead's ideal of the romantic English country church. Holy Innocents has had an eventful history over the last century. Loss through an aging church-going population and the AIDS pandemic, coupled with costly damage from the Loma Prieta earthquake, threatened to close Holy Innocents in the early 1990s. Under the leadership of Bishop Cathy Roskam and the Reverend Armand Kreft, Holy Innocents was revitalized and grew to become a financially self-sustaining church. Joshua GriffGriffin joined Holy Innocents as our deacon in August 2010, and Bertie Pearson became our priest-in-charge on September 12, 2010. The window of Holy Innocents Holy Innocents are the children slain by King Herod. Matthew 2, recounts that Herod, angered because he had been deluded by the wise men, ordered the massacre of all male children of two years or under in Bethlehem. The feast of the Holy Innocents is commemorated on December 28th of the Roman Calendar and is often referred to as Childermas. As a collective Patron Saint, the Holy Innocents provide protection against the injustices inflicted on children. The Holy Innocents are represented by three lilies and two crowns. The lilies symbolize the purity and innocence of children. The two crowns symbolize the two Kings, Jesus and Herod. About the Episcopal Church The name Episcopalcomes from the Greek word episkopos, which means bishopor overseer.The leaders of our church are called bishops, and we are called Episcopalians.Our Traditions: This includes the prayer and theological reflection by a multiplicity of voices throughout Church history. We believe that God has continued speaking through the generations and the traditions that have been established through the life of the Church have authority in our lives. Reason: While reason is commonly understood today to be an aloof, non-emotional consideration of clear facts, ' since the time of 16th Century theologian Richard Hooker, Anglicans have used the term in a more holistic way, entailing both the operations of the mind and the heart. Anglican reason must include a combination of logic, and the subjective, basic sense of rightness' which each of us posses. Reason, which includes our own personal experience of God and God's work in the world, is the third-leg of what is known as the Anglican Three-Legged Stool, a metaphor that is used to describe how Anglicans take into consideration of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, each one informing the other two, to discern truth, make decisions, and find authority.
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