St. Andrew's Episcopal Church (Birmingham, Alabama)

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Birmingham, Alabama, is a parish church of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama. It was founded in 1902 as a mission of the downtown Cathedral Church of the Advent.

Saint Andrew's Episcopal Church
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
St. Andrews on Palm Sunday, 2002
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Location	1164 Eleventh Ave. S, Birmingham, Alabama
Coordinates	33°29′43.67″N 86°48′27.84″W
Built	1915
NRHP reference No.	86001959[1]
Added to NRHP	August 28, 1986

The present building, completed in 1915, was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1986.[1] The brownstone edifice was designed by the local firm of Joy & Marriott, patterned after English Gothic parish churches. The first services were held on Easter Sunday, April 4, 1915.[2]

In the late 1940s the parish developed a distinctively Anglo-Catholic, or "High Church," identity, very different from the norm at the time for the Episcopal Church nationally and especially the Diocese of Alabama, which has historically held to lower styles of churchmanship. It held its last service of Morning Prayer as the principal Sunday service in 1950, roughly at least three decades before Holy Eucharist became the most common principal Sunday service for other Episcopal churches in Birmingham.

In 2014, the Reverend Matthew Rich became priest-in-charge in discernment at St. Andrew's. His ministry ended abruptly in 2017 when he was arrested on charges of child pornography.[3]

The Rev. Dr. Tommie Lee Watkins, Jr. began serving as rector of the parish on September 24, 2018. He was the first openly gay African American ordained in the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama and the first African American to serve as rector of St. Andrew's.[4]