This past Sunday, Church of the Advocate, an Episcopal congregation in Carrboro, held its first Palm Sunday service outdoors at the Town Commons. On Friday, the church will also hold an outdoor Good Friday service known as the Way of the Cross.
The two services, part of Holy Week commemorations leading up to Easter, which falls on Sunday, recall Jesus' last days on Earth before his crucifixion and, according to the Gospels, resurrection.
In the majority of U.S. churches, these services are held indoors. But a growing number are taking them outside.
"I don't know if I can ever go back to the procession of palms inside the sanctuary," said the Rev. Lisa Fischbeck, the vicar at Church of the Advocate.
Taking their cue from their Latin American counterparts, more churches are sponsoring Good Friday pilgrimages through downtown streets. The events are known as the Way of the Cross.
Each year in Raleigh, a group called the Pilgrimage for Justice and Peace holds a five-day pilgrimage across North Carolina. Carrying wooden crosses and placards, the crowd makes an annual stand to end war and the death penalty. It culminates in a 14-stop procession in downtown Raleigh.
Gail Phares, the leader of the group, said she got the idea for the pilgrimage, which begins on Palm Sunday and ends on Good Friday, from a Roman Catholic priest named Miguel d'Escoto, who during Holy Week walked throughout Nicaragua praying and fasting as a protest against U.S. policies in Latin America.
"For people of the Christian faith, it's the ultimate time we're thinking of the crucifixion of Jesus," said Phares, a former nun. "It's a way to connect people's struggle of justice with the story of Jesus."
Indoor stations
Such processions are commonplace throughout Latin America where Christians, mostly Roman Catholic, have taken to the streets during Holy Week.
But in the United States, most churches opt for the indoor Stations of the Cross, an ancient ritual that marks the final stops on Jesus' journey to the cross. Nearly every Catholic church sanctuary is encircled with 14 images of Jesus' last steps, and on Good Friday members make their way from one to the next.
By comparison, Church of the Advocate will trek to several spots across town, including Club Nova, a center for severely mentally ill adults in downtown Carrboro, the police station and the old town cemetery. This will be the sixth year the church holds an outdoor Way of the Cross service. Like last year, the litany accompanying the procession will be read in English and Spanish.
"Just as Jesus confronted the oppressors of his own day, so we take time at each of our stations to reflect and pray for situations of injustice and oppression in our own community, in our own day," said Fischbeck.
Calling attention to injustice during Holy Week is not just a Catholic or Episcopal tradition. The downtown Durham congregations, including a Presbyterian and Methodist church, hold a joint Way of the Cross service outdoors. And Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship will be joining in part of the Pilgrimage for Justice and Peace.
"Our lives are expressions of our convictions that there's no separation between acts and doctrines," said the Rev. Isaac Villegas, pastor of the Mennonite congregation. "Wherever we find injustice and violence we find ways to speak Christ's peace with our bodies."
