NBC 5 in Chicago has reported incorrectly that Teen Vogue published a list of the “100 most awesome” churches in the nation. The Daily Herald in Chicago’s western suburbs published a submitted item on March 13 that said St. Mark’s Church in Glen Ellyn had made the list.
The designation came instead from Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, a blogger on Medium and creator of The Resistance Prays, a TinyLetter publication. Teen Vogue’s Stephanie Russell Craft wrote a brief profile of Graves-Fitzsimmons in December.
Graves-Fitzsimmons asked readers to consider five criteria as they determined church awesomeness:
- spiritually enriching community
- vibrant worship
- social justice warriors
- fully LGBTQ-inclusive
- [invites] people into Christian identity/belonging
On Feb. 19, Graves-Fitzsimmons published a list of the first 100 churches nominated for the designation. These Episcopal churches made the crowd-sourced list:
- All Saints, Pasadena, California
- All Souls, Berkeley, California
- Epiphany, Leeds, Alabama
- St. John’s, Washington, D.C.
- St. Mark’s, Glen Ellyn, Illinois
- St. Matthew’s, Westerville, Ohio
- St. Paul’s, Jeffersonville, Indiana
- St. Paul’s Cathedral, Boston
- St. Stephen’s, Richmond, Virginia
Matthew Townsend is a Halifax-based freelance journalist and volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in Anglican settings. He served as editor of the Anglican Journal from 2019 to 2021 and communications missioner for the Anglican Diocese of Quebec from 2019 to 2022. He and his wife recently entered catechism class in the Orthodox Church in America.
