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Introduction
History
Graces
Appetizers
Salads
Soups
Casseroles
Meats
Poultry
Seafood
Vegetables
Breads
Desserts
Cookies
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Index

INTRODUCTION

Imagine a celebration, any celebration -- a birthday party, a Redskins game, Thanksgiving dinner. Each of these celebrations has special participants, a unique atmosphere, and distinctive food. Birthday cake, hot dogs, mince pies --each dish plays a role in celebration. The most joyful celebrations call forth the most extravagant dishes. They symbolize how important the event is to us, and how much we value the fellowship of other participants.

A church service is a celebration, too. We come together on Sundays to celebrate Christ and to celebrate each other as members of a Christian community. Frequently food is a part of our ritual. During services at Dumbarton United Methodist Church we share the holy meal of homemade bread and wine, and afterwards we talk over coffee and light refreshments. Sometimes we stay for potluck lunches, and on special occasions we have a fancy cake. Food and fellowship are part of our worship. We frequently share meals at each other's homes or with a wider circle of friends.

Jesus was well aware of the relationship between food and community, body and soul. His first miracle was turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana in Galilee, and his last appearances on earth were at meals. Eating together is an ancient Christian tradition.

Many of the recipes in this cookbook are and have been a special part of our rituals. Some are related to special seasons of the Christian year. Most are related to ordinary time, any other day of the year. Every family dinner is a celebration of communing together and as in the Jewish tradition, includes a ritual of thanksgiving -- grace.

Because our congregation is diverse, united in community but proud of the individuals who make it up, our cookbook is diverse as well. You will find a sampling, a "potluck" if you will, of our heritage, our rituals, our talents and our recipes. We invite you to share and to celebrate with us.

DUMBARTON CELEBRATIONS AND RITUALS

Our traditions have grown gradually, rooted in early Christian practice yet reflecting the interests of individual church members. We write many of our own services and we invite people to contribute their unique talents, from powerful vocal solos to family recorder duets; from storytellers to dancers; from old to young.

The Christian year begins with Advent, which Dumbarton celebrates with a caroling party, a candlelight service for families on Christmas Eve, and a Sunday School nativity pageant. An evergreen Advent wreath, hot cocoa, and fruity stollen establish the holiday atmosphere at church. Many families share special holiday cookies at coffee hours.

Between Christmas and Lent comes Epiphany. During this time we often gather in one another's homes for small group dinners, sharing our everyday lives and cares over supper. Each person brings a portion of the meal.

In February, Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, when we mark our foreheads with ashes from the last year's palms. We share hot cross buns with our sister church, Mt. Zion, on Palm Sunday, and on Holy Thursday over 100 people celebrate the Last Supper at a Seder meal in the church hall. We try to make our menu kosher. Some of the foods we have served are Turkey Baked with Almonds, Burgundy Haroset Molded Salad, and a green salad with Sherry Lemon Dressing as well as traditional symbolic foods: sweet and bitter herbs, unleavened bread, boiled eggs. On Easter eve the Easter vigil begins in darkness in the churchyard and ends at midnight with a burst of lilies and butterflies or balloons in the sanctuary. Our Easter Sunday worship includes a potluck coffee hour of combined offerings. Pentecost, fifty days after Easter, falls about the time of the annual church weekend retreat, when we confirm young people as new members of the church and share visions for the next year. Decorations for Pentecost have included an orange parachute, mylar streamers, and containers of water to mark baptisms.

After Pentecost the church calendar observes "ordinary time," when each Sunday takes its meaning from the Bible readings for the day. Twice a month year round, several church members take time after the Sunday service to make lunch for the House of Ruth. We celebrate the beginning of summer with a potluck "Send Off" cookout in the yard, we move the hour of worship from 11 a.m. to 10 a.m., and the beverages at coffee hour change to cool drinks such as lemonade and iced tea.

In the fall All Saints is a particularly meaningful Sunday, as we recall all those who have gone before us in the faith. Thanksgiving Sunday usually marks the end of the church year, competing for attention with the harvest festival, visiting relatives, the beginning of Advent and the Sunday of Christ the King. Annually, some gather in a nearby park for breakfast on Thanksgiving morning to celebrate in community the bounty of God's blessings.

Following on Thanksgiving's heels, Advent begins and the circle is complete. We recommence with eager anticipation of what a new year will bring and how we will celebrate our renewal.

HISTORY OF DUMBARTON CHURCH

As the descendent community of the first Methodist society in the District of Columbia, Dumbarton United Methodist Church takes great interest in its historical roots. Like all Methodists, we might trace our beginnings to Susannah Wesley, mother of John and Charles. She preached informally to the family during the long absences of her husband Samuel, the Anglican rector of Epworth. Reading of the experiences of missionaries, she eventually began preaching to the neighbors. Despite disapproval from the curate, Mrs. Wesley continued to preside over her Sunday gatherings. Her example undoubtedly influenced her sons who later founded the protestant denomination of Methodism. (From Heroines of Methodism, by Rev. George Coles, 1857.)

Bishop Francis Asbury was sent to the colonies by John Wesley to oversee the faith. According to his 1801 Journal, Robert Strawbridge, an Irish immigrant farmer, founded "the first class (of Methodism) in Maryland and America" in 1768 at his log cabin near New Windsor. Strawbridge apparently began itinerant preaching shortly after his arrival, variously dated from 1759 to 1761. Little is known about Strawbridge's wife, Elizabeth Piper. We can safely suppose that she must have been tough, however, because Strawbridge began his preaching tours soon after completing their log dwelling and left Elizabeth and the children to wrestle a living from their rented 50-acre farm at Pipe Creek.

Both New York and Maryland claimed the birthplace of American Methodism, and the dispute lasted more than 150 years. At the 1860 General Conference, the Baltimore Conference, then as now including Dumbarton, was outvoted and the Centennial of American Methodism was celebrated in 1866, the year Methodism was founded in New York. However, it was later discovered that a Methodist minister riding the Ohio circuit in 1813 met a German farmer who claimed to have been converted by Strawbridge in Maryland in 1763. This bit of evidence figured in a 1916 church decision that the origin of American Methodism was in Maryland, not New York.

EARLY METHODIST CONGREGATIONS IN AMERICA

The earliest known account of Methodists worshipping in Georgetown dates to 1772, twelve years before the formal organization of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. The preacher was Robert Williams, an English missionary sent to the colonies in 1769 by John Wesley. He preached to a gathering in a cooper's shop on Congress and Gay Streets, now 31st and N Streets.

At the first recorded Quarterly Conference in Joppa, Maryland in December 1772, Bishop Asbury formally appointed Robert Strawbridge and Richard Owings to the Frederick Circuit, which then included Georgetown. This marked the founding of what was to become the Dumbarton Avenue Church, because it was the first assignment of a preacher to the Methodists who had been meeting in Georgetown.

Given the appeal of early Methodism to the poor, and its concerns for social justice, it is likely that many of the original Methodists in Georgetown were black. Georgetown was an important commercial center for freedmen, and a 1776 census of the town counted 1263 whites and 698 blacks. By 1800, the census listed 731 slaves and 400 "free blacks."

Stephen Roszel, an influential anti-slavery advocate in the Baltimore Conference, was pastor of the Georgetown Church several times between 1810 and 1841. Stephen's mother, Sarah, was one of the first Methodists in Loudoun County and was converted by William Watters. Mrs. Roszel organized a Sunday Methodist worship in a school to take up the spiritual slack during the absences of itinerant preachers.

CHURCH BUILDINGS ARISE

Strawbridge probably built the log cabin in which he preached in 1764. Reportedly, it had to be abandoned during the Revolution because the landowner, Solomon Miller, was a Quaker who had refused to pay his taxes for the war effort. By 1808, an itinerant Methodist minister passing by the old cabin noted that it was "in a dilapidated state and used for a barn." Souvenir hunters hauled away the last vestiges of the place in 1866 during the first Centennial of American Methodism, according to Maryland historian J.T. Scharf.

According to one collection of colonial records, Georgetown Methodists had no formal church until 1795, when a chapel was built on Montgomery Street (now 28th Street), near what is now M Street. The Georgetown Methodist Society was an appointment for preachers on the Frederick Circuit until 1801, when it became a separate "station."

The "new chapel" on Montgomery Street was enlarged to a church in 1806. According to one chronicler, it was "30 feet by 40 feet deep, being one and a half stories high." By 1820, the congregation had grown so large that this building was torn down and another erected in its place. The new two-story building was "substantial and strong, and answered the purpose of worship for many years," until the congregation sold it to the town for $1200. It became the Corcoran School. (From Richard Jackson's The Chronicles of Georgetown, from 1778 to 1878.)

The Dumbarton Methodist Church was deeded in May 1849. As Jackson described it in 1878, it was "a spacious church, two stories high, the basement being used for the Sabbath school, while the main room of the church is used for public worship."

After the first battle of Bull Run, the Dumbarton Avenue church was used as a hospital. Lincoln attended one of its first services after it reopened as a church. It may have been one of these visits which inspired him to write on May 18, 1864, "God bless the Methodists." During its days as a hospital, a young clerk working at the Agriculture Department often came there to read poetry to the casualties. His name was Walt Whitman. Another famous person who most likely visited at the hospital was Dr. Mary Walker, an Assistant Surgeon General during the war. She wrote often of her conversations with the pastor of Dumbarton. Dr. Walker was the only woman to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor and the only person to have had it rescinded by an act of Congress. According to her granddaughter, the Congressional Medal was ordered returned because Dr. Walker was such an outspoken feminist. She never gave back the Medal, and was buried with it in 1897.

MOUNT ZION UMC IS BORN

Blacks, relegated to the balcony of the original Georgetown church, wanted their own place of worship. Henry Foxall, a slaveowner and prominent Georgetown Society member, helped make it possible. In 1816, he sold them his lot on Mill Street above West Street (now 27th Street above P Street), and helped them build a small brick meetinghouse first known as "The Ark." The "African church" organized a Sunday school for its children in September 1823. Writing in 1841, Lloyd Davis, then pastor of the Dumbarton Avenue church, noted that "this church and school now has a large membership and its effect in promoting the welfare of the colored citizens of Georgetown has been incalculable."

This church became the Mount Zion Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844. By 1850, black Methodist Society members in Georgetown outnumbered whites 441 to 411. After years of preaching from white laypersons and pastors (provided by the Dumbarton Church until 1855), Mount Zion obtained its first black pastor in 1864. The same year saw the formation of the Washington Conference, which was organized to serve the principally black congregation of the city.

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT

The Methodist Church has often been ahead of its time in social/political ideas. In 1924, the General Conference of the Methodist Church created a Commission on World Peace. One delegate asserted that this gave Methodism "the distinction of being the first Protestant denomination in this country, and probably throughout the world, to establish a special agency for the advancement of peace."

Looking through the minutes from previous years of the Baltimore Annual Conference we find the following thoughts and concerns. In light of our national concerns in 1983, it is of interest to note the dates of these citations:

"We cannot but condemn an (economic) order which in its best days failed to provide employment..., which has created an appalling paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty, has glorified wealth-getting without corresponding service to society, has left millions in the shadows of perpetual fear of poverty, sickness and old age." (1934)

"We affirm our unalterable opposition to war and its pernicious philosophy of militarism . ...We deplore the enormous expenditures now being made for military purposes, particularly in the light of our staggering burden of debt and the pitiable poverty of multitudes of our people." (1935)

"The Negro is the most underprivileged group in the United States. The Negro has a lower standard of living than any other group. His poverty is accompanied by that trinity of evils-- disease, ignorance and crime . ...We warn all who harbor racial intolerance that this is a fire that will destroy the temple of their own religious and political freedom." (1939)

"The man on the street fears that our 'cold war' may soon become an atomic war and that there is little he can do to halt the steady march of world events toward a final and brutal conflict. There is danger that hysterical fear may itself become the cause of war. 'Christian people' should reject (this) spirit of fatalism about war." (1948)

"All men are children of God and brothers one of another; before Him no distinctions of nation, race, class, culture, or political alignment can stand. God wills all men to be free to work out their destinies in a just society amid conditions compatible with truth, and to share in the resources of the earth that He has provided for all. To us He has committed, not implements of destruction for the arrest of evil, but the words of reconciliation and love." (1952)

GRACES

Prayers of Thanksgiving are coon to all faiths. A few favorites from Dumbarton are shared with you here.

DOXOLOGY - Sung at every Sunday worship and frequently at potlucks, before the meal

Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise God all creatures here below.
Praise God above, ye heavenly host.
Creator, Christ and Holy Ghost.

JOHNNY APPLESEED GRACE - Our favorite at retreats

Oh the Lord is good to me,
And so I thank the Lord
For giving me the things I need,
The sun and the rain and the appleseed.
The Lord's been good to me.

MORAVIAN PRAYER - John Wesley was so impressed with the piety that the Moravians exhibited in their "grace before and after meat" that he translated the prayer from the German and used it in his own home. This prayer can often be heard, sung joyfully, and in four part harmony at many a church supper.

Be present at our Table, Lord,
Be here and everywhere adored.
These creatures bless and grant that we
may feast in fellowship with thee.

The lesser known second verse is as follows:

We thank thee, Lord, for this our food
But more because of Jesus' blood
let manna to our souls be given
the bread of Life sent down from Heaven.

OTHER FAVORITES

God is good,
God is great,
And we thank God for our food.

Lord Jesus, be our holy guest,
Our morning joy, our evening rest
And with our daily food impart
Thy love and peace to every heart.

Bless this food, Bless this drink,
Bless us gathered together.
Make us one, in his love,
Bless us now and forever.
(To the tune "Edelweiss")