Organized on January 31, 1839 at 114 George Street, your St. Stephen's Church serves as the third-oldest Episcopal parish in Providence. This is an active Episcopal parish in the Diocese of Rhode Island that was first organized on January 31, 1839 and admitted to the diocesan convention in July of that same year. In the next year the parish erected its first permanent structure at the northwest corner of Transit Street and Benefit Street.
During a yearlong tenure the Reverend George Leeds introduced the first beginnings of Anglo‑Catholic tradition here — three years before the founding of the Church of the Advent, the region’s most significant tractarian church — and those leanings were publicly condemned. S. Stephen’s is proud to be the third‑oldest Episcopal parish in Providence. Recent parish figures show 130 members in 2015 and 109 members in 2023, with no membership statistics reported in the 2024 parochial reports; plate and pledge income reported in 2024 was $211,371 and average Sunday attendance that year was 87 persons.
Listen for the hush of services and the parish life within these walls, then notice the Brown University campus and the College Hill streets beyond them.