Officials: Fire destroys 100-year-old Episcopal Church of the Messiah in Central Islip

Members of The Episcopal Church of the Messiah in Central Islip had planned a special Juneteenth service before a fire ripped through their 100-year-old church building Sunday, clouding the immediate future of a congregation born in the decade of the Civil War.

A steel pan player had been booked and a Juneteenth liturgy prepared for Monday. Food for the holiday commemorating the end of slavery was cooling in a refrigerator in the basement, where the fire raged overnight.

“It’s definitely sad,” said Maureen Roberts, a member who has called the church her second home for the better part of four decades. “We are devastated.”

Churchwarden Sandra Townsend, whose grandparents’ names graced the church altar, said the congregation now must find a way to move forward as it has, uninterrupted, since being established in 1869.

“We keep going,” she said as she watched workers nail boards over the windows of the only church she’s known. “That’s all you can do.”

Earlier Sunday, Townsend and others from the congregation prayed with Bishop Lawrence Provenzano, head of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, who arrived from Garden City to let members of the Central Islip church know that they will have the support of the diocese as they search for a path forward.

Townsend said while this particular Sunday was about sifting through the ashes and Monday’s holiday event is canceled, the neighboring parish hall could serve as a temporary home for services in the near future.

Volunteers from Brentwood, East Brentwood, East Islip, Hauppauge, Islip and Islip Terrace assisted the Central Islip Fire Department in battling the blaze for just over two hours beginning shortly after 2 a.m., said Central Islip Fire Department Chief Michael Zaleski.

Firefighters arrived to find the blaze burning from the basement of the church up to the ceiling on the main floor. The balloon frame design of “the extremely old structure” caused the fire to spread rapidly, the chief said. “It’s totaled on the interior,” Zaleski explained.

Central Islip-Hauppauge Ambulance Corps. was also present, though officials said no injuries were reported.

“Other than it being an old church, it was a pretty simple fire to handle,” Zaleski said.

Suffolk police arson squad investigators will work to determine the cause and origin of the fire, the chief added.

Townsend said that much of the wood from the original 1869 church building on Church Street was repurposed when the current building was constructed on Carleton Avenue on land gifted to the congregation in 1923. While the building has been expanded in its century on the property between First and Second avenues, in many ways it is the same structure its oldest congregants remember from their earliest days.

Townsend said her grandparents, Frank and Geraldine Townsend, were welcomed into Church of the Messiah when they arrived from the Bronx. The English and Irish church soon changed with the demographics of the community and now serves Black residents from the surrounding areas and other parts of Suffolk County, she said. On Sunday, members drove from as far as Manorville, Babylon and Stony Brook to gaze at their badly damaged church.

“Disbelief,” said Roberts, of Babylon. “That’s really the perfect word for what we’re feeling.”

Townsend kept going back to the church’s history and how even as it faced change in the 1920s and the decades that followed, it always carried on.

“We will continue to celebrate Mass and worship in our faith,” the churchwarden said. “We are committed.”

By Grant Parpan

grant.parpan@newsday.com@GrantParpan

Grant Parpan covers Suffolk County courts and federal courts for Newsday. A Long Island native, he joined Newsday in 2022.