A year ago, in the days after learning that Donald Trump would be the next president, Charleen Ward was afraid.

And come Sunday, she was in church.

Pamela Perry, left, and Patrice Eubanks talk during a St. Margaret's choir rehearsal. The church has seen attendance rise this year.

Isabelle Melese-d'Hospital, facing the camera, embraces Charleen Ward during a service at St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. "I needed to have that family support of the church" after the 2016 election, Ward said. Washington Post photos by Matt McClain

“I was really scared. I felt that things were going to be drastically changed for me as an African-American woman, as a gay woman,” she said. “I needed to come after the election. I knew there would be many who felt the way I did. I needed to have that family support of the church.”

The pews were packed in churches across the country on the Sunday after the election, filled with Trump supporters giving thanks for the turning of a page in America, with stunned liberals seeking solace and with many who simply felt compelled to be together in community in an emotional moment.

Surely, the election didn’t mark any sort of spiritual awakening in America. There’s been no big turn in the tide of an increasingly secular younger generation. But there was a slight shift: In churches across America, some of the people who walked through the doors for the first time in many years on that Sunday after Election Day stuck around. In quiet ways in the past year, the church has changed them. And they have changed the church.

That’s apparent at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in the District of Columbia, where Ward found community on that Sunday after the election. The church has so many new members – many of whom voice their commitment to progressive priorities loud and clear, but don’t have quite as firm a grasp on church tradition – that the clergy just launched a series to teach them, over drinks, about the theology behind their social justice causes.

“It comes out of the requests from our 20- and 30-somethings, who are kind of new to church. They’re not new to advocacy. They’re not new to activism,” said the Rev. Richard Weinberg. “They have commitments. But they don’t have the theological language and background.”

Average Sunday attendance jumped from 98 in the month leading up to Trump’s inauguration to 122 in the following month, Weinberg said. “I would say that there is more of an energy and a commitment to the resistance movement. Young folks and not-young folks alike are coming.”

It’s a pattern echoed in congregations of many stripes. In many Jewish and Muslim congregations, some young people who didn’t think much about their identities before drew closer to their communities in the face of rising anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

At All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in the District, the Rev. Robert Hardies said that Sunday attendance is 33 percent higher this fall than it was before last year’s election.

The Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, said that’s the case at most congregations across the country in the liberal Unitarian Universalist church. Her own church in Phoenix saw a 20 percent increase in Sunday attendance after the election.

“A lot of people who are members but hadn’t been attending regularly or hadn’t attended in a while are all coming back to the community,” she said.

She thinks the stress of politics is driving women and immigrants in particular to church. “When people are afraid, when they’re facing trauma, when they’re in the midst of tremendous challenge and difficulty, they seek out communities that will support them,” Frederick-Gray said. “They seek out religious community. And I believe people are experiencing trauma in this political environment.”

Many mainline Protestant churches, as well as mosques and synagogues, have redoubled their social action activities, attracting new members who want a place to get involved. Church committees across the country have been busy hosting rallies about climate change and racism, writing and calling legislators about health care and taxes, and offering direct aid to refugees and immigrants.

“I hear that constantly from pastors, that they’ve seen an uptick in attendance post-election,” said the Rev. Jennifer Butler, who chaired a White House faith council during the Obama administration and now leads the liberal organization Faith in Public Life.

“I think what’s helping is that there’s also a larger public witness of, I guess you would call it, ‘progressive religion’ – which I think has given people some comfort and some feeling of confidence in the church, that the church is going to practice what it preaches,” Butler said.

At St. Margaret’s, members have joined some of the protest marches and have reached out to Muslim and Jewish leaders to show solidarity. But often the volunteer opportunities are less obviously political, like serving meals to hungry neighbors.

Jade Williams, 27, has started going to St. Margaret’s on both Thursdays and Sundays to serve meals and chat with the homeless guests. She came to the church recently, soon after she moved from the Bahamas to the District to work for the Bahamian Embassy here and spotted a sign on the church’s door. It matches many of the yard signs that sprang up in the District after the election: “Black Lives Matter … Love is Love, Science is Real.” But it ends with an additional line: “God’s Grace is Everything.”

“That’s what drew me there and really keeps me there,” she said about the sign.

Recently, Williams had a harrowing experience that left her grateful for the church. She, her husband and relatives went to the Jefferson Memorial to take family photos and were shocked when a group of about 20 protesters, in town for a white nationalist demonstration, started taunting the family.

“Growing up, I went to a Catholic school. One of the songs we used to sing when we went to Mass in the morning, that’s what’s been on my mind these last few weeks – ‘They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love,’ ” she said.

“I think that relationship with the church home is incredibly significant and important to me, after that occurred,” Williams said. “It made me appreciate the work that St. Margaret’s is doing, its message. Every single message every Sunday morning has a social justice theme.”

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