St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church, part of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina, was founded in 1906. Our church is named for St. Cyprian, north African bishop and martyr.

St. Cyprian, originally called Thascius, was born around the year 200 into a prominent and wealthy pagan family. Thascius received an excellent education and was a well-known orator and teacher before becoming a Christian and being baptized when he was in his forties.

Cyprian fled the persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire that began in AD 250,  guiding his Carthaginian diocese from a distance for over a year. He opposed the readmittance to the Church of Christians who had sacrificed to the Emperor during the persecution, unless they met stringent conditions of repentance and then only at the point of death. In another of the many debates and disputes in which the early Church engaged, Cyprian disagreed with Pope Stephen I, who had declared that a baptism conducted by someone not baptized him- or herself was nonetheless valid.

Cyprian was held in high regard by the common people because of his attention to their needs during times of plague and famine, and when another round of persecution began in AD 256, he did not flee. Rather, he appeared before the Roman proconsul and affirmed both his faith in Christ and his refusal to sacrifice to the Emperor. He was banished, then imprisoned, and finally beheaded for this in AD 258.