Bucolic and gorgeously green at mid-summer, Christ Church, St. John's Parish, Accokeek, Md., has offered, for more than three centuries, one of the most peaceful vistas in the entire United States.

It may again provide repose for eyes and soul when the controversy surrounding the rector's election has passed.

To uninvolved passers-by, the little brick church with its diamond-shaped window panes and small steeple, is a study in serene simplicity. The lawn, carefully preened every weekend by a volunteer crew, is bordered by a graceful wall protective of mossy gravestones dating back to 1797.

Viewed across the wide churchyard, a grove of stately trees that shelter a handsome colonial rectory seems more a tranquil symbol of hospitality than the center of a stormy secular and ecclesiastical legal battle. New turns are heard almost daily in what has come to be called the saga of Accokeek (an Indian word for peace.)

Once described as being "in the country," the sprawling area that constitutes Accokeek, in Prince Georges County, is only 10 miles south of the nation's capital and hence is both rural and suburban.

"The congregation reflects the blending of families whose histories are entwined with the church as well as families and individuals who are new to the community," says a self-study of the parish. "To maintain the family feeling of the church, we have monthly social activities to promote fellowship ... hayrides, trips to dinner theaters, potluck suppers, camping trips for the youth, fund raisers, Christmas caroling, and an active acolyte program."

The round of light-heartedness may return, but for the present, there is a nervously guarded fellowship of 50 to 60 parishioners worshiping in the venerable church and others going to diocesan-directed services in a nearby hall. Both sides claim a majority. An array of visiting bishops, including the recently retired diocesan, the Rt. Rev. Ronald Haines, come and go, adding a note of churchly celebrity in supplying "an episcopal presence."

Truth to tell, Accokeek, like many parishes, has known troubles aplenty since its earliest days.

In the political upheavals of the 1770s, the clergy often found themselves in considerable conflict with their congregations.

"Conditions were not conducive to religion," recalled one scribe in colossal understatement. "Missionaries were few and the temper of the local population was not oriented toward normal Christian living."

Another bewailed that "for more than six months I preached with a pair of loaded pistols on the cushion."

The Archbishop of Canterbury was told that "the Lord's day is profaned, religion despised, and all notorious vices committed as that it has become a Sodom of uncleanness and a pest house of iniquity."

Whatever the secular scene, through it all, Christ Church and St. John's Chapel, Pomonkey, across the creek, have been yoked and unyoked and yoked again, sometimes dependent and uneasy, other eras in companionable status. The latter's tiny congregation, its building and leadership, are also pawns in the ongoing ecclesiastical pageant of disarray.

During post-revolutionary days, ranks were shaped with clerics no longer bound, by conscience and administration, to England.

Christ Church got off to a tentative, almost casual start with a frame structure built in the early 1700s (replaced in 1745) on private land that wasn't deeded to the parish until 1843. The vestry became the legal owner with an exchange of $75.

Possession is now overshadowed, some say, by the diocesan setup that didn't exist until 1792 when the Diocese of Maryland was founded, and didn't radiate from the District of Columbia until the Diocese of Washington was carved out of Maryland in 1896. All of it is in fairly recent times by Accokeek reckoning.

As part of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Christ Church survived the presence of British troops during the War of 1812.

On Christmas Eve 1856, a wood fire caused Christ Church to burn. Rebuilt the next year, it was to be occupied by Union troops as the Civil War moved south.

That God brings good out of adversity is shown in the devastating fire that permitted the parish to rethink its position and arrange the interior of the new building for the "catholic advantages" it had been hearing about from advocates of Tractarianism and the Oxford Movement that had begun in 1833.

Emphasis was placed on the altar rather than the pulpit; the London-made, 1752 chalice and paten became more cherished, stained glass was introduced, and colonial pew boxes gave way to conventional pews. Liturgical warmth, yes, but central heating didn't come along until 1968.

Churchmanship, if measured by lack of genuflecting and the sign of the cross, doesn't rankle anyone; eucharistic vestments are accepted, and priests are forthrightly called "Father," even in the lawsuits.

Lastly, in terms of turmoil, was last year's closing of Canterbury School that found a home at Christ Church in the 1970s. It enrolled 35 or so students in the upper grades but lost out to deadly debt.

As the days of summer flee across the calendar of an extraordinary year, an old-timer's statement suddenly takes the form of a hopeful prophecy:

"In regard to that dear old church where I have spent many happy moments under the shade of those spreading oaks at convocation and picnics," he wrote in 1931, "there is feeling of love and attachment coming over me that is almost indescribable after being associated with the church for so many years, and for which I cherish the fondest recollections. Now in regard to Accokeek and surroundings, I think it has quite a bright future before it -- good roads, good schools, and a dear old church."

Read 70 years later, it is to Accokeek, and to all who follow its unfolding drama, a picture of the promised land.

The Rev. James B. Simpson, TLC's Washington correspondent, is assembling A Treasury of Anglican Art, to be published in 2002 by Rizzoli International.