Christ Church Episcopal is the building Rugby was built around. Designed in the Carpenter Gothic style with steep gables, board-and-batten siding, and trefoil windows, it has the unselfconscious authenticity that comes from never having been "restored" into a museum: this is a working parish that has held weekly services since 1887. Visitors are welcome to walk through any day of the year, and the docent-led tours go inside on most weekday afternoons.
The interior is small and lit by clerestory windows, with the original pine pews, gas-fitted oil lamps converted to electricity, and a hand-pumped reed organ that still leads the singing on Sundays. The cemetery behind the church holds the graves of many of the original colonists, including Thomas Hughes's mother Margaret, who died in Rugby in 1887.