OPEN SPACES OF SPIRITUAL POSSIBILITY: REIMAGINING THE EPISCOPAL CATHEDRAL FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Tracey Lind taught me what a cathedral was. When she was the Dean of Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland, Ohio, the mother church of my home Diocese of Ohio, my family would take the 45-minute drive up to Cleveland a few times a year to visit the Cathedral, hear her excellent preaching, and go out for dim sum in Cleveland’s wonderful Asiatown. It was Tracey that preached a Gospel of love and inclusion, that knew exactly how to deal with people that others (including myself) might look down at, and offered a compelling vision for a Cathedral in the city.

Tracey, upon arriving in Cleveland in 2000, found herself at a Cathedral about to start a major renovation process, as detailed in the chapter “The Demolition Contractor” of her 2004 book Interrupted by God. Discussing the piazzas in the renovated cathedral complex, Tracey discusses St. Angela de Merici, the founder of the Order of Ursulines, who instructed her sisters to “be like a piazza,” by which she meant, in Tracey’s words, “to be gracious, hospitable, and engaged in the world—to stand with Christ in the crossroads of life.” Tracey then goes on to note that “each Italian piazza is different in ethos, but all have essentially the same characteristics. They are open, inviting, restful, refreshing, and yet filled with energy. They are found in the center of the city and tucked away in neighborhoods. They are centers of commerce, culture, charity, conversation, and collaboration.” And it was this vision that Tracey plotted for the cathedral—a center of commerce, culture, charity, conversation, and collaboration.

Where have our cathedrals gone? Not every diocese has one—and not all of them need one due to the vagaries of diocesan borders and demographics. And certainly not all Cathedrals are in a traditional urban location like they are in Europe or Cleveland. Many of those that are urban have found themselves embracing new forms of urban ministry. But there is still a substantial need for the continued growth of Cathedrals as a site of spiritual resources. 

A random sample of eight of the 80 Episcopal cathedrals in the United States showed four cathedrals that offered the Daily Office, three that offered a once-weekly midweek Eucharist, two that offered Eucharist every day during the week, and two that did nothing beyond Sunday mornings. (And may I applaud Christ Church Cathedral in Nashville for having both a daily Eucharist and the Daily Office.)

In a 2012 report for the Association of English Cathedrals entitled “Spiritual Capital: The Present and Future of English Cathedrals,” Theos and the Grubb Institute, the authors of the report, write in their introduction that “Cathedrals are not just tourist destinations but places that can convey a sense of the spiritual and sacred even to those who are on the margins of Christian faith, or who stand some way beyond. In an age of amorphous, ‘emergent’ spiritualities, this presents cathedrals with enormous potential,” and that one of the key themes for growth found was to equip cathedrals to connect people with the sacred. In their last section, they write that cathedrals are “ clearly and distinctly perceived as Christian, and as institutions, but at the same time understood as open spaces of spiritual possibility in which exploration and development of emergent spiritualities are made possible.”

How do we create those spaces while maintaining the cathedral’s role as a local leader? Here are a few suggestions.

Firstly, a continued commitment to justice work and a role in the life of the city. While our Cathedrals might not be the places of civic import like they are in England, Cathedral Deans across the Episcopal Church have done the hard work of making themselves influential figures in the lives of the city, from Tracey, to the now-retired Jep Streit at St. Paul’s in Boston, and to Sam Candler of St. Philip’s in Atlanta and his unique form of evangelism that could only occur if one’s the senior priest or pastor at a major church in his city.

However, as evidenced by the title of this piece, there is still a good deal of growth to be done spiritually. My friend, Garrett Boyte, the priest-in-charge of Holy Cross Church in Shreveport, Louisiana, wrote a blog post at the end of his internship there in 2018 entitled “What I Learned Saying the Office in the Parish.” Holy Cross is not a big parish. In 2018, their reported Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) was 62, a number lower than any cathedral in TEC. Garrett writes that:

When I first had the idea, planted in my brain by the dedication to the Office by my seminary professors, to say the Office in the parish, I thought it would mostly be me by myself on most days. Perhaps members of the parish would come by occasionally but my expectations for attendance were low. People are busy and lead busier lives. But I scheduled the services to be manageable for people with a 9-5 job. Morning Prayer has been at 8:15 and Evening Prayer at 5:30 …. As the weeks wore on, attendance would fluctuate as people learned to adjust their schedules. I continued to encourage attendance and told people that when they couldn’t attend they should say it at home.

He concludes his post saying that “it has taken some getting used to, but now it’s very natural to comprehend the Office as a set part of the parish’s daily schedule …. This is the beginning stages of making the Office a ground for the culture of parish life. And once it’s become embedded into the fabric of the community, our obedience to it flows out from us with little effort and to great effect.”

Their example and those of others (see my friends Jayan Koshy and Tony Hunt and their work in founding the Society of Saint Nicholas Ferrar and in starting a practice of Morning Prayer at St. John’s Church in St. Paul, MN), do offer us hope for consistently saying the Office in parishes or cathedrals.

Why focus this on cathedrals? Well, most of the time, cathedrals are one of the few churches in a diocese with not only the people-power to offer these programs and are normally situated in the right location to draw those surrounding it in. Garrett’s example is proof that you can do these things, like the Office, in a smaller parish as well.  

All ministry is contextual—a small-town rector isn’t going to have a road race every year to deliver an invocation for. However, many successful cathedrals are successful because of how they adapt to their context. I do not expect any cathedral in the US to go fully British and do Choral Evensong every day. (There is, for better or for worse, no other church in the US like St. Thomas Fifth Avenue.) What I do hope and pray for, though, is the formation of a robust spiritual life, with always-opened doors, and a chance to stop in and pray to God.