Yoga Mats and Tai Chi for the National Cathedral

Last Tuesday, many Episcopalians were dismayed to read the Washington Post’s latest article on the National Cathedral. According to Michelle Boorstein’s report, the financial strain of recent years has encouraged the folks of the Cathedral to stretch themselves in unusual ways, both figuratively and literally.

About ten years ago, the National Cathedral had to halve its $27 million budget in the face of falling revenue. The 2011 earthquake, which harmed several historic landmarks, caused $26 million in damage for the church. The cathedral now has to raise $13 million for its standard annual budget and chip away at the remaining $19 million in property repair costs.

Several measures have been taken to offset these mounting difficulties. Officials now ask for a $10 admission fee from tourists. But the perpetually forward-thinking Dean Gary Hall has also pushed for myriad activities and programs to attract regular donors to bulk up the budget and build up the endowment. Hall hopes that opening up the cathedral as public space may grant access to corporate and large private donors that would otherwise remain unaware of the church.

In the article, he insisted, “I think our future, in terms of funding the cathedral, is attracting major donors, like all big cultural institutions. And major donors are interested in innovative, transformative stuff, not just maintaining a building to be a tourist attraction.”

The article leaves much to be desired in terms of explanation regarding the causes of financial stress and other possible solutions. George Conger eviscerates this gaping problem in his Get Religion piece.

But let us, just for the moment, savor the new “Seeing Deeper” program that rolled out at the National Cathedral. On Monday night, attendees enjoyed lessons from a tai chi master replete with a silver sword. A sword! In church! Take that, crucifix and thurible, you nasty symbols of Constantinian oppression! On Wednesday, choristers sung a 40 part “extreme polyphony” (sure to be quite a delight thanks to the amateur singers galloping about the football field-sized space). On Friday, several lucky spiritual-but-not-religious contortionists got to engage in an all night vigil (not for Easter or Christmas, of course—nirvana forbid!). I say “contortionists” because yoga mats were mentioned, but I could be wrong. Cushions were also furnished the otherwise austere Gothic interior. Sedentary navel-gazing may be the preferred method of fund-raising/spiritualism for aging New Ageist elite. After all, the architectural space seems religiously neutral for Dean Hall. “I want to skateboard down [the nave]—or have a paper airplane contest,” he piped up to Boorstein.

No doubt the Episcopal clergyman means well in this venture and faces a challenging financial crisis as a leader. On the other hand, the “non-theist” dean is at least somewhat pleased with this perplexing synthesis of Eastern mysticism with a Christian worship space. While the cathedral has always been a somewhat spiritually confused place with its blurred barrier between the City of God and the City of Man, these endeavors mark yet another exhibition in the Religious Left’s obsession with interreligious dialogue and cultural relevance. “It’s easier to have interfaith collaboration about that than at the doctrinal level. If I get people together and say, ‘Let’s talk about God,’ we’ll get an argument,” Hall complained, “But if I say, ‘Let’s all pray together and experience the divine together in our own way,’ people can enter that in a much more creative and less-judgmental way.”

Experience some vague, self-defined spirituality and don’t think critically—that is the popular mantra, and probably in more places than just the National Cathedral. In addition, Dean Hall seems to believe that Protestants are given to over-thinking, warning that Protestantism made religion “too mental…not enough experience.”

Perhaps Dean Hall is once again showing his insular social circle: that of a liberal, wealthy WASP elite. Maybe in the rarefied height of Mount St. Alban, overly cerebral abstractionism remains an endemic problem. However, many Protestant Christians, especially in the District, are interested in experiential worship of some kind and in reaching out into the world through generosity, cultural improvement, and evangelism. Until Hall decides to engage the successful, integrated congregations of DC (which are orthodox evangelical or Catholic in nature), he will probably continue to urge the National Cathedral to embrace embarrassing gimmicks.

h/t David D. for the story