This week I visited the historic Rockefeller estate and the family church in Pocantico Hills, New York. John D. the patriarch built Kykuit early in the 20th century and it remained in the family until grandson Nelson bequeathed it as a museum. The patriarch also founded Union Church nearby at the same time.
Father and son were devout northern Baptists who shunned liquor, tobacco and gambling. Kykuit was a place of temperance during their rule. On Sundays after church and meals the family played the organ or piano and sang hymns. Although a magnificent mansion overlooking the Hudson River, their faith kept the architecture and dimensions restrained. Some nude classical statuary was kept out of sight though the dining room mantle carving oddly portrays an ancient baccanal.
Union Church is also relatively modest and resembles other small town sanctuaries, excepting the extraordinary stained glass windows. Henri Matisse designed one, his last work of art on earth, crafted at the insistence of Nelson to honor his mother, a great art patroness. Nine other windows came from Marc Chagall, initially commissioned by Nelson’s brother David, the first of which to honor their father, John Jr., the great philanthropist. Its theme is the Good Samaritan, into which Chagall squeezed nearly every aspect of the Gospel story.
Another Chagall window whose theme is the crucifixion honors Nelson’s young son killed but never found in Papua New Guinea while on expedition. His then New York Governor father famously searched for his missing son in the jungles and waterways without avail. The son is shown kneeling before the crucified Lord, while perhaps his family, and his expedition partner, look on. “Seek and ye shall find” also titles this window. A window honoring his father is titled “Knock and it shall be opened unto you.” Other windows are themed around six Old Testament prophets and honor other family members. Apparently the family was very involved in crafting each window’s paricular biblical focus.
In more recent years David, the patriarch’s last grandson who died this year at age 101, gifted the church an organ to honor his late wife. Apparently the congregation no longer has title to the building, which is held in trust by an historical preservation group. But the congregation is active. One of its apparent members gave a lengthy talk on the windows and their biblical themes to a visiting tour group when I visited. There were preparations for a flea market in the parking lot. The current pastor has been at the church for nearly 25 years, and he attended a United Methodist seminary plus Princeton Seminary.
I’m curious if current Rockefellers, who still access Kykuit, attend the church. The senior surviving family member is a son of Nelson who attended Union Seminary, which the Rockefellers once funded, and he is now an aficionado of Zen Buddhism. The Rockefellers underwrote, with varying degrees of intentionality, the early liberalizing of Mainline Protestantism. Their philanthropy included, besides Union Seminary, Riverside Church, the Federal and National Councils of Churches, and the Interchurch Center, among other once formidable but now diminished Mainline institutions.
The Rockefellers had faith that Christianity could adapt to and thrive within modernity, not themselves apparently anticipating postmodernity. Yet their multigenerational investment in Union Church, and the theologically rich windows they commissioned, evince their spiritual exertions, if often misdirected, were also just as often high-minded.
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