Image by Red Stick Rant
To me, there is not a better church building, Episcopal or otherwise, in the United States. Designed by the incomparable architect (and Louisiana native) H.H. Richardson, it is an icon of American architecture. Take one step inside and it is easy to see why.
So you can understand why all of the architects visiting Boston for the recent American Institute of Architects (AIA) convention would want to see it, including your humble blogger (though my reason was a bit different - read on). Not that I needed a tour of Trinity - I had been in the church hundreds of times before, and during the 1992 AIA convention I even gave tours of the church. I know the place pretty well.
At my home parish, I read Evening Prayer on the weekends. It is usually just me, alone in the church, and I find the time to be intensely spiritual. For weeks I had been looking forward to reading Evening Prayer at Trinity - a spiritual experience in one of the most spiritual spaces ever.
So imagine my surprise when I entered the vestibule and was greeted by two college-age kids at a table across the door to the nave, saying I had to pay $6.00 for a "self-guided tour" to enter. I told them that I was an Episcopalian, had been there many times before, and didn't want to tour - I wanted to say prayers. They told me that worship times were posted, this wasn't one of those times, and to go downstairs to get a ticket if I wanted to get in.
So downstairs I went. I asked the person behind the counter if, as an Episcopalian wanting to spend a few minutes in prayer, I needed to pay $6.00. Yes, I had to pay. So I ponied up $6.00, went upstairs, and quietly said Evening Prayer.
I figured that maybe this was something special, what with all of the architects in town. So I decided to let it pass.
Now page forward three days, after the convention. My wife and children are with me in Boston, and we go to Trinity Church. We open the great door and there, in the center of the vestibule, is the same little table blocking the main nave door manned by the same college-age kids during the AIA convention. And the kids tell me the same thing - $6.00 to get in. But we're Episcopalians, I reply, and we don't want a tour. Sorry, we need a ticket, they insist, or come back during "regular" service times. I ask if they normally charge to get in, and they said yes. So we left.
Travel all over Italy, or France, or the UK, and NOWHERE will you be required to pay a cover charge to enter a house of God. (I know, I've been there.) They often ask for a donation, but that is all. I think what Trinity is doing is unconscionable. At the least, it's not what their website indicates (See a A Place for Prayer). Nor is it very "welcoming" or "inclusive, to use the pop-theology catch-phrases of the day, and I must say I have a hard time seeing Trinity as a spiritual space anymore. I do not think Trinity is that hard up for cash - it is the 10th largest Episcopal Church in the nation (my parish is a mere 113th), so lack of funds is not an excuse. If they want to run guided tours and ask folks to pay for it, fine. If they want to offer folks self-guided tours for a price, fine. But to deny entry to all unless they pay, and to assume everyone who seeks entry to the church, outside of appointed worship services, is somehow only there to "see" the place, is insulting in the extreme. Doubly so when those seeking entry are their fellow Episcopalians.
2 comments:
Clifford,
This is the New, Improved Episcopal Church/Organization! It's all about the money, dude!
Whatever do prayers have to do with that?
No. Allen, I don't think it is that sinister. It is, however, sad.
Having lived in Boston, the value system these young people know pretty much excludes religious Faith, except in the limited circumstances where it allows a progressive political identity. The practice of religious Faith, when it is done, is a communal thing only - symbolic and ceremonial - and seen more as a social function. Individual acts of to Faith such as prayer are seen as quaint things undertaken only by old people, or those intellectually unable to cope with "reality" (e.g. "the religious right").
I honestly believe that the folks working at Trinity those two times I stopped in likely saw my request as a ruse to get in without paying. That a person would crave admittance for reasons other than the architecture and history is most likely an utterly foreign concept to them. To them, that's what Sundays are for.
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