A Convening Authority

The Cathedral was founded as “a center of intellectual light and leadership.” From the beginning, this has been a place for social and political activism, for the exploration of ideas, and for community in the widest sense. Many people—both known and unknown—have chosen the pulpit of St. John to bring their messages to the world. As times change, the conversations change. What doesn’t change is the effort to see, understand, include, and most of all, to listen.

The Cathedral of our Common Humanity

Dean Kowalski, scholar Thupten Jinpa, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Professor Sakena Yacoobi, founder of the Afghan Institute of Learning, participating in a dialogue on “Kinship and its meaning in our world today,” May 23, 2010. THE DALAI LAMA In 1979, I visited the USA for the very first time. Although I am a simple Buddhist monk from faraway Tibet, I remember being warmly welcomed at the Cathedral as a fellow spiritual brother. What began then was a conversation, which continues to this day, about the value of love, kindness, compassion, and the sense of global responsibility. Despite the different philosophical approaches we may take, we agreed then as now that these qualities are at the heart of all the world’s major religious traditions.

PRISCILLA BAYLEY The Cathedral was founded as a specifically American Cathedral, which makes it unique because of its commitment to democratic and egalitarian ideals.

HANNAH WOLFE EISNER The value of being an American space is that it provides a way to broaden the category of the sacred. A lot of my family’s stories are about the Cathedral community, people being in this space regardless of what they believe. That says something important about the Cathedral.

PHILIPPE PETIT The policy of open doors, open to all religions, all persuasions, and all people is what makes this Cathedral different. The Cathedral becomes a beacon of the community.

THE REV. TOM PIKE You should walk into a religious building and say, “Something is missing. It’s the people.” That sense of embracing community, and being the sign of community, is the very center of what the Cathedral is all about.

MARNIE WEIR Since its founding the mission has been to be a center for intellectual light and leadership and a house of prayer for all people. That’s what we’re supposed to do, and that’s what the Cathedral has done. The Cathedral is a forum to shape society. There are ways to make that happen here. BILL BAKER The Cathedral is the biggest indoor space in New York City. That it is also a place for moral purposes and that it has a history of people coming to share and express their values and faith makes the Cathedral a special place to hold the heart of this great city.

MIKE EDWARDS The Cathedral’s identity is well known in the city, forged in the social movements of 100 years ago, 50 years ago, 20 years ago and the present moment. From the welcoming of European immigrants to support for civil rights to the care of AIDS patients and the environment, the Cathedral has always been in the forefront of new struggle.

BRUCE MACLEOD There are no other places like this in New York. Our issues are universal— our issues are everything that affects humanity.

“This is the Cathedral of our common

humanity.” DAVID DINKINS

DEAN KOWALSKI When people say the Cathedral is only a place for worship and art, it overlooks history. The Cathedral has always been a place where the meeting of the sacred and the secular were expressed not as opposites, but as dialogical tensions. Here, the secular and the sacred work together. The Cathedral expresses God’s love affair with the unfolding world.

MIKE EDWARDS The Cathedral is foremost a place to be used. The Cathedral’s mission has ever been democratic and egalitarian; as the centuries pass, that mission requires more service, and to some extent, different kinds of service.

WAYNE KEMPTON A building this size can take anything. The Cathedral is big enough to allow a community inside and let the space change to be what you want it to be. It can take Gregorian chants, whirling dervishes, the Dalai Lama, or dope-smoking peace freaks listening to The Chambers Brothers.

A Special Call to Advocacy

Top Archbishop Desmond Tutu, May 20, 2003.

Bottom Lucas Benitez of the Coalition of the Immokalee Workers and Patricia Cipollitti of the Alliance for Fair Food with Dean Daniel at the Cathedral, March 2018.The Coalition of Immokalee Workers persuade growers to Fair Food standards including better pay and zero tolerance for sexual harassment. In exchange, the growers gain the opportunity to sell to committed retailers who have promised to only buy from Fair Food farms. JOHN CLINTON EISNER The question really is what is the Cathedral supposed to be and for whom? If you actually take this major New York City resource and try do something in the spirit of why it was built, how do you do that?

SUSAN RODRIGUEZ The Cathedral is experiential. Its role is not as an edifice but as a place that offers connection between leaders and people. People who are concerned with the health of our world, our city, and our community.

DIANA COHN I think that the capacity of the Cathedral to bring in a wide diversity of people who are engaged or want to learn about any issue— from water, to fracking, to food, to sanctuary—is a real strength. The Cathedral has the gravitas to do that for any problem we face.

BISHOP DIETSCHE We do not get to choose the world we live in. But as I like to say, we do get to choose what kind of witness we will be in that world.

SUB-DEAN PAT MALLOY Liturgy, when it’s done well, is inherently revolutionary. It paints a picture of a world that is not the world we live in. There is structure, there is hierarchy, but there is also shared responsibility, there is a common project, all of which leads to a re-commitment to living in the world… there is a hunger for something transcendent and a desire for commitment to community. I think even just participation at that level is revolutionary.

MURRY STEGELMANN The Cathedral is one place where we can figure out what it means to be part of God’s family and understand the work we have to do on this planet.

BILL BAKER The Cathedral represents our highest values and purposes: serving God and having a strong moral focus. The Cathedral offers itself as a place where you can ask, “What should we do? What is right? How can we maximize our lives for the best purpose?”

MARILYN NELSON A Cathedral like this can help people think through the issues, help people listen to each other. The hope is that it is possible to hear each other and that hearing can make a difference.

DEAN KOWALSKI The reach of the great conversations that have convened under this roof are breathtaking. All sorts of people have been brought together across cultures and faiths to dream about holy cities and just societies—and then they—“we”—are called into action. Across time, cultures, and faiths, the Cathedral invites each and all of us to enter the conversation. That invitation is from God. “Just come and be a part of it and the truth will unfold. It will be revealed.” That is the message.

ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU At a time when the world is turning inward upon itself in growing xenophobia, the Cathedral carries out a vital ministry as it both celebrates diversity and demonstrates openness to all.

“We will stand as one united force, Muslim and Jewish and Christian and Buddhist and Shia, black and white and male and female. We will stand boldly, because the earth needs us.”

THE REV. GERALD DURLEY

BISHOP DIETSCHE This was the place where we asked people to come join the March for our Lives. We gathered here and headed down to 72nd Street. Those things are not separate. They are part of what we mean by the Glory of God. They are all an expression of the central fundamental religious enterprise that we are engaged in at the Cathedral.

JUDY COLLINS St. John leads the way. It is interdenominational and all-embracing. It is a realization of what we are as a community, as a city, as an international point of adventure and departure. This is the treasure we have up here on the Upper West Side, and it’s not a mistake that it’s here in New York.

JAN ELIASSON When I was Deputy SecretaryGeneral of the United Nations, I was in the Cathedral with colleagues from all over the world sending a message about the oppressed, the vulnerable, and the equality between all people. To send that message from the Cathedral was a privilege. This great Cathedral shares the UN’s mission to promote peace, development, and human rights throughout the world.

THE DALAI LAMA Since the first occasion, I have returned to the Cathedral several times, participating in interreligious services and interfaith dialogues to foster closer harmony and understanding. Each time I have been reminded that all religions emphasize love and compassion, betterment, improving human beings, and a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood—these are things that we have in common.

JAMES CARROLL The Bible speaks with a thousand voices. The unity of its belief is created out of conversations, not pronouncements…. Nothing human is forbidden here; no voice need be silent before Silence itself.

Hope for Change

Top Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, the parents of Trayvon Martin, honored for their activism at the at the Cathedral, June 2018.

Bottom Maya Angelou commemorating 1964 Mississippi Freedom Riders James Early Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael H. Schwerner, who were killed while working to register Black voters, June 24, 1989. MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN We are at a crucial turning point in America today. We no longer believe that the rents in the moral fabric of our society will heal themselves. We are called up to take action, initiative, and responsibility for our future and our children’s future. Implicit in the mission of the Cathedral is the hope for change. As an institution in the midst of an urban microcosm of poverty, violence, and despair, the Cathedral towers, physically and spiritually, over the everyday adversity that is New York. In a society increasingly fragmented and plagued by an ever-growing rift between the “haves” and the “have nots,” the Cathedral offers a redemptive community, a place of welcoming where those of every race and class may come to share and worship.

THE REV. JESSE JACKSON The Cathedral of St. John the Divine has been an indispensable prophetic pulpit for New York City and America. Through a dark time—when it seemed as though the world had turned to greed and away from need, the Cathedral has held high the struggles that are central to our survival as a nation, a people, and a broad and various community of faith. While others are burying their heads in the sand, the Cathedral stood up against homelessness, against inhuman budgets, against inverted national priorities. It stood up for equal rights, for the renewal of neighborhoods—including its own—for the powerless, for the indigenous peoples struggling to protect their homes, for people with AIDS.

DEAN KOWALSKI The Cathedral has a convening authority. There are conversations that can only happen here. Something transformational can happen here. That is a very special call to advocacy. The Cathedral has often angered people when it has taken positions—but we’re still fighting. We at the Cathedral can’t move away from any narrative about human dignity. Anywhere you look you see extremism and polarization, people feeling left out, or victimized. God is in everyone, everywhere. If the Cathedral doesn’t have what it takes to attract people as different as the right and the left in America, then maybe we don’t need a Cathedral. More than ever the Cathedral is part of a conversation.

“God really had to work on me to strengthen me to get me to speak up for other people. To speak up for my son. To speak up for myself… Even though I gave birth to Trayvon, I just think that he is everybody's son.”

SYBRINA FULTON BISHOP DIETSCHE Every Cathedral program is a vehicle for inspiration and social change, whether it is our community outreach and food kitchen for hungry neighbors, our pastoral work, our concert series, or our thought-provoking and memorable art exhibitions, conversations, and lectures. In the 1930s, we spoke out against the rise of Hitler in Germany. In the 1950s, we spoke out for racial justice, with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In the 1980s during the height of the epidemic, we spoke out against the stigma of AIDS and homophobia. Immigration. Affordable housing. Intolerance. Today, we are speaking out against the violence of religious extremism and the backlash of religious intolerance… and confronting the jarring episodes of racial injustice that have no place in 21st century America. Our humanity calls us to compassion, hope and peace.

THE DALAI LAMA The welcome you have given to so many traditions is a shining example of the spirit of cooperation that the human family is in such urgent need of today.

ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU Your example is an inspiration to us all. We reach out to you across the oceans and hold hands, linking our humanity to your humanity, our struggle to yours and proclaiming: “Justice and peace have kissed each other and goodness and love will prevail, for if God is for us, who can be against us?”

KALIE KAMARA I want to be in a place where there is tolerance, where I don’t have to feel that if I’m different or my heritage or cultures’ values are different, that somehow we’re against each other. Many times religion tries to do that, but not here.