In his Introduction to The Cathedral Church of St John the Divine (1916), the Very Rev. William Mercer Grosvenor, then Dean of the Cathedral, wrote: “It is evident that we are at the very beginning of what we believe to be a great future for this Cathedral. We are trying to make it the centre of a far-reaching spiritual influence, and at the same time to go forward toward the completion of the building itself.” It is this dynamic interplay between the will to exert spiritual influence at every stage of the building’s development and the more tangible effort to move the building toward completion that fascinates me in the early history of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine.
At the time of Grosvenor’s writing, the nave of the cathedral was still unbuilt. Yet sermons preached at the Cathedral had already been published, putting it on the map as a center of spiritual influence: for example, “The Talisman of Unity: A Sermon in Behalf of Church Consolidation Preached in the Crypt of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine Sunday January the Twenty Second 1899” by William Reed Huntington. The Cathedral’s crypt accommodated “a congregation of 500 persons” and had only been opened for use on January 8, 1899 (Cathedral Church, p. 22), two weeks prior to Huntington’s sermon. Huntington was well known as an ecumenical thinker, and had been a trustee of the Cathedral since 1887. To have a sermon worthy of publication preached in the crypt so soon after its opening served a double purpose such as Dean Grosvenor articulates: it helped to make the nascent Cathedral “the centre of a far-reaching spiritual influence” while it also raised public awareness that new milestones were being reached in the growth of the Cathedral toward completion.
The good will of the public tends to play an important role in the completion of religious buildings. Subscriptions and donations are mentioned throughout Cathedral Church as playing a key role in the financing of the building. Thus Dean Grosvenor, with his dual emphasis on spiritual impact and physical building, shows a genuine practical understanding of what is needed to get a religious building built. The public needs to be made aware that the building, however incomplete it may be, is an effective centre of spiritual influence; but they also need to be made aware that the building is moving effectively towards physical completion and thus growing in functionality.
