This priceless anecdote, from a recent conversation re confirmation on StandFirm:

Another move, no LCMS (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod), no CRC (Christian Reformed Church), but an invitation to teach Adult Bible Class at the Episcopal Church (dismal failure; Episcopalians generally have little interest in reading, mush less studying, the Bible). This was before the 1979 revisions were in place in that parish so the liturgy was almost word for word what I grew up with in the LCMS The hymns were for the most part unsingable, but you can’t have everything.  I took the adult confirmation class…twice. I backed away from confirmation the first time because of a crass remark about how much money the parish was sitting on; I expressed surprise that the parish had that much money in the bank and the priest said, “What do you expect us to do with it, give it to the poor?”  I was a full time volunteer with Habitat for Humanity working as Director of Family and Children’s Services (no pay, but a title that allowed the schools and welfare department to treat me as an equal).  I knew considerably more about the plight of the “poor” in the community than the priest could comprehend.  I needed a church home, took the class again, the bishop came and I was officially confirmed in the Episcopal Church.  I worked Alter Guild, sang in the choir, served as a Reader, coached a friend through his required Bible study to become a Deacon, filled the pulpit on one occasion, and moved out of state when they tried to draft me for the Vestry.

I guess it’s stuff like the Rector blurted out about the bank account that gave me such a jaundiced view of the Episcopal Church (or any other Main Line church for that matter) being a suitable instrument of social justice.

Her comments about Episcopalians’ studied disinterest in the Bible rings true as well.  As far as the difficulty in singing traditional Anglican hymns is concerned,  I managed to master the 1940 Hymnal in our paid youth choir, so I never understood my mother’s gripes about it.

But I will have to admit one thing: I never knew of anyone who fled the state to avoid serving on a Vestry.

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I found intriguing Elizabeth Kaeton’s piece on priests-in-charge.  It was interesting because it’s one of those rare posts (in this case from a liberal) which transcends the left-right divide that defines just about everything these days.

For my Evangelical readers, if you’re interested in the whole business of “priest-in-charge” you’ll need to read her post.  It is, more or less, an interim pastor, and that in an episcopally structured church (which is the one thing that we have in common.)  This means that the appointment is made by the bishop above, not called by the congregation (as is the case in Baptist or AoG churches.)

Several years back there was published a report on Church of God ministers that I usually christen the “Bowers Report” after the Pentecostal Theological Seminary professor who headed up its compilation.  One of the takeaways for me was that our pastors neither trusted the administrative bishops above them nor their laity below.  The result was pastoral stress, which was in part reflected in the high level of obesity amongst our ministers (the report used statistics, although anyone who has attended an Anglo Church of God campmeeting or General Assembly knows this to be so.)  The swelling waistlines are in part a product of a church culture which gives gluttony a pass while prohibiting alcohol and tobacco, but it’s also a sign of stress.  And there are indications (as Rev. Kaeton indicates) that pastoral stress isn’t restricted to the Church of God, or even to conservative churches.

How did we get in this mess?  I’ll try to avoid rambling, but let me lay out my ideas.

It used to be that churches could be described as polities.  People had a sense of ownership in their church, and that ownership was reflected in the power that the vestry/deacon board/church council had.  Sometimes they became tools of the ruling clique in the church and made some really silly decisions.  The most egregious one of these I saw growing up in the Episcopal church was the unceremonious booting of the ladies’ rummage sale from the church grounds, which lead the guild to start one of the most elite resale shops in the country.

In a country club church like the Episcopal church of the 1960′s and before, the membership could regard their rector as yet another of the hired help, there to do their bidding.  Many rectors, especially those who were in the ministry as a matter of pedigree, were more than happy to oblige.  Sometimes I think that explains some of my dislike for all of the hue and cry about the “authority” of our ministers, but that’s another post.

Now churches that go nowhere because of their controlling laity aren’t any more admirable than those that go nowhere because of their controlling clergy.  The result is the same, and is opposite when there is momentum from both sides to make progress.  The Southern Baptists didn’t become the largest Protestant denomination in the US because their deacon boards sat on their hands.  Congregational denominations are perfectly capable of significant forward movement, as the Assemblies of God are demonstrating these days, and they can’t move without the consent and participation of their laity.

The whole idea of the church as polity was significantly challenged in the wake of the 1960′s from a number of fronts.

On the left, activist clergy saw (and still see) themselves as the vanguard of change.  Those in the congregation who don’t see it their way will be considered to end up on the “ash heap of history,” to use Leon Trotsky’s phrase.  That’s demoralising for a congregation, especially in the time when the country was going through a collective nervous breakdown, and was reflected in the precipitous drop that the Episcopalians and other Main Line churches experienced in the 1970′s.  We’ve seen this again in the conflict over LGBT bishops and clergy in the past decade.

On the right, we had the likes of Bill Gothard challenging the whole concept of church as polity by saying that authoritarianism is “the Bible way.”  This flew in the face of two centuries of American church experience.  Conservative churches did so well forty years ago that the weaknesses of this idea were masked, but they’ve come home to roost of late.

We also have parachurch ministries and independent churches to erode the church as polity concept.  Both of these are built around the personality of one individual or his (usually but not always) family.  Both of these have encouraged another uninspiring trend in churches: the trend towards the church as a consumerist provider of services rather than a gathering of God’s people, a trend that needed little encouraging in our society.

Finally we have churches (such as the Roman Catholic and the Church of God) which were authoritarian early in their history onward.

The result is that, today, too many of our ministers (and the diocesans above them) are obsessed with their authority, and build their ministries around its maintenance.  Our lay people are reduced to three choices: submit, start a war, or flee.  Worst of all, our getting away from church as polity hasn’t reduced politics in the church.

It’s little wonder that our ministers, trapped in a no-win paradigm with their congregations, are stressed out.  Everyone involved is stressed out.  And it’s little wonder that house churches, with no payments (the need for funding drives way too much ministry, and is a big part of the problem) and informal structure, are gaining popularity.

P.S. I noted that Rev. Kaeton supports same sex civil marriage.  I would be interested to know why she thinks we need civil marriage in the first place.

HT to David Virtue.

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As many of you know, for me, in one sense, this is it: at the end of August, I will be leaving as Ministries Coordinator of the Church of God Department of Laity Ministries.  Next week is our General Assembly in Orlando, in many ways the place where I will make my parting “social.”

As this 13 1/2 year span of my life comes to a close, I wanted to recount something I heard some time back and have been thinking about it ever since.  It came from the Rt. Rev. Daniel Vassell (right), Administrative Bishop of the Church of God in Ontario.  Before he went to Canada, he worked for the church’s Youth and Christian Education department, and working in the same building we got to know each other.

One Christmastime I met him in the lobby, and I think I mentioned something to him about my Anglican activities.  For someone whose roots are Jamaican like Daniel, Anglicanism is a familiar thing.  You even see Anglican traits reflected in the way Pentecostal West Indian churches worship and operate.  I remember one church I preached at in New Jersey where the Grenandan pastor changed the colour of the pulpit stoles.

Daniel was emphatic at the mention.  “You mark it down,” he said, not wanting me to forget what he was about to say.  Anglican and other liturgical churches were, in some ways, better at taking the “celebration” outside of the four walls of the church.  Pentecostal churches gathered on Sunday, exuberantly worshipping, and, in too many cases, that was it.  Because of the constraints of the liturgy, other churches had to celebrate elsewhere–and if there’s one thing that West Indian churches like to do, it’s celebrate.  But it’s better when the church took the celebration to the community around it and not just kept it to itself.

In many ways, that encapsulates what is, IMHO, wrong with most of North American Evangelical Christianity these days.  To start with, our churches–especially our Anglo ones–are far and away too performance oriented.  That’s odd, considering we preach that Jesus Christ’s work on the cross is what gets us to heaven, not our own works.  But we’ve come to equate fulfilling the mission of Jesus with what amounts to a business model of performance.

Beyond that, our obsession with worship has led us to focus our attention and resources on our Sunday service and how it’s done and housed.  That in turn has led both to wrapping our Christian life around our worship and to the expensive edifices that we’ve built to house that worship, edifices that have sapped the financial resources God has given us from directly ministry related activities, to say nothing of the celebration we’re supposed to be having.

But our life in Christ is to be celebrated, and that celebration needs to come out of the confines of the walls of our churches and into the world around us.  How that takes place depends upon the culture we’re ministering into and the legal status we have, but in a world racked by economic uncertainty the sight and experience of people who still have something to celebrate and do it is a powerful message.

So, as I prepare to venture out from the confines of the International Offices (my work has been part time, so the venturing in has been likewise) my message is this: it’s time to take the celebration of the life that Jesus Christ has given us out of the confines of our churches and into the community around us.   It’s time to take the celebration to the people.

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Damian Thompson’s list for why Dr. Jeffrey John (the openly gay CoE clergyman who may become Bishop of Southwark) is a good one, but this item especially caught my eye:

David Cameron apparently supports Dr John’s candidacy. Nothing could underline Cameron’s right-on credentials more effectively than supporting the episcopal ordination of a Left-wing gay priest. He doesn’t even really open himself up to accusations of tokenism, since Dean John is the obvious choice: popular, clever and a former member of the chapter of Southwark Cathedral. The Bankside gay community would love having him as their bishop – and they might love Dave a little better for helping put him there. The fact that the PM’s constitutional right to intervene in the appointment of bishops is antiquated and undemocratic would be ignored just this once, I reckon.

First: the fact that this is happening at all is a sign that Rowan Williams’ main (only?) motivation for downgrading the Episcopalians is due to pressure from the Africans.  He reminds me of the old Cream song Politician:

I support the left, tho’ I’m leanin’ to the right
I support the left, tho’ I’m leanin’ to the right
But I’m just not there when, when it’s coming to a fight.

Second: the CoE is a state church in a state where LGBT privileges (and the attack on those who don’t go along with their idea) is enshrined both in law and in bureaucratic preference.  It was only a matter of time before same state would intervene on their behalf, and it looks like this is the place.

This simple fact of life is a major reason why I’ve counselled Anglicans on this side of the pond not to put stock in their relationship with the CoE, and now things are moving to their logical conclusion.

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If you are given the opportunity to talk long and frequently long enough, you will blurt out the truth, as Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts-Schori did in New Zealand:

Disagreement with The Episcopal Church about gay bishops is one thing: but why have those two ordinations provoked such intense antagonism?

Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told yesterday’s Q&A session at Te Hepara Pai that she figures that’s about loss of power.

“I think it represents the pain and discomfort of people who used to be at the centre, and who are now finding themselves being moved to the margins.

“In my context, 200 years ago the landed white gentry were in control of a monoculture. ‘Now all of these people have come along and messed with that: how dare they?’”

She finally admits what I’ve said for a long time: what this whole business is about is not inclusion or tolerance, but replacing one predominant, empowered group with another.  It’s that simple, and perhaps the fact that she was on the other side of the world removed some of her inhibitions.  Or perhaps she has become so triumphalistic that she doesn’t care whether the truth comes out or not.  Either way, she has ceded the moral high ground (assuming she had any, which I doubt) in a big way.

The trout in the milk, for her at least, is the Africans.  They have been disempowered par excellence, and now that’s changing.  And guess at whose expense?  Perhaps she is expressing her own state.  She and those of her idea have been pushing orthodox Episcopalians towards the margins (and out of the church in many cases) for many years.  Now, perhaps, she and her allies are being pushed by the Africans out of the Communion.

As we say in the hills, some days you eat the bear, and some days the bear eats you…

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From his Commentary on the Apostles’ Creed (36-38):

Whence also the Apostle says, “All Scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable for instruction.” And therefore it seems proper in this place to enumerate, as we have learned from the tradition of the Fathers, the books of the New and of the Old Testament, which, according to the tradition of our forefathers, are believed to have been inspired by the Holy Ghost, and have been handed down to the Churches of Christ.

Of the Old Testament, therefore, first of all there have been handed down five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; Then Jesus Nave, (Joshua the son of Nun), The Book of Judges together with Ruth; then four books of Kings (Reigns), which the Hebrews reckon two; the Book of Omissions, which is entitled the Book of Days (Chronicles), and two books of Ezra (Ezra and Nehemiah), which the Hebrews reckon one, and Esther; of the Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel; moreover of the twelve (minor) Prophets, one book; Job also and the Psalms of David, each one book. Solomon gave three books to the Churches, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles. These comprise the books of the Old Testament.

Of the New there are four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John; the Acts of the Apostles, written by Luke; fourteen Epistles of the Apostle Paul, two of the Apostle Peter, one of James, brother of the Lord and Apostle, one of Jude, three of John, the Revelation of John. These are the books which the Fathers have comprised within the Canon, and from which they would have us deduce the proofs of our faith.

But it should be known that there are also other books which our fathers call not “Canonical” but “Ecclesiastical:” that is to say, Wisdom, called the Wisdom of Solomon, and another Wisdom, called the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach, which last-mentioned the Latins called by the general title Ecclesiasticus, designating not the author of the book, but the character of the writing. To the same class belong the Book of Tobit, and the Book of Judith, and the Books of the Maccabees. In the New Testament the little book which is called the Book of the Pastor of Hermas, [and that] which is called The Two Ways, or the Judgement of Peter; all of which they would have read in the Churches, but not appealed to for the confirmation of doctrine. The other writings they have named “Apocrypha.” These they would not have read in the Churches.

These are the traditions which the Fathers have handed down to us, which, as I said, I have thought it opportune to set forth in this place, for the instruction of those who are being taught the first elements of the Church and of the Faith, that they may know from what fountains of the Word of God their draughts must be taken.

Those of you who are counting will recognise Rufinus’ list of the canon of Scripture is identical to what Protestant and Evangelical churches use today (as, for the Old Testament, is the case in Judaism as well.)

Rufinus’ distinction between “canonical” and “ecclesiastical” is replicated in Article VI of the Anglican Articles of Religion, although there it’s attributed to Jerome.  Jerome’s opinion on the subject is discussed in my Apologetics for the Rest of Us.

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Drew asked me an interesting question regarding this in response to a previous post:

Do you think that at any point in the foreseeable future, the ABC or the rest of the Anglican Communion will sever its ties with the ECUSA in favor of one of its rivals?

The short answer is this: I think it’s finally moved into the realm of the plausible, where it wasn’t before.

What I see here is two people–Rowan Williams and Katharine Jefferts-Schori–who are both in “no win” and “no lose” situations at the same time.

Let’s start with Rowan Cantuar++.  I’ve always found it hard to believe that the author of “The Body’s Grace” and the chief prelate of the state church of a country as committed to the elevation of the LGBT community as the UK is would actually cut The Episcopal Church loose.  However, the Africans–and by them I’m thinking of the big provinces of Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and others–have forced the issue.  What they have told Williams in word and deed (esp. with GAFCON) is that, if the Church of England goes with TEC, there will be a new “Anglican Communion” and CoE won’t be a part of it, let alone at its centre.  And the Africans have the numbers in their favour.  Williams’ response is to go along with this in as plodding manner as he can get away with (and he’s a master at this,) hoping that TEC will back down on its continued ordination of openly LGBT bishops, but yet prepared for the worst if it doesn’t.

Jefferts-Schori, for her part, cannot do this.  She and her church, for a variety of reasons, are in an irreversible movement towards not only the complete admission of LGBT people into the life of the church, but also their control of same.  In her idea, she has no alternative (and the recent House of Bishops confrontation with Canon Kearon underscores this) but to move in this direction.  The downside is that one of their legal defences is that TEC is the “official” constituent of the AC in the US, but I don’t think that’s a big of an issue in court as it is outside except for a few cases.  Her hope is that the CoE won’t cut its ties with TEC; that’s why she’s shoring up the relationships she has in the mother church (and that shoring up is what led to “Mitregate.”)

One thing that everyone seems to forget is that membership in the AC is a multi-legged stool, but it’s not clear (to me at least) whether the stool needs all of its legs to stand or just one.  It’s possible that Williams could get TEC booted from the ACC and the Primates Meeting and keep TEC in full communion with the CoE, at which point TEC could still claim that it’s part of the AC (that’s a stretch, but then again…)  And then there’s the issue of CoE recognising the ACNA…

What we have here is two organisations playing a game of ecclesiastical chicken.   The best result is that both will swerve, in which case no one wins.  The worst result is that neither does, in which no one wins.  That’s why I’ve always said that North American Anglicans need to be about their mission and let the Communion politics take care of themselves.

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While researching something else, this, from a post I made in the wake of TEC’s GC 2006:

There is no question that most of the Anglican Communion will not stomach the election of a woman Presiding Bishop, especially one that supports homosexuals the way she does. There is also no question that the Episcopal church has put Rowan Williams and the Church of England in a tight place, since they are in the middle of their own debate over women bishops along with all of the other controversies the Communion is convulsed with. The 2006 General Convention is a watershed for the Episcopal church, one that has been coming for at least four decades but which has arrived in a way that no one can miss. (Personally, I’m surprised it took this long. But that’s just me.)

The Episcopalians could have fudged on many of the issues in front of it. They’re good at that. But the GLBT people and other radicals smelled total victory, and they could not resist having it all. (They’ll screw up the 2008 election for the Democrats if they do the same thing at the Democrat National Convention they just did at this gathering.)

But now they must face up to the consequences of that bold move.

When liberals operate in our society, they generally do so incrementally, and they generally try to assure themselves that they have the covering of the legal system and/or bureaucracy when they make their move. In this way they can force their opponents to submit to the law or at least dissuade them through high legal fees.

They also prefer to appropriate to themselves existing institutions rather than creating new ones to displace the old. The classic example of this is gay marriage, where they are attempting to redefine marriage rather than abolishing it. Their attempt to force the Boy Scouts to allow homosexual scout masters rather than to start a new scouting organisation (or eliminate scouting altogether) is of a similar ilk.

Up until now they have been reasonably successful in both in the Episcopal church, albeit at the loss of a large portion of the membership. But now they are faced with forces and institutions beyond their control, specifically the “Global South” provinces which have no use for either North American sexual adventurism or economic elitism (don’t count out the power of the rage that causes.) Their attempt to roll the Global South has hit the wall at every turn. They are coming to realise, even in their arrogance and pride, that there are some things they cannot do and many people they cannot win over, crush or ignore.

This may explain why the institution known by its acronym of ECUSA is wanting to go simply by “The Episcopal Church.” Hard as it is on the Boomer leadership of the church, they have to swallow the fact that they cannot “have it all” in this case. They must choose between being something they cannot stomach and breaking away from people who cannot stomach them. Being forced to choose the latter will mean that the Episcopal church will henceforth represent a “spirituality” that is consciously other than Anglicanism, something they have been doing for a long time but until recently have not had to admit.

What we may end up with then is a communion of one (or two, if the Canadians decide to throw their lot in with their American counterparts.) The liberals would then have to convince the rest of us that their church, with its superannuated demographics and a belief structure little different from the neopagans around them, is a place one would want to invest time, money and family into. For a group of people who have risen on the backs of others and sold themselves through a combination of deception and coercion, this is a tall order. The Episcopal church may have “crossed the Rubicon” with this General Convention, but we doubt seriously that Katharine Jefferts Schori—or anyone else they could have elected—is the Julius Caesar that the left is going to need to win the victory.

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Creedal Christian’s post on the meltdown of the Anglican Communion (HT to Stand Firm) got me thinking about many things.  One reaction to this is that the “middle” is AWOL in this discussion.  But I think that view overlooks some things that have been at work both in TEC and our society in general.

One of the things that people like about Anglicanism is its “comprehension.”  That comprehension was initiated by the fact that the Church of England was a nationalised part of Roman Catholicism with a Reformed theology injected into its episcopal structure and liturgical worship.  The result was the much-vaunted via media, but that via was brutally enforced by state power under Good Queen Bess and kicked from wall to wall in the following century, first towards a high church idea under Charles I and Laud and then a replica of Geneva under Cromwell.

What survived was directed to muddle along in an atmosphere where strong belief is discouraged.  The broadness of Anglicanism only works if everyone agrees not to get too worked up about the whole business, and that’s the Anglican view that was presented to my ancestors, generation to generation.  Enthusiasts like the Wesleyans and the Oxford Movement come along from time to time, but eventually they figure out that the church isn’t going their way and depart, leaving a remnant to carry on at a lower level.

The last century was very hard on religion such as this.  In its kind face was thrust a gaggle of “isms:” communism, fascism, feminism, etc., to say nothing about the technological changes that were afoot.  Like the bland English cooking that disappeared from the streets of London to make way for every other kind of cuisine, many found a more interesting spiritual (or unspiritual) diet to feed themselves and and to build their lives around.

For those left in Anglican churches, the question that made V.I. Lenin famous arose: what is to be done?  The left’s answer was and is simple: we must remould the church to be like the society around us so we can communicate with that society and be relevant to it, irrespective of what we have to jettison in the process.  Bringing up Lenin in all of this, however, makes another culinary analogy relevant: the old Soviet restaurant.

Back in the last years of the USSR there was a joke circulating about a man who went into a restaurant and ordered an item off of the menu, only to be told that it wasn’t available and that he should order another dish.  The man was indignant: I thought we had choices here, he said.  You do, the manager replied: you can order what we want you to or you can get out of this restaurant.  (I witnessed something almost this bad at Galatoire’s one time, but I digress…)

That wasn’t far from the truth, either.  Soviet restaurants had full menus, but when you’d point to an item you wanted, they’d tell you they didn’t have it.  After a while of pointing and disappointment while the waitress giggled, you’d end up ordering the Chicken Kiev and that was it.

But their agenda was no laughing matter for the left in the 1960′s, when it burst on the scene in what was then PECUSA.  What they basically told a largely upper middle class, WASP denomination was that they were overmoneyed, racist phonies.   And that was just a socio-economic criticism; it went on to attack their antediluvian theology and 1928 BCP.  Faced with this assault, it’s little wonder that so much of the membership got the “Soviet restaurant” feeling and departed.

What’s amazing is that the church, to some extent, came back from this, only to get another round this past decade as the left determined that embracing the LGBT community was “the deal” for the church.   Those who missed the characterisation as overmoneyed, racist phonies got slapped with the broad brush of bigots and homophobes; racism took a back seat when the Africans arrived on the scene.  And this time TEC has a Presiding Bishop who is more forthright in stating the agenda and more ruthless in enforcing it–and making sure that, when the unhappy patrons storm out of the restaurant, they don’t take the silverware and china with them.

It’s little wonder, under these circumstances, that the “middle” is nowhere to be found.  This isn’t a game for the feint of heart.  And the worst of it is that our political system is pretty much the same.

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National Cathedral’s uninspiring financial situation is leading to desperate measures:

Then news came this week that the cathedral, visited by every U.S. president since Theodore Roosevelt laid its foundation stone in 1907, was considering selling off part of its rare books collection, probably worth millions. Cathedral officials said the potential sale of the books is a separate matter from its ongoing budget difficulties. But they acknowledge that they no longer have the staff and resources to care for such a vast collection, which includes volumes donated by Queen Elizabeth II and Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie and a Dutch Bible that was the first written in modern language.

The officials are in discussions with the Folger Shakespeare Library, which, with its internationally known conservation department, could possibly better preserve the fragile pages and make the tomes available to scholars.

The cathedral’s chief operating officer, Kathleen Cox, said the possible book sale, as well as measures such as eliminating financial support of a global poverty program, is an attempt to refocus on the cathedral’s core mission as a “church for the nation” and tourist attraction.

The Episcopal Church is experiencing the “perfect storm” in its finances with a soft economy, declining membership (and thus donor base) and enormous litigation costs to hold on to property and keep it from those pesky Anglicans.  (If TEC struggles with keeping up its flagship church, how can it expect to do so elsewhere when it wins all of these lawsuits?)

My experience with church finance has led me to one cardinal rule: unless things are desperate, you never sell off fixed or real assets to pay for operating expenses.  That tell me the state of National Cathedral.  (I should note to my Church of God friends that their budget drop, from $27 million to $13 million, more or less is the same as the estimated remittances of the entire denomination before and after our reallocation of resources.  And that’s just one Episcopal church.)

But really, they might as well dump the books.  These include the following:

The cathedral, which has not had a rare books librarian since the 1970s, has been talking with the Folger over the past year about a possible sale or donation of about 2,000 of its 8,000 books, mostly rare Bibles, Books of Common Prayer and theological works.

Given TEC’s direction, and their desire to ditch 2,000 years of Christian belief and practice, the books would be better in other hands.  They’re certainly not going to take inspiration from them.

One other idea: why doesn’t TEC just empty the library and move “815″ (their headquarters) to National Cathedral?

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