Hall raised the cathedral’s profile with his outspoken and steady public comments on things like race, transgender rights and gun control, but he said the place needs more in order to pay its large regular bills. He is proposing eventually reopening the college that’s on the cathedral’s grounds as a kind of think tank for 21st Century progressive religion. And to find ways to make programming relevant.
Cathedral-watchers disagree about whether the type of programs Hall brought in helped give the place energy and relevance or went too far from tradition and instead watered down its brand.
Mainline Christianity has been shrinking in recent decades, but all of institutional religion is struggling to deal with the lack of commitment by young Americans ”“ including financially. Massive Episcopal and Catholic cathedrals are uniquely facing questions about how you fund buildings at a time when it’s trendy for religious communities to ditch buildings altogether, and when our most popular spiritual figure ”“Pope Francis ”“ gets accolades primarily for his talk about simplicity.
Read it all and see also an atheist’s perspective
I read the article, including the statement above about it being a hard time for Episcopal and Catholic cathedrals. Here in the UK the lore has been in recent years that cathedrals and big inner-city churches have bucked the trend for shrinking congregations. The statistics seem to back this up. The reason sometimes given is that ‘Nones’ find it easier to be present anonymously in the pews, not wanting to sign up to fully-fledged religion.
He was here in the Diocese of Michigan as a vert affluent parish less than 3 years before climbing up to WNC. Before that he was the Dean at Seabury Western as it was going out of business. He was at another affluent parish, Redeemer Bryn Mawr (PA) on a few years. His awful theology apparently trumps is inability to grow a parish or seminary or stay there for long.