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The oldest synagogue in America is 70 miles from my home, so it was a given that at some point I would make the trip. On Friday night, prodded by the congregation’s website that seemed to indicate that services would end on March 6, I rushed to Newport after work, taking a phone call on the way.

Rhode Island’s reputation for religious tolerance in the face of intense intolerance by the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies is renowned – fostered by the liberal attitudes of Rhode Island’s founding governor Roger Williams, who also established the nation’s first Baptist church.  Touro is the only example of a Colonial synagogue, the oldest Jewish structure in America and, as I said, the oldest synagogue. Visiting was a privilege, because if not for this project I doubt I would have had cause or inclination to set foot inside other than to admire the historical furnishings and architecture. As it was, I witnessed a moving, solemn orthodox shabbas service, met my first shabbas goy, and had a good historical experience.

History

The Jeshuat Israel congregation can be traced back to 1658 when Sephardic Jews arrived in Newport (then the capital of Rhode Island) from the Caribbean island of Curacao. Sephardic Jews emigrated — fled is more accurate — Spain and Portugal during the Spanish Inquisition, when Catholic jurists forced the conversion of  or put to death most Jews. An excellent, if exhaustive history on this topic is B. Netanyahu’s Origins of the Inquisition in the 15th Century. Those Jews who pretended to convert to Christianity, but continued to practice Judaism in secret, are referred to as Marranos.

For the first 100 years of their existence, the Newport Sephardim worshipped in private homes until 1750, when a wealthy merchant, Aaron Lopez, son of Portugese marranos, funded the design and construction of the Touro Synagogue (so named for its first cantor, Issac Touro).  Lopez became the wealthiest resident of Newport through his diverse business interests, but most notably his focus on the spermaceti candle industry — spermaceti being the waxy substance found in the head cavity of a sperm whale.

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There has been a small Finnish community on Cape Cod since the 19th century and I am too lazy to do the research to plausibly explain why in this entry in the 52Church series, but they apparently, according to one local history, had a penchant for drinking and so a temperance society was formed at the turn of the century to quell their dipsomania. That society eventually became a place of worship and since Finns — and many people of the Nordic and Teutonic countries — tend to be Lutheran, so West Barnstable became home to the first Lutheran church on Cape Cod, the Suomi, or Finnish Lutheran synod to be precise. According to Marion Rawson Vuilleumier’s Churches on Cape Cod, services were conducted only in Finnish until 1943, when a second English service was added and the church congregation grew.

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Over the Christmas holidays while visiting in-laws in San Francisco, I was invited to a party at a wine marker’s cave in the mountaintop town of Angwin, California. As we wound up the steep road my friend said, “This is a Seventh Day Adventist town and university.” We flashed past a big church, the campus of the Pacific Union College, and then on into the back roads to our destination.

Intrigued, I did some research on the religion. Here are the basics: an American denomination formed in the middle of the 19th century from the s0-called “Millerite” movement, and was formally organized in 1863 in Battle Creek, Michigan (remember Battle Creek), largely around the writings and vision of its prophet, Ellen G. White, a native of Gorham, Maine who wrote prolifically of her visions which began after she was hit in the face by a thrown rock while fleeing a 13 year old girl in Portland, Maine.

The Millerites were a group formed around 1850 in upstate New York who, based on a close reading of the Bible, predicted the Second Coming would occur in 1844. It didn’t. Again, I will spare you my borrowed pedantic knowledge and point you at the Wikipedia entry, which, as I assume with all Wiki entries, shares the input of the church, its members and officials and is as balanced a definition and history as you can find anywhere. The church is unique in several respects, notably the observance of a Saturday sabbath, a high proportion of vegetarians and abstemious practices, and a strong tradition of extroverted charity and public works from hospitals to higher education. Tithing is encouraged — more on that later — and church members do not join unions or other organizations aside from the church.

I believe there is only one Seventh Day Adventist congregation on Cape Cod. I live about five miles from the church on Route 28 in Osterville. It is a modest, contemporary structure set slightly back from the road in a stand of pine trees.

The Service

The parking lot was full — most churches seem to be enjoying strong attendance these days — and I entered the narthex along with a herd of young people dressed in their Sunday best. I was warmly greeted at the door, handed a program, and made my way into the main church hall where I took the customary back-pew-right-hand-side seat. As I settled in I put on my glasses to read the program but the temple piece fell off, victim of a lost screw. As I flustered around trying to fix the specs, a jovial man introduced himself, a local attorney who it turned out was also the church pianist. We talked for a few minutes, me explaining the purpose of my visit, he telling me about his beginnings as a Catholic. Before I could ask him about his conversion the pastor, Rev. Mark Gagnon introduced himself. The welcome was warm and effusive and I was made to feel right at home.

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The plan last Sunday morning was to hit a “regular” church but on the way I saw a few people enter the Assembly Hall of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in North Falmouth on Route 151 near the Massachusetts Military Reservation. I turned around and casually slipped in for what may be one of the more novel religious experiences since I started lurking in strange churches last autumn.

I try to find a new denomination everyweek so I don’t fall into the lazy trap of repeating the tried and true. With three Episcopalian visits on the board and two more scheduled I could easily be accused of sticking to what I know when the point of this exercise is to check out the mystery religions I may never have cause to visit again.  With this entry I officially cross the one-third mark in my 52 churches and need to start seeking out the significant Protestant holes in my experience as well as the religions that are going to be tough to track down (Buddhism, Hindu, and Sikhism are the big ones on the list now).

My prior experience with the Jehovah’s Witnesses has been a few random door-bell-ringing-points-of-contact where well-dressed young men, travelling in pairs, come bearing pamphlets and prayers. The second was when I worked as an orderly in suburban Boston hospital and witnessed a drastic surgical procedure on a child who’s spleen had ruptured in a school bus accident and had to have surgery without the benefit of a blood transfusion which Witnesses prohibit due to a specific Biblical admonition against third-party blood. I believe, but can’t confirm, that one of my great-great-grandfather’s four daughters was a Witness, but that is based on faint hearsay and some found copies of the faith’s signature publication, The Watchtower.

Of course the Witnesses’  headquarters in Brooklyn is a familiar sight across New York City’s East River, and according to my brother-in-law Jim,  the Witnesses dominate the dry wall trade in NYC in the 1980s.  I have no reason to doubt his word on this, but at the same time I have no evidence that this is still the case today.

The Assembly Hall is a neat, trim single story building with no rooftop steeple or other overt religious contrivance. I parked and walked back around to the front of the building, up a few steps and into one of two doors. Two gentlemen dressed in suits immediately made me feel under dressed in my Merrill snow clogs, green corduroys, and blue blazer sans necktie. I scanned the tables for some sign of collateral (pamphlets, programs, etc.), saw none, but heard a man’s voice amplified through the sound system.  I said hello to the two deacons and entered the main room in the Hall.

It had three banks of chairs, about ten rows of 15 each, and was more than 75% filled when I entered. A man in a suit stood on the dais behind a lectern and was preaching on the topic of the Sabbath. As I walked to my seat in the last row of the farthest bank of chairs he told the congregation to turn to a specific place in their Bibles. Immediately I was at a disadvantage as I don’t own a Bible and none were furnished. I took off my coat, sat down, and started to take notes, not sure what I had missed as I obviously was entering late.

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I would make a terrible Jew.

On Saturday I visited my first synagogue and attended my first Jewish services since Hiram Samel’s bar mitzvah in 1972, thus this is the first Jewish visit of the series.  It was a reform congregation in Hyannis, one founded in 1933, located on Winter Street in a contemporary building that is at most thirty or forty years old. I give my participation a C minus at best, but throughly enjoyed the service, particularly the warmth of the congregation and the high degree of communal participation by all in attendance.

This was the most confusing service for me to participate in, with some serious revelations into the depths of my complete ignorance of the Jewish tradition. Example: I did not know the Jewish name for God (Adonai) I certainly do not know how to read Hebrew, let alone pronounce it. I am not used to reading from right to left. I could go on, but let me forge on first. I approach this entry gingerly as good mensch friends like Uncle Fester are sure to howl at my Judaic Ineptitude.

There are not a lot of synagogue options on the Cape.  The other synagogues I’m aware of are in Falmouth, a “Chabad” in Hyannis, and of course the oldest in the country, the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. When my eldest son was in third grade he  participated in a “Local Heroes” project which paired him and his classmates with local leaders — his “hero” was the former Rabbi of the Cape Cod Synagogue — and so he shadowed the man for a term, visiting the synagogue on several occasions.   Of the religions I hope to learn the most about in this project, Judaism leads the list due to its venerable age and traditions, and  its commonalities and differences with Christianity (shared geographical locus, Old Testament history, etc.).

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As I am back on Cape Cod sand after a weekend of exotic services in Istanbul, today I went to Christ the King, a large Catholic church in the neighboring town of Mashpee.  This is the second Catholic church visited in this project, the first being a Latin mass in San Francisco over the holidays, but one I had highlighted as a key visit in my local peregrinations. I have visited the large, white and relatively new parish twice before: once for my eldest son’s soccer banquet and the second for the funeral of a friend’s father. It is the largest Catholic congregation in the immediate area, perhaps on the entire Cape, and the church itself is the largest local church visited so far on the Cape.

Massachusetts is a very Catholic state due to the high influx of Irish and Italian immigrants in the 19th century.  I estimate half of my childhood friends were Catholic, and over time I felt I was in the minority as a non-church going, non-affiliated quasi-Christian. Those friends would talk about going to  ”CCD” (catechism class) and when visiting me on overnight stays, would need to make arrangements to attend Mass at a local church. Catholicism is an integral part of eastern Massachusetts culture, and I’ve always felt excluded when in the company of friends for whom the church was a fact of life.  As a WASP I was part of a different tradition that was more English and austere than Latin and emotional. As the local political columnist Howie Carr once observed, Bay State WASPs worship in wooden churches, Catholics in brick. WASPs tend to have roman numerals after their names, Catholics’ end with a vowel.

In the 1960s and 70s the Catholic parish that went on to become Christ the King was in temporary quarters on Route 28 in the Portugese section of Cotuit near the intersection of Newtown Road. I remember attending Mass there with a visiting friend one summer, the services were held in a tent evidently because the congregation swelled in the summer months and needed additional seating. My memories of that first Mass were of being confused by the Sign of the Cross, the genuflection before entering the pew, and the large amount of memorized rote evidently taught in the catechism classes. I was lost and felt very left out of the internal workings of the church.

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Today the 52 Churches project left Christianity after 12 churches and finally experienced Islam with a visit to the impressive Blue Mosque of Istanbul. This one was not easy, took some courage and persistence, but was well worth the extra effort and I am particularly proud that my introduction to Islamic worship was in such a venerable and magnificent mosque.

Formally known as the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in English (the Sultanahmet in Turkish), the Mosque was built between 1606-1616 by Ahmed I, whose tomb is located there. There is a detailed history on Wikipedia of course, so I will spare you the borrowed pedantry and let you click the previous link to educate yourself. It’s blue because of the extensive use of blue tiles throughout the interior, particularly in the immense dome, which in many ways mirrors the grandeur of Hagia Sofia, The Church of Wisdom, built 1100 years earlier across the grand plaza to the east. The mosque is notable for having six minarets, the most of any mosque except for Mecca, which was given a seventh minaret to retain its preeminence in the minaret department.

I tried to enter and observe prayers three times over the past seven days and polled several people about the etiquette and protocol of an infidel such as myself entering a mosque during prayers. In some cases and countries nonbelievers are firmly banned from entering mosques, but allegedly, because of the secular reforms of Kamal Ataturk, Turkey does not hold such a hard line and the Blue Mosque in particular is organized as a “tourist” mosque and permits visitors in between prayers.

Each time I tried to enter I was too close to the beginning of the next prayers and the guest entrance on the west side was closed. The carpet touts and would-be tour guides can be brutal and by my final attempt today, with only hours before I left Turkey for China, I resolved to make one last effort despite the warnings of many that I was a fool to expect to watch prayers. It simply isn’t easy and it isn’t like a typical temple or church where a non-believer can just stroll in and have a seat. Indeed, even in the Eastern Orthodox church they have a name for people like me — catechumen - who are supposed to observe the services out in the narthex outside of the nave. That apparently is NOT the case in a mosque, some of which prohibit a non-believer from entering at all. I was growing a bit pessimistic I would ever gain entry or worse, would have to disguise myself and enter in mufti like Richard Francis Burton did when he snuck into Mecca in 1853 disguised as a Pashtun (he also spoke nearly every Indian and Arabic language).  I am a huge Richard Burton fan by the way. He was one of the more amazing adventurers who ever lived.

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(Brace yourself church fans; this is going to be a long one I think)

First the context. Then the church.

The Eastern Orthodox Church is the second largest Christian denomination in the world (after Roman Catholicism) and is the prevalent Christian denomination in Greece, the Balkans, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia. It is Greek in origin and traces its history directly back to Christ’s Apostles, emphasizing in its beliefs its unchanged connection directly  back to the foundation of Christianity.

It was the religion of the Byzantine Empire, which followed the Roman Empire and peaked in its power and extent in the middle of the sixth century but survived until 1453 in its capitol of Constantinople until the city was sacked by the Muslim Turks. The Patriarchate is the spiritual capitol of the faith, yet care must be taken not to assume that the Patriarchate is the “Vatican” of the Orthodox faith, or the Patriarch is tantamount to the Pope. He is, like the Pope, considered “first among equals,” and he is viewed as the leader of the Orthodox faith. Historically the position of Patriarch wielded immense power and in some regards was as powerful as the Byzantine Emperor. The piety of the Byzantine court cannot be underestimated, and the synods or early religious councils that were convened in the early centuries such as the Council of Nicea are fundamental to the history of all Christian denominations.

This is the religion of icons, of priests in black cylindrical hats and flowing robes, of smoking censers filled with frankincense. If you’ve seen Deer Hunter and recall the Orthodox wedding, then you’ve seen some Orthodox liturgy.

After the sack of Constantinople the Byzantine church limped around Istanbul, getting kicked out of one church after another as the Sultan converted Hagia Sofia — The Church of Holy Wisdom — into a mosque and commanded that no Christian church exceed a mosque in size or grandeur. Today the church is the small but elegant Church of St. George on the shores of the Golden Horn in Phanar (Fener), where it has resided since 1600.

From Wikipedia:

“Since the fall of the Ottomans and the rise of modern Turkish nationalism most of the Greek Orthodox population of Istanbul has emigrated, leaving the Patriarch in the anomalous position of a leader without a flock, at least locally. Today the Church of St George serves mainly as the symbolic centre of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and as a centre of pilgrimage for Orthodox Christians. The church is financially supported by donations from Orthodox communities in other countries.

On 3 December 1997, a bomb attack seriously injured a deacon and damaged the Patriarchal Cathedral.^[4] This was one of the many terrorist attacks against the Ecumenical Patriarchate, its churches and cemeteries in Istanbul in recent years.The efforts to bring the terrorists to justice are continuing.”

The Service

Before travelling to Turkey I wrote an email to the secretary of the church seeking some information about services, but I never received a reply, which is not surprising given the incongruity of communicating with an ancient church through a digital pipe. Friday afternoon I used Skype to phone the Patriarchate’s press office where I explained my mission to visit interesting sacred places over the course of a year. I was referred to an American expatriate affiliated with the church, and one minute later had an encouraging discussion with a gentleman named Paul Gigos who told me my timing could not be better as one of the more significant Feasts of the ecumenical calendar was taking place the following morning, Saturday: the Feast of the Three Hierarchs.

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I realized a long standing personal dream today when I stepped inside of the Hagia Sofia and admired it’s 1500 year old dome.

I looked up at the distant mosaic of the Virgin and Child, admired the Empress Irene and the Pantocrator, saw the sadness of John the Baptist rendered in little mosaic tiles like a pointillist’s painting. I stood in front of the conquered altar and defiantly said the Lord’s Prayer to myself in an attempt to make this an “official” church visit– since no religious services have been conducted inside the great nave since Kamal Ataturk secularized the monument into a museum in 1935.

The last Christian rites were interrupted because of the sack of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453.  For many Greeks it was a lifelong dream to see that service completed yet it is unlikely Hagia Sofia will ever see another Christian service. The symbolism and the antipathies are too strong so now it sits neutral, a museum to a strange time when the Roman Empire morphed into the Byzantine. An American politician has made some noise about turning Hagia Sofia back into a church,  but ….

I walked on marble floors so worn and ancient they felt soft and comfortable like old shoes. I touched the Sweating Column. I stood before the altar, now defunct and confused with Islamic scripture, and wondered at the coronations, the Easters, the Christmases that were celebrated there in the glory days of the Byzantine Empire, the Empress behind, sitting with her retinue in her loge.

It was freaky. To be there was an honor, an exceptional thing made real after years of reading about its splendor and magnificence, the Churbuckian version of a celebrity sighting only …. much more profound and humbling. To put it into perspective. I pay homage to history in my backyard that is four hundred years old — old weathered wooden houses and churches built by Pilgrims and Puritans. This was a wonder of the medieval world; at the time of its construction it was the tallest dome in the world and the largest enclosed space in the world. When one stands under the dome and looks up, blinded by the shafts of light through the windows, you have to ask “How did they get the stuff up there?”

Domes were throughout the  medieval era through the Renaissancs, incredibly difficult architectural challenges. The Pantheon in Rome is one great example of an ancient dome. The tale of Fillipio Brunelleschi’s great feat in giving Florence a dome on its Cathedral is fascinating. Domes were very high tech for their time, and Hagia Sofia’s is all the more remarkable for its early implementation and sheer size. Hagia Sofia has had several domes, the first one collapsed in 558 in an earthquake and had to be rebuilt. It was hit again in 868 and 989, yet the Emperors kept rebuilding.

The Hagia Sofia was the church of the Byzantine emperors, administered by the Patriarch of Constantinople, built by 10,000 laborers in six years and completed in 527 AD. It was commissioned by the Emperor Justinian and is a reflection of Roman culture for Constantinople was Nova Roma, the new Rome established by the Emperor Constantine — the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity — as a way to move the center of power from the tired and corrupt precincts of Rome to the strategically brilliant locale of Byzantium, a Greek village that dominated the Bosporous, arguably one of the most geographically strategic pieces of land in the world.

Hagia Sofia is a place of so many superlatives that it is hard to follow in the words of the historian Procopius or modern writers such as John Julius Norwich and Lord Stephen Runciman and describe it’s majesty.

The Service

There wasn’t any. There were a lot of Turkish and Japanese tourists. Everyone was holding a camera out in front of them, and some workers were erecting scaffoldings to commence some restoration work. I made my way to the altar and felt a little awestruck, but other than that … no music, no liturgy, no prayers. There was a huge feeling of, well, history, agelessness, ghosts, and some pride in being a human.

Random Observations

• The first church I paid to enter. 20 Turkish lira. The ticket says “Ayasofya” the Turkish name for Hagia Sofia.
• I will return before I leave on Sunday. It deserves a second visit I think.
• The eastern porch smelled funny
• The Sweating Column was very strange and has me convinced I have contracted a weird disease.
• There are no stairs to the upper balcony, but a series of ramps with incredibly worn down stones.
• The mosaics that remain, the Comenus, the Pantocrator, the one high above the altar of the Virgin …. simply breathtaking works of art. The Muslims plastered over most of them in the 15th century as Islam prohibits such imagery.
• The external architecture is evidently the finest example of Byzantine architecture extant. It remind me a little of the Greek Orthodox church in Centerville on Cape Cod.
• The big discs hung by the Muslims around the interior upset me as they have when I have seen them in photographs, yet I understand that the structure was holy to those Muslims who worshipped there for 500 years.
• My chances for attending Muslim prayers grow slim. Colleagues are warning me away.

Next: more church in Istanbul!

I resumed the journey to visit 52 places of worship in one year and returned to my home base on Cape Cod this Sunday morning with a visit to my first Baptist church, the Osterville Baptist Church in the center of the village of Osterville. Baptists are among the more mysterious Christian denominations for me, and perhaps the most ridden with cliches and preconceptions to my uninformed mind.

The church dominates the center of the stylish village, nicknamed “Imposterville” by one friend for its glitz and wealth. As a year-round community, Osterville is a quiet village populated by a growing community of middle class working people and merchants. As a summer resort it is home to celebrities and the ultra-wealthy, with some magnificent estates and many waterfront “starter Castles” and McMansions.  It is also a renowned yachting center and home to the Crosby Yacht Yard — birthplace of the totemic Cape Cod Catboat. In January the streets are quiet, in June they are bustling and shining.

Built in 1837, the church is a large white Greek Revival church on the intersection of Main Street and Wianno Avenue in the center of the village. I possess very little historical background on the building and its congregation, and don’t know if it has been a Baptist church over the course of  its entire history.

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This will come in handy in Turkey the week after next. I need to get some serious 52 Church work in — and am thinking specifically of the Blue Mosque.

“Sacred Destinations is an ecumenical guide to more than 1,250 sacred sites, holy places, pilgrimage destinations, religious architecture and sacred art in over 60 countries around the world. In addition to richly illustrated articles, there are photo galleries containing over 24,000 high-quality images plus detailed maps and lots of practical travel information. Happy exploring!”

via Sacred Sites at Sacred Destinations – Explore sacred sites, religious sites, sacred places.

I picked a Catholic church for my last Sunday in San Francisco, largely for two reasons: sentiment and novelty. Saints Peter and Paul Church presides over Washington Park in the city’s North Beach neighborhood, a twin towered handsome white church I’ve admired since I first lived in San Francisco in the early 1980s. It is the church where Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe were said to have been married — at least so said my bartender friends back in the day — but as it turns out Joltin’ Joe did not tie the knot to Marilyn there, but posed for photographs on its steps after their civil ceremony. DiMaggio’s funeral was held in the church in 1999 and he was married to his first wife in the church in 1939.

I have never witnessed a Latin Mass before andsince the church conducts one at 11:45 am on the first Sunday of every month, I took the opportunity while it was available.

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The most dreaded words in the Churbuck lexicon are: “Everybody get on your feet and put your hands together.” I am an unwilling, stolid, and confused participant in most group activities.
From square-dancing to collegiate acapella singing groups – David Churbuck is not your man. I dislike physical contact with strangers, am an awkward wooden hugger, air-kiss Europeans like a head injury victim, and get embarrassed by physical therapy sessions and trips to the chiropractor. I am, in short, the perfect repressed WASP who is content to let others sing and dance and who is happy to suffer in silence rather than submit to the sketchy intimacy of a massage or the group conviviality of line dancing.

My wife and children know this, and love to torment me in volunteering me for trips to the stage to be sawn in half by the magician. I have a severe autonomic physical reaction to this stress – a sort of perspiring performance anxiety – which escalates the more I am exhorted to sing, which I am reluctant to do as my only comfortable singing voice in somewhere in the key of Kermit the Frog.

Being an intrepid liturgical explorer, I woke early this morning in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood and decided to knock off this week’s church visit by simply going to the closest church in the neighborhood. Hence today was my first walk-to-church experience, one I am most grateful for because it underscores the founding question behind this project: I wonder what goes on inside of that place on any given Sunday?

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A benefit of a high-travel lifestyle such as mine is the opportunity to visit an internationally infinite range of places of worship to visit during the course of the 52 Churches project. This Christmas and New Years found me and my family in San Francisco and since the project was never meant to be geographically restricted, I am trying to use my two weeks in the Bay Area to best effect, with some opportunities to visit faiths not found on Cape Cod and around Southeastern Massachusetts.

Christmas Eve services are one of the two high holy days in Christianity – the other being Easter Sunday – and the result is big crowds of the seasonally faithful. Still, crowds or not, the project was falling behind after missing last Sunday’s opportunity due to travel so the chance to experience an extraordinary church and service was too compelling to miss because of my usual claustrophobic aversion to crowds. I didn’t want to be the pious guy during the Christmas Eve party, but the opportunity to check out a super church was too good to miss.

This section is not meant to be the big Episcopalian discourse of this project, but simply an account of a beautiful Nativity, or Christmas mass conducted at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral – the third largest Episcopalian cathedral in the United States. When I was last in San Francisco in November I happened to drive up California Street to Nob Hill and, my eyes now tuned to look for possible churches to visit, I was captivated by the huge Gothic cathedral which reminded me of Paris’ Notre Dame but is obviously much younger, having been completed in the mid-1960s. I had never visited before, but resolved to make Grace my Christmas Eve stop, assuming a place so grand must put on the full show for the highest of Christian holidays.

Figure 1From Hysterical Bertha on Flickr

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This week your intrepid correspondent ventured into the direction of Calvinism with a trip to The Presbyterian Church of Cape Cod located on Iyannough Road (Rte. 132) in West Barnstable near the Cape Cod Community College campus.

A big goal in this year-long journey is not so much spiritual discovery as an attempt to discern – after years of wondering – what the heck the difference is between the various Protestant arms of Christianity: Episcopal, Methodist, Congregationalist, Baptist …. I hope to finally figure out what stripes or spots separate the different animals in the religious zoo. Do Baptists baptize? Congregationalists congregate? Do Methodists have a method? Today I visited the Presbyterians, to be accurate he Orthodox Presbyterians.

First let me indulge in a little amateur armchair theological history with apologies to those who know better. The Reformation – was a very big deal in Europe in the 15^th century that split Christianity into Catholics and Protestants (emphasis on the “protest”). A number of religious thinkers (Martin Luther, Jan Hus) become disillusioned with perceived abuses by the Holy Roman Catholic Church, which was rich, powerful, and doing some sleazy moves like selling “indulgences” to people who couldn’t afford them so their dead relatives would be absolved from sin and granted entry to heaven (there were a ton of other beefs, which got hashed out in the Diet of Worms (har-har) when the Holy Roman Empire summoned Luther to come get his comeuppance. The Reformation took hold in northern Europe, focusing not so much on spiritual issues as on governance, in other words: Reformists challenged corruption in the church and how it was run, looking for a more transparent system with more involvement by the laity (the people in the pews). To over-simplify, the Reformation set out to reform the Catholic Church and give more power to the people. (I feel like I just got a C+ on Mr. Keany’s 11^th grade European History course).

Luther got excommunicated (at least he didn’t get executed like Jan Hus) but his movement spread and found a home in Switzerland in Zurich (a guy named Zwingli) and Geneva (Calvin). The movement spread all over northern Europe and hit the British Isles when John Knox, a cohort of Calvin, brought it there from Geneva. Eventually the religion was declared the Church of Scotland.

Presbyterianism is (to be absurdly reductionist), a form of Protestantism that believes the fix is in — e.g. predestination –- and that the ruling model should be more collaborative and based on a council rather than Bishops, Cardinals, etc.. I won’t bother getting into the details based on a 90 minute visit and some web research – but the defining characteristics of Psrebyterianism would appear to be 1) origins in Scotland and the Scottish Reformation in 1560, 2) the guiding religious text called The Westminster Confession of Faith and 3) the system of church governance by pastors, a council and the laity. If you want to be further confused, read in depth about the various Presbyterian splinter movements.

Let me digress here to say there’s no wonder I have been confused for 40 years about the difference between a Methodist and a Presbyterian. I am sure every religion has its shadings and hues – but some seem to hang together tighter than others. I am sure there are gradients of Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism that track to the many different flavors of Protestant Christianity, but to the casual visitor like myself, they seem like a lot of noise obscuring the basic signal.

Onwards to the service. I intended to visit the Touro Synagogue on Saturday morning for Shabbat, but the 70 mile drive for an 8:30 am service was daunting so I slept in and deferred this week’s visit to a “safe” bet closer to home. Not until late on Saturday night did I decide on the Presbyterians for no other reason than I wanted a “safe” church this weekend after the intensity of the last two weeks spent with the Quakers and the Victory Chapel.

The Cape Cod church is fairly young, with the visitor’s guide indicating the first phase of the chapel’s construction was completed in 1981. It is a one story building with a little steeple. The interior has low ceilings and the feel of an office building – meaning the notion of “narthex” or “porch” is not strong in the architectural design.

I arrived, hung up my winter coat, said hello to a deacon, signed the guest book and took my back row seat in a room about 50 by 50 feet. The wall behind the altar was glassed by a series of tall windows looking out into the gray tree trunks behind the church. A piano provided the only music – an austere contrast to last week’s large electrified and amplified band at the Victory Chapel. A bank of poinsettias, a red candle and a few other embellishments put one a little into the Christmas spirit. There were no pews, but instead rows of padded chairs fitted with a wire basket that held a Bible and Hymnal. About two dozen men and women filled the seats to close to half-capacity and the same deacon who greeted me made some announcements.

Following the announcements the pastor,  Reverend James A. La Belle,  took the podium and began the service. The liturgy and order of the service was very familiar with a greeting, and then, while standing, a call to worship, hymn, invocation, then a rote statement called the Confession of Faith, followed by an Ascription of Praise.

The pastor read Isaiah 51.21-52.12 from the old Testament. I followed along with the Bible taken from underneath the seat in front of me. I have never read the Bible cover to cover or in any organized Bible study group, so I have some issues finding chapters and verses, but the pastor kindly pointed out the page number. The Bible was not a King James version but another which I failed to note. It was printed in large type and the verses were laid out in a strange “stanza” arrangement more like poetry than the usual eye-squinting justified pica type I am accustomed to.

The operative word in Presbyterian liturgy is “confession” – a bit strange to my ears because I associate a confession with a booth, a screen, and a priest in the other booth. The service had a Confession of Faith, a Confession of Sin and that was followed by a Silent Confession of God’s People. Reverend La Belle delivered a considerable and eloquent pastoral prayer, which, because of its duration, I initially took to be his “sermon.” His prayer – which I estimate at 10 minutes, was directed at God and had a good line about the congregation coming together to help each other sharpen their faith the way “iron sharpens iron.” That pastoral prayer was concluded by the Lord’s Prayer. I noted that instead of saying “and forgive us our trespasses” the Presbyterian version says “and forgive us our debts” – an entirely appropriate 2009 TARP sentiment in my opinion.

The offering was made, I dropped a five into the bowl, and wondered for a second about the financial affairs of any congregation and how much income came from the offering plate. The thought passed, a hymn was sung, I actually tried singing, and realized my hymn voice is very basso profundo in its native tone-deafedness.

Then came The Proclamation of the Word of God. This was the sermon part and it was a good one – a long but very well argued and logically presented dissection of Mark 8.31-33, a passage from the Gospel according to Mark (patron saint of Venice) where Jesus says he will go to Jerusalem to die and be resurrected which earns him a rebuke from Peter. The whole death of Christ meme struck me as pretty out of season given we’re a week or two away from the birth of — as my late atheist* father would put it: “The Beej” — the Baby Jesus — but Reverence La Belle tied that knot neatly by persuasively arguing that Christ was born to die (giving rise to images of Hell’s Angels mottos and Bruce Springsteen songs) and in dying became the Son of God. I thought La Belle was a very good Deconstructionist of the text, putting me in mind of my Comparative Literature classes at Yale in the 1970s when deconstruction and the literal analysis of texts drove me nearly nutty with overweening critical analysis.

Random observations:

• This was solid Christianity. Stern, to the point, and very based on the fundamentals without being fundamentalist.
• The Presbyterian God is a stern god.
• This was not fun or entertaining but solemn and pensive.
• The word took precedence over the architecture or the music.
• The crowd was well dressed and I spotted one bow tie on the morning I decided not to wear a bowtie.
• I wondered if most American Presbyterians have Scottish ancestors.
• Rutherford B. Hayes, Bob Hope, and Ulysses S. Grant were Presbyterians.
• Parking lot had no trends in automotive selection worth noting.
• New churches don’t smell like churches. Yet.
• This is the second weekend in a row I went to the discount big box store after services.
• A Presbyterian cocktail consists of whiskey, ginger ale and Coca Cola. And is ordered as a “Press” as in, “Barkeep I should like a V.O. Press.”

  Next weekend ….. off to California on Saturday so …. Either a synagogue on Friday night or a church in California.

*On the topic of athiesm, this is a nice observation by the late David Foster Wallace in his recent posthumously published short story in the New Yorker:

“If you consider the usual meaning of “atheism,” which, as I understand it, is a kind of anti-religious religion [emp. mine], which worships reason, skepticism, intellect, empirical proof, human autonomy, and self-determination …”

Last week’s 75 minutes of silence at the East Sandwich meeting of the Society of Friends (Quakers) and this week’s visit, the fifth in the series, could not be further apart, more diametrically opposed, more yin/yang, salt and paper, or black and white than what I decided on for this week’s visit in the 52 Churches project. I knew, somewhere along the year-long project, that I would encounter some interesting variants and eye-opening experiences, I just underestimated the amplitude of the contrasts and the impact of some of the experiences. This week’s church visit was pretty amazing on many levels.

The Victory Chapel in Hyannis is located in a former tennis court complex near Captain Phinney’s Lane and Route 132   and was formerly housed at a location in Dennis. The church is a Christian Fellowship Ministry and its leader is the Reverend Dr. Paul Campo.  I have been dimly aware of the church since moving to Cape Cod full-time in 1991. It has been the subject of a series of stories in the Cape Cod Times and gathered some controversy in the press, including allegations made elsewhere of cultish tendencies. I had forgotten about the church until recently reminded and told of its location by a friend who is active in Cape Cod religious circles.  Here is the Wikipedia entry on the Victory Chapel and the associated Potter’s House.

This was not a mild experience for me. I  approached it with an open and objective mind, but knew, going in, that I would be visiting a church that was different from most Christian experiences I have known as a Congregationalist and Episcopalian.

“Victory Chapel, located in Hyannis, MA, is a full Gospel Pentecostal Church, where Jesus is still changing lives. Our mission is to proclaim the gospel in our local community and throughout the world. We belong to a larger fellowship of churches called Christian Fellowship Ministries, with over 1300 churches throughout the world. We hope that you will come visit us and see what God is doing in our church.

Over the years, we have held true to the fundamentals of Christianity while maintaining a fresh enthusiasm for engaging the community. At Victory Chapel, God has reached people through bible studies, haunted houses, theater productions, coffeehouses, parades, healing crusades, outdoor concerts, revival meetings, TV and radio broadcasts and holiday productions.

Victory Chapel has been on the Cape for over two decades. Pastor Paul Stevens and his family came from a Christian Fellowship Ministries church in Tuscon, AZ to begin the work. The church began holding services in a living room before moving to a storefront in Yarmouth. Shortly thereafter, Pastor Paul Campo assumed leadership of the church. Over the years, the congregation has grown in size and influence. We have seen many souls touched and redeemed through the power of Jesus Christ.

We hope that you join us and see what God is doing in our midst. We’re a close-knit community always willing to welcome someone new!”

I arrived 15 minutes early, too casually dressed I realized as I entered the church and saw a busy congregation of well-dressed men and women wearing neckties, dresses, jackets, and polished shoes. I was warmly welcomed, introduced myself, and shown the double doors leading into a large open room the size of an indoor hockey rink. The floor was carpeted and lined with several hundred chairs facing a large stage filled with musical instruments and a large wooden lectern. Above the pulpit hung an array of flags from China to  Brazil to Salem, Massachusetts. I took my customary place in a corner seat in the back row, sat down, and was soon approached by a man who introduced himself as Jermaine. He was followed by another gentleman, Jeff, and a third named David. All were very welcoming and offered themselves should I have any questions. Afterwards I learned Jermaine and Jeff were listed on the staff page of the church website.

The chairs began to fill with men and women — I would estimate the average age of the congregation in the late 30s or early 40s, mostly married couples, some with children. A few African-American parishioners were in attendance as well as several Hispanics.

The service began with a very energetic hymn played by a twenty-piece, electrified and amplified band. The musicianship was very good and the congregation sang along via a powerpoint presentation projected on a screen behind the band. I stood with the rest of the congregation and clapped along, but did not sing as my weak eyes could barely make out the words of the hymns — most of which reminded me of Christian rock music. The essence of the songs was Jesus, the Ancient One, salvation, and statements of Christ having died and risen again. Four songs were sung in rapid succession, with very little speaking between songs by a man I initially assumed to be the minister.

There were no hymnals. Many of the congregation carried bibles. I took off my coat as the clapping was warming me up. I was a little uncomfortable as I was too casually dressed and a bit in awe of the volume of the music and the enthusiasm of the people around me, many of whom sang with both hands high above their heads, or their right arm raised in a type of salute.

Announcements were made of upcoming Christmas performances, scheduled prayer meetings, and reports on “outreach” expeditions where some of the congregation traveled by  van to Providence, Rhode Island to hand out pamphlets in the rain at some housing projects and stores. The congregation applauded enthusiastically whenever it was reported that someone prayed or accepted Jesus as a result of these outreach efforts.  Outreach programs also traveled to local prisons to spread the faith. Parishioners suffering from the flu were urged to stay hope to spare the rest of the congregation, but to phone the church to let them know how they were doing and if they needed any help.

Following announcements the baskets were passed for the collection and the minister told the story of a Salvation Army kettle in Pennsylvania that had been given a dollar bill wrapped around a South African Kruggerand. A biblical parable was cited in parallel to the Kruggerand story but I forgot to write down the Biblical citation.

The pastor of the congregation, Dr. Paul Campo, delivered a sermon based on Phillipians 3, v. 13 — and energetically and with some wit presented a sermon on looking upwards from the pit, the pit of sin, to the light of life under Christ. He used several metaphors to describe this redemption, and at some points in the sermon spoke against smoking, drug use, drinking, and internet pornography. He also criticized other Christians who sinned but believed their church attendance absolved them, calling such churches “dead churches.”

The sermon was graphic at times, drawing analogies to being born again to being pulled from a toilet and placed on the seat by God, and backsliders to dogs returning to eat their own vomit. My favorite part of service was joining hands and introducing myself to the other parishioners around me.

At the conclusion of the sermon the congregation knelt its head in prayer and people were called forward to the altar. While this occurred one of the parishoners who greeted me before the service, David, returned to ask my opinion of the service. I said it was was “interesting and energetic.” He asked if I would be returning and I explained my intention to visit 52 places of worship. He reminded me that the Victory Chapel was about making a decision, a decision which could not be delayed for I needed to be prepared for whatever could befall me. I felt some pressure to commit, but I was able to deflect that pressure, and turned down an invitation for lunch at a parishoner’s home after the service.

I left at 1:15 pm, 2 hours and 30 minutes after arriving: the longest service so far. Another prayer service was scheduled for 7 pm. I did not attend.

Random observations:

• This was a somewhat aggressive religious experience and made me uncomfortable at times. I think it was designed to do that.
• There was some response by the congregation to the sermon, many “amen’s” and “good preaching”
• Sometimes there was a rising inflection of an appended “a” sound to the end of the some of the preaching, putting me in mind of Robert Duvall in The Apostle
• There was no moment of silence or silent prayer
• The Victory Chapel was my first “born again” “pentecostal” religious experience
• The faith supports the speaking of tongues. I thought one of the speakers spoke in tongues but cannot be sure if he was or if the microphone was malfunctioning.
• While there is a great deal of online controversy expressed about the Christian Fellowship Ministry, I won’t repeat or link to it here. I didn’t arrive at the church with an agenda, and I believe in suum cuique when it comes to religion. I have not personally witnessed first hand any of the negative incidents reported elsewhere.
• This form of worship is not new, and can be traced far back into the tent revival and Chautauqua movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Next week: undecided, but it will be my last Cape Cod church in 2010.  I may go Baptist or Catholic next week. I plan on using my time in San Francisco during the holidays to attend Friday prayers at a mosque and meditation at the Zen Center.

Guess the question of where is a mosque on Cape Cod has been answered:

“The Islamic Center for Cape Cod, Inc., has purchased property at 3072 Falmouth Road in Marstons Mills. Calls to the telephone listed on the Center’s Web site, as well as to the corporation’s resident agent, Saeed Chaudhry of Hyannis, had not been returned by press time.

The Center’s Web site (http://i.c.c.c.tripod.com) states that “we are a developing Islamic community in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA. We are trying to make a Mosque at this location with the help of our local and external Muslim community.”

via The Barnstable Patriot – A mosque for the Mills?.

An advantage to the 52 Church project (more accurately the 52 Houses of Worship project) happening on Cape Cod is my proximity to relatively old churches and traditions. For example the oldest American synagogue is an hour away in Newport, Rhode Island; Plymouth is a mere 30 miles away, and the oldest Quaker meeting in the country is less than ten miles to the north in East Sandwich.

There are some significant churches on my mental list that I look forward to, either because of historical reasons or pure curiosity, and one of those is the Quaker meeting in Sandwich. This morning I went with great anticipation for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the historical importance of Quakerism to Cape Cod. I felt a bit guilty indulging in the Quaker meeting so soon in the project, but it was what I decided to do, so I did it.

“Quaker” is a perjorative term affixed to this particular practice of religious dissent and faith which began in 1650 in England when a judge dismissed the faithful as “quakers” because the power of their beliefs made them tremble before God. It arrived in Massachusetts shortly after the Mayflower, and its early adherents were severely punished, chastised, and even put to death for their beliefs, leading some to emigrate out of Plymouth to Sandwich, the oldest town on Cape Cod, where a meeting was founded in 1658. Other persecuted Quakers fled the North Shore of Massachusetts and founded the first white settlement on Nantucket. Over time many of the most prosperous whaling fortunes (Coffin, Howland, Folger) were Quaker fortunes. I strong recommend Peter Nichols “Final Voyage” and Nathaniel Philbrick’s “In the Heart of the Sea” for a clear look at Massachusetts Quakers and their relationship to the seacoast, industry, and the first American fortunes. My whaling captain ancestor, Thomas Chatfield, was not a Quaker.

But I digress. To the meetinghouse and its remarkable service.

The meetinghouse was built in 1810 in Kennebec, Maine, dismantled, barged down the coast, and reassembled by the numbers on its present location  north of the King’s Highway (Route 6A) in East Sandwich. It is on Quaker Meetinghouse Road and sits on a small hill in a wooded copse of locust and holly trees. The architecture is quite severe and ultra-New England, with weathered shingles and remarkably plain but beautiful detail work.

I arrived ten minutes early and entered the door as a woman stepped outside and declared “there’s a fire in the stove, make yourself at home.”

I stepped into the narthex/entryway, signed my name in the guest book, dropped some money into a box labelled the “building maintenance fund” and guessed at which closed door I should open. I stepped into a moderately sized room with rows of pews facing to the northwest and another set facing back towards the door. In the middle of the room was a woodstove and the chimney rose up to the ceiling and made a 90-degree turn to the chimney on the western wall. One woman sat in the pews. She did not turn when I entered. I found my place in the back row corner seat and made myself comfortable. It was so silent in the room that I didn’t dare snap a photo of the interior. This shot is from the Meeting’s website:

Not a word was said in the room for the next 70 minutes.

More people arrived and the only sounds in the room were the soft ticking of an old clock by the door, the rustling of one man’s synthetic jacket, an occasional airplane flying overhead unseen in the blue sky, the ticking of the woodstove as it slowly warmed up the chilly room, the shifting coals as the logs burned down, three sneezes that were unanswered with “gesundheits” or “god bless you’s,” the occasional rustling as someone shifted in their pew, the turning of a page as a man in the front pew read a Bible. This was not a place to have a cough, a rumbling stomach, or the hiccups.

No one preached. No hymns were sung. No prayers were said outloud.

I was attending an unprogrammed meeting. That means there was no minister or service, but instead a meeting of friends to contemplate God. I’ll quote from the Meeting pamphlet:

“We invite you to share the hospitality of our Meeting House and join in our unprogrammed Meeting. The Meeting asks that you listen attentively, both to the remarkable harmony of the silent waiting and to the minustry that may arise from the silence. We ask you to wait with patience and openness for an understanding of Friends Meeting.

Meeting really begins only when we are all joined in the silent waiting upon God that is known among Quakers as Centering Down.

Speaking, when there is any, arises from a deep religious experience and is preceded by the conviction that this experience must be shared. This is sometimes senses as an upwelling of the spirit, sometimes as an insight following study, meditation and prayer. It is always humble, always a result of the most earnest seeking. It is not casual or argumentative and seldom is humorous.”

The meeting ended around 11 am when the same woman who welcomed me stood up and shook hands with another person. I greeted the people around me, there were introductions by all, and some announcements of forthcoming meetings, food drives, and pot luck suppers.

Random observations:

• I was perhaps the youngest person there
• There were too few people to make any pithy sweeping demographic statement about the parking lot
• I want to return to this service more than any of the previous three experiences

What I thought about during the 70 minutes:

• Whaling and why Quakers dominated that industry (I have no idea).
• William Penn
• Quaker Oats
• Why such a silent, benign, pacifist gathering would be persecuted 350 years ago
• The branches of the bare locust tree through the antique glass windows and how that swirling effect is like my eyesight now
• How completely timeless the room was — nothing in it other than the clothing and eyeglasses we wore and the three electrical ceiling lights was from this century
• Richard M. Nixon (his mother was Quaker and his father converted)
• The overalls the bearded man who tended the woodstove wore
• Would someone speak?
• This was the quietest I have ever been for an extended period of time
• How much I enjoy this project

Here is the Wikipedia entry for the Religious Society of Friends. Next week, I may go Catholic.

I resumed my spiritual smorgasbord with a trip to Hyannis to attempt to attend services at the Brazilian Assembly of God church on Mary Dunn Road. I pulled into the parking lot at 9:45 – having had no luck in finding the service times as the church has no website – but things looked very sleepy, so with only a few minutes left on the clock until 10 am (which I assume is the default start time for many Sunday services) I fell back on Plan B and continued north to Route 6A, the Kings Highway, and turned into the Unitarian Church of Barnstable across the street from the Trayser Museum on Cobb’s Hill above the intersection of 6A and Captain Phinney’s Lane. This was not an entirely compulsive decision as I have admired the church for many years and wanted to have my first Unitarian experience somewhere in the course of my 52 visits.

The service didn’t begin until 10:30, so I drove down to Barnstable Harbor, parked the car, and listened to an excellent 1973 Boston Music Hall concert by the Grateful Dead that featured a flawless Here Comes Sunshine/Weather Report Suite from the Wake of the Flood album. That was an appropriate warm-up for my introduction to what may be one of the most liberal of the Christian denominations, if indeed “Christian” is even an appropriate label to fix to the “UU”. Unitarianism is very much a Boston tradition – the church has its headquarters on Beacon Hill and the church is identified with Ralph Waldo Emerson, a former Unitarian minister and perhaps the foremost American philosopher of the mid-19^th century along with his peer, Henry David Thoreau. When I studied 19^th century American religious and intellectual history in college, the influence of the Transcendentalists on the Unitarian church made me make a mental note to check it out one day – a note that took 30 years to realize.

The Unitarian Universalist Church is a liberal religion – more a congregation of people bound spiritually than by religion – which has no overt Christian dogma or reliance on scripture. Wikipedia has a long definition, here’s an excerpt:

“Although Unitarian Universalist congregations and fellowships tend to retain some Christian traditions, such as Sunday worship with a sermon and the singing of hymns, they do not necessarily identify themselves as Christians, nor do they necessarily subscribe to Christian beliefs. The extent to which the elements of any particular faith tradition are incorporated into one’s personal spiritual practices is a matter of personal choice in keeping with Unitarian Universalism’s creedless, non-dogmatic approach to spirituality and faith development.”

None of this was known to me as I entered the church, so I entered with an open mind after wrestling with the front door for a few tugs until a nice woman (subsequently identified as the Reverend Dr. Kristen Harper) popped it open and bid me to enter. I took a back row corner seat in the straight backed pew, and pulled a guest card and history from the hymnal rack. The church was built in 1905, and was the eastern parish in the original Congregationalist parishes of Barnstable founded in 1646 (the western parish was the last church I visited, but that congregation is Congregationalist ((which is the antecedent for Unitarianism according to Wikipedia}). Reverend Harper, as luck would have it, posted some thoughts on how to define Unitarian Universalism on the church website last month. I suggest reading her reflection for a more personal attempt to define the “UU”.

The choir was rehearsing with great gusto as I filled out the guest card and blinked wetly with feeble eyes at the big room (note to self, need to read a basic guide to church architecture so I can show off with words like “narthex”). The podium, or altar, was simple, with a back wall displaying several bas relief carvings of a Star of David, Islamic Crescent and Star, Yin and Yang, Cross, and of course the Flaming Chalice symbol of Unitarian Universalism. No Jesus. No Virgin. No overt displays of any religion’s totems over another’s. The church was built in 1907 — replacing an earlier structure destroyed by fire in 1905 – and was designed by Guy Lowell, the architect of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

The pews filled up and folding chairs were brought in to accommodate the late arrivals. Reverend Harper rang a bell and the organ played a nice prelude of Thanksgiving hymns, including one I remember liking as a ten-year old, the classic Dutch hymn of Thanksgiving, “We Gather Together to Ask the Lord’s Blessing.” Reverend Harper made her introduction and welcome, noting that the congregation welcomed gay, lesbian and transgendered visitors. The chalice was lit, the congregation rose, and in unison made their affirmation. A hymn was sung, then a nice communal type of ritual was performed, with the congregation rising and walking up the center aisle to the altar where each picked a pebble from a bowl and dropped it into another while giving silent thanks. I was tempted to participate, but have decided not to engage in any rituals such as communion or other altar activities out of respect for the congregants and for fear of giving offense through lack of protocol.

At the back of the hymnal was a series of readings, or prayer-like statements, known as “responsive readings” written by many noted authors including Abraham Lincoln and Rabindrinath Tagore, the Indian Nobel Prize winner. We read “To Loose the Fetters of Injustice” (I forget who the author was).

The reading was “The Arc of the Universe” by Charlie Clements and the sermon was entitled “Guest at Your Table: Water Justice,” which fit neatly into my preconceptions that the UU would carry on the Transcendentalist koan of a “sermon in every stone.” Reverend Harper was a very eloquent and persuasive speaker and rooted her message that inequities in the distribution and availability of fresh water in the Third World and among the poor in local realities of drought and water use on Cape Cod. She kept me wide awake, the Churbuck test of any sermon.

Random observations:

• Christ was never mentioned, nor any Bible quoted
• The music and the setting were traditional. Juxtaposed with the absence of any overt Christian trappings, the music made this an unChurch-Church experience.
• Barack Obama and Martin Luther King were cited by Reverend Harper, who is of African-American descent and who did a wonderful job quoting Rev. King’s “If not now, when?” speech
• The average age of congregation tilted to 50
• There were two dozen children and teens present
• I didn’t see many twenty or thirty year olds
• The sexes were equally represented
• The parking lot had a high quotient of Mini Coopers and Subarus, this was not an SUV or BMW crowd

Next week — I have to catch up on a missed Sunday due to travel from San Francisco to Boston earlier in the month — so I may attempt a double-header this coming weekend with a synagogue visit on Saturday and a church on Sunday. Oh, and church recommendations are always appreciated. My neighbor, the Right Reverends Jeremy and Nicole are giving me some pointers in exchange for the loan of my clam rake. I will be in San Francisco over the Christmas holidays and thought I’d hit the Zen Center and perhaps Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill, Glide Memorial on Van Ness or the North Beach church where Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio tied the knot.

I am not a religious person, but this morning marked the second Sunday in a row that I’ve continued with a concept that I hadthought about for a number of years (but officially commenced last weekend); visit a different local church, temple, mosque, or coven every week for a year (within reason) and then blog about it.

Some background on my religious proclivities or lack of: I attended church as a child thanks to my mother, who was determined to see some spirituality instilled in me and my siblings, mostly Congregationalist churches in Georgetown and Andover, Massachusetts. My father was an atheist who claimed to be a “Home Baptist” and a parishioner in the “Church of Saint Mattress.” He did not attend my baptism at the age of 13, and indeed blamed the demise of a pet gerbil on that same event coming a day after I was officially inducted into some long-forgotten church in Andover. I attended an all-boys prep school in Massachusetts founded by an Episcopalian Bishop – Phillips Brooks – a famed orator, clergyman, and rector of the Trinity Church in Copley Place in Boston. Chapel was conducted several nights a week after dinner, was compulsory, and a few of the faculty were ordained ministers. I was baptized at Brooks in Lake Cochiewick a second time by the late Reverend George F. Vought (along with a Buddhist classmate from Thailand) and was eventually confirmed as a member of the Episcopalian church in the Brooks Chapel – probably my favorite religious memory to this day.

The Churbuckian religious status today:

• I don’t go to church and don’t consider myself religious
• I am a “registered” congregant of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Osterville, but again, do not attend services
• I was married in the Cotuit Federated Church by a visiting minister who once played on a famous UCLA national championship basketball team in the 1950s and was extremely tall
• The Cotuit church is the “Churbuck church” – we get married and buried there – but I have only attended services once to see my neighbor Reverend Jeremy do an awesome baseball-themed service last summer
• I am not a big Jesus guy and don’t go for the miracle stuff, but understand it is powerful stuff – and has dominated Western thought for the last 2009 years.
• I am monotheistic in the Einsteinian sense that I believe something ties stuff together.
• I do not take communion when I do attend services because I am agnostic
• I do not sing hymns because I am tone deaf and annoy people sitting around me who usually think I am mocking the music
• I subscribe to the foxhole theory of atheism. I prayed very earnestly for my life in 1981 while delivering a decrepit 60-foot ocean going catamaran to Florida in a November gale

So – with all of that said as a form of disclaimer and disclosure: why visit random houses of worship and then write about them? Good question. Let’s see:

• It is a nice way to spend a couple hours on a Sunday morning that would be otherwise spent doing email and reading the Sunday Times.
• The music can be quite good
• The architecture of some churches is impressive
• I live near some old churches with some significant colonial history behind them
• It seems like an interesting thing to do, especially religions I know nothing about like Greek Orthodox, Hinduism, Jehovah’s Witnesses …..
• It could be very enlightening
• I get to be pedantic and indulge my interest in 19^th century American intellectual and spiritual history
• It’s a good excuse to go to different places and find a nice lunch and a walk afterwards
• It beats blogging about interactive marketing

I intend to limit my range to Southeastern Massachusetts, Cape Cod and the Islands. My criteria? Try to visit as many diverse denominations and faiths as possible, seek interesting churches, and always attend with the utmost respect and humility. This is not a “critique” of churches or religions, nor will I award stars, rankings, or any judgments. So, let’s start off.

11.1.09: St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Falmouth, Massachusetts, on the village green.

At the invitation of my good friend Paul Noonan, I attended a very unique service in this wonderful stone church on Falmouth’s historic village green. Entitled Solemn Evensong for The Feast of All Saint’s Day, this was an afternoon service on the first early afternoon of the late fall – the day after Halloween and the first night of daylight savings time. I attended in bowtie and blazer and was greeted by Mr. Noonan for being overdressed. I reminded him that alumni of The Brooks School would no sooner appear in chapel without a coat and tie as they would go to the dining hall without pants.

The organ and choir were the main attraction of this musical service, which has its historical antecedents in vespers or evening prayers. There was no sermon nor standard religious drill, but instead most, if not all of the proceedings were sung by the choir.

The prelude was Johannes Brahms “O Welt, ich muss dich lassen” – or “O World, I Now Must Leave Thee” – in keeping with the avowed purpose of the All Saints service which was to remember the congregations’ deceased from the previous year.

I sat alone, near the back, and found the service amazingly relaxing and meditative, particular the Lessons, which were sung – The Magnificat and the Nunc dimittis. Coming from the WASP tradition, this is pretty much a familiar, “home-team” sort of church experience for me.

The program gave an excellent explanation of Evensong:

“Based on the services held daily in the medieval Church, Evensong, as arranged in the Book of Common Prayer of the Anglican Church, has been sung regularly in the Church since the sixteenth century, the Tudor Age (with only a few breaks during the Commonwealth in the Seventeenth Century. Here the music is sung by the Choir. ”

The church is quite intimate and cozy, with a very high cathedral ceiling, wonderful stained glass made in England, and dark woodwork. This is a very late 19^th century “English” church. Attendance was somewhat sparse – a shame given the quality of the wonderful choral music, and I believe I was the youngest person in the congregation (there were very young people signing in the choir). Mr. Noonan recommended I return for another musical service, the “Compline.” I will likely do so.

11.8.09 West Parish of Barnstable, West Barnstable, Route 149

For years I have admired this amazing white clapboard church off of Route 6 in West Barnstable. The architecture and the exposed bell in the belfry make this a jewel of Cape Cod’s ecclesiastical architecture.

I arrived a bit before the 10 am service and was warmly greeted, given a name tag, and shown a pew in the back of the meetinghouse. This church was built in 1717 and is the oldest Congregationalist church in the United States. A quick digression on Congregationalism or the United Church of Christ – this is the “ancient” denomination of New England, the direct descendant of the Pilgrim’s faith, and indeed the hymnal is the “Pilgrims’ Hymnal.” Based on what I read in Barbara Tuchman’s Bible and Sword, the faith of the Pilgrims (not to be confused with the Puritans who settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony in Boston) was very Old Testament and almost Jewish in its close dogmatic affinity to Israel. While the Pilgrims fled England in the early 17^th century for Leyden, Holland and then Plymouth, the current tenor of Congregationalism is very community focused, social, and liberal in its approach.

I realized my plan of slipping unnoticed into random churches was both rude and unreasonable. When the Reverend Reed Baer asked if there were any visitors I stood and introduced myself by name and hometown. The layout of the church is very interesting – with the Parson ascending steep stairs to a pulpit high above the congregation who sit in “penned” pews with gate door and spindle railings. The layout is square – with the congregation sitting in a u-pattern in front of the pulpit. An upper balcony looked very inviting, and I spied a head or two sitting above me. There was organ music, but the choir sang with a pianist seated near them on the main floor of the church.

There was no stained glass, just nice 24-pane windows (and lots of them). The church was flooded with light on the sunny morning and the wood was all exposed and naturally finished with, heavy split beams supported by several slender columns.

The theme of the service was “healing.” The Parson, a former corporate attorney who was ordained later in his career, was very well spoken and friendly. The house was very nearly packed and had a very warm, community feel in the way the congregation said goodbye to some long-time parishioners who had sold their home to be near their children.

As I departed I met my old captain, David Ellis, from the M/V Point Gammon, the Hy-Line ferry to Nantucket that was my summer job during high school and college. We hadn’t seen each other for 30 years and had a good time reconnecting on the steps of the narthex (which is today’s word of the day).