Dean’s Letter: What is the Cathedral for the City?

If you’ve joined the Cathedral community in the last few years, you may have heard the tagline “Cathedral for the City” and wondered about it. The phrase was coined over a decade ago (before my time) and expresses what I think of as a very Anglican interpretation of a cathedral’s mission.

In the Church of England, our mother church, a town becomes a city only when it acquires a cathedral; so the presence of a cathedral has a secular significance. The cathedral is traditionally a community gathering place: the place to celebrate joyful events like a coronation or the harvest; the place to gather for communal grieving after a tragedy or war; the place for magnificent cultural events like concerts and art exhibits. In ages past, the cathedral often served as a place of refuge from a Viking incursion or major storm; the place to give thanks after the Plague had passed; even as a site for farmers’ markets.

This variety of functions makes clear that, besides being a place to worship God and celebrate our Christian fellowship, besides being the official “seat” (Greek Cathedra) of the Bishop, a cathedral serves as a resource for the whole city in which it ministers. So you could say that, traditionally, every Church of England cathedral is a cathedral for its city.

In the Episcopal Church, this identity has been less clear: in many cases, when a diocese was founded, an existing parish church was named as the cathedral, and the congregation retained its sense of being a parish that served its own members. St. Paul’s was a parish church that was “elevated” almost 40 years ago to the status of Cathedral (this was more than a decade after the Diocese of San Diego was carved out of the Diocese of Los Angeles). We retain the DNA of a parish while also wearing the mantle of a cathedral, so you might say we are a hybrid community.

I take our mission as “Cathedral for the City” very seriously. As you know we have remodeled the Nave and Chancel to be more flexible and accessible for almost every kind of community event; we have opened our doors to the needs of our unhoused neighbors and those marginalized from their faith communities because of their orientation or gender identity; we provide space for several organizations that seek to enrich the lives of underserved populations; we have created a room rentals system that welcomes civic, professional, arts, service, and private organizations. In fact, while we offer very reasonable rates, by the end of July our facilities rental revenue, now an essential element in our budget, had already exceeded our expectations for the current year. I hasten to add that your pledges are still by far the biggest portion of our revenue!

In the course of our current Major Gifts Campaign, this mission has been recognized by the broader community in the shape of a generous grant from the Parker Foundation and a significant number of gifts from people otherwise unconnected to St. Paul’s. I am deeply grateful for this recognition.

Thus far, our leadership has managed to find a balance between being open to the community’s needs and providing a spiritual home for those who choose to become members. From where I stand, we are fulfilling our calling to be “The Cathedral for the City” in San Diego.

See you on Sunday.

Your sister in Christ,
Penny