Reaching Out

Local churches have been in the spotlight a good deal lately--from the protests of the size of the Knafel Center project by the parishioners at the Swedenborg Chapel to some students' irritation with the frequent peals of the new bells of St. Paul's Church. It's a question in the first case of not enough light and in the second of too much noise. As far as the bells go, I can't say that my heart goes out too much to those bothered by the chimes. We students have become experts at tuning out what we don't need to hear (how many of us slept through the bells of Memorial Church when we were first-years?). Frankly, some of us like the harmonious sound, and still others actually use the bells to tell the time. As Donne points out, "The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth."

The conflict between the University and the Swedenborgians is a little more complex. The parishioners are concerned that the construction of the new Harvard office building will dwarf their small chapel and keep light from streaming through their stained glass windows (Harvard denies that the structure will be so intimidating). Of course, there's nothing new in the idea of the commercial and secular overpowering the sacred; a look at Manhattan shows us any number of churches dwarfed by skyscrapers, and even on Fifth Avenue, it's not clear that St. Patrick's Cathedral is any taller than Bergdorf Goodman. Well, this is America, a secular society with a capitalist economy, and commercial buildings should be taller than houses of worship. What you see is what you get.

But Cambridge churches in the late 20th century have often not worried about the relative height of their buildings but about the depth and range of their social concern. Reaching out has been as much a motive as reaching up. They have been able to move horizontally--if not vertically--into the Cambridge community in a number of ways that are less religious but more social, educational and political. Within a mile's radius of the Swedenborg Chapel, we can find a history of such outreach that more than compensates for any physical restrictions. Consider the following three examples:

Local children can attend the Newtowne School at the First Church in Cambridge Congregational on Garden Street, a cooperative nursery school where youngsters learn and play together in a park nestled a safe distance from the traffic of Mass. Ave. Their parents, of whatever belief or non-belief, make sandboxes and swingsets and help the small faculty show their kids how to read, count and share the space in the classroom and the churchyard.

It was once possible for those children, after they had outgrown the nursery school, to move around the corner onto Brattle Street, where the basement of Holy Trinity Armenian Church, itself a unique building in the midst of Tory Row, housed the Ecole Bilingue, a French elementary school (its campus has since moved to Arlington). Students immersed themselves in another language and another world, while learning by osmosis something of the Armenian people and their faith.

Moving back across the Square, a grown student could (and still can) find refuge, even sanctuary, in the Old Cambridge Baptist Church behind the Inn at Harvard. We should remember this contribution in less turbulent times when enjoying the church's creative role in the production and performance of theatrical events, including a nod to ancient comedy in last year's "Menaechmi" of Plautus. In the late '60s and early '70s, the church was a center of protest for those politically opposed to the draft and to the Vietnam War as a whole. In the '80s, it was part of the vocal opposition to the violence and political persecution in Central America.

All three of these churches are either boxed in by hotels (the Sheraton Commander borders one side of the First Church property) or apartment buildings and parking areas (which surround Holy Trinity), yet their influence extends far beyond Sunday morning services and the physical limits placed upon their structures. Likewise, the tiny Swedenborg Chapel on the corner of Kirkland and Quincy streets and its founder have influenced the Harvard community. Henry James, Sr. 'was an avid reader of the works of Emanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish theologian who was the inspiration for the Church of the New Jerusalem. Henry in turn influenced his eldest son William, the philosopher and psychologist for whom our William James Hall is named. Just up Quincy Street a few blocks from the Chapel is Harvard's Faculty Club, formerly the home of the James family.

Despite the clear ability of churches to overcome physical restrictions and have more than just spiritual influence in the community, it is wrong to over-look the significance of space and relative height in the debate over the construction and shape of the proposed Knafel Center. Across the street from the home where Henry and William James once read the works of Swedenborg, on the side of Emerson Hall is inscribed a quotation from the eighth psalm, "What is man that thou art mindful of him?" President Lowell commissioned the inscription, overruling the original request of the Philosophy Department that the wall read, "Man is the measure of all things." It seems that Harvard, in planning the Knafel Center, is operating on the probable truth of the latter statement, but even if man is the measure of all things, there should be some sense of decent proportion.

Susannah B. Tobin '00 is a classics concentrator in Lowell House. Her column appears on alternate Thursdays.