A QUESTION

During my recent vacation in Seattle, I headed downtown each day to go swimming. The pool where I work out is a block from the First United Methodist Church where I was choir director/music director for the ten years preceding my cantorial studies at Hebrew Union College. The church is a massive, square stone building with a terra cotta dome — a distinctive and impressive landmark in the downtown area. Inside, the sanctuary seats 1200 people, with a wooden balcony around three sides and a huge pipe organ dominating the wall behind the choir loft above the chancel area.

“First Church,” as it is often called, is indeed the oldest congregation in Seattle. But as the city grew and residents moved to the suburbs, First Church suffered the fate of many downtown religious institutions with a dwindling congregation occupying and increasingly valuable piece of real estate. In fact, the Bank of America tower — the tallest building on the west coast — is immediately across the street from the church.

In the early 1990s, a push began to demolish the church’s building and replace it with a modern office tower that would house the congregation on its property. Opponents of this plan were able to have the building declared an historic landmark, but the state supreme court overturned that decision, claiming that government intervention preventing the congregation from doing what they saw fit with the building was a violation of the separation of church and state. During my last trip to Seattle, I saw a newspaper article that said that the organization which shares the city block with First Church had worked out an arrangement with developers, and that the church would likely be demolished within the next 18 months.

The church leadership, for its part, says that it is no longer able to maintain an aged building with a 1200-seat sanctuary for a congregation of 700. And furthermore, the mission of the church has become, in recent years, service for the large homeless population in the area. (In part because of the mild climate, there are more than 2,000 homeless people in the City of Seattle.) The church claims that it will be able to better carry out its mission in the downtown area with a smaller facility.

And so I ask this question from a Jewish perspective: does the mitzvah of serving the homeless take precedence over the preservation of an important piece of a community’s history and tradition? Does the current mission of the church justify removing a symbol of the city’s religious life that has stood for nearly a century?

This is not so easy a question. On the one hand, symbols of our past are important reminders of who we are. Our history very much informs our identity at the present. We act as a holy people not merely in response to immediate need, but out of a sense of mission arising from a rich tradition. Religious symbols remind us of who we are and give us grounding as a people. How do we preserve our religious identity absent the backdrop of our past?

On the other hand, we are taught not to ignore the plight of the poor in our midst. We are to imitate God’s merciful deeds: to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, to keep faith with those who sleep in the dust. No one organization is going to solve Seattle’s difficult and complex crisis of homelessness. But a religious community that can shine a light into that darkness by providing meals and services, and moreover comfort and support, is in pursuit of tikkun olam — the repair of the world — through g’milut chasadim, deeds of lovingkindness. This is our task in the world. Is there any justification in ignoring it?

Because of my association with First Church, I find this dilemma particularly troubling. For a once flourishing congregation to have to make such a decision is heartbreaking. I understand the importance of serving the surrounding community, but the destruction of a proud piece of history makes me very sad.

Past or future? Symbols or deeds? Heritage or mission? How would make the choice?

B’shalom,
Andrew Bernard
Cantor