Friday Reflection: The Shaping of St. Stephen’s Sense of Place II
The period from the 1940s through the 1980s set the stage for St. Stephen’s today, with challenges that escalated with time. The church managed them most successfully in the first years, thanks in part to its rector, Dr. Alfred W. Price.
Sanctuary in Troubled Times 1942-1971
Over his long tenure, Dr. Price took this “dear old place” out of the near-fatal doldrums of the Depression into dramatic resurrection. He made St. Stephen’s the center of a Spiritual Healing movement that drew worshippers from across the nation and brought a prestige that spanned the globe. This openly evangelical ministry aimed “to bring the helpfulness of religion to bear on fear, anxiety, worry, frustration, guilt, sickness and disease.” The church was packed, not only for the two healing services on Thursday (12:30 pm and 5:30 pm). In 1958 alone, 27,193 attended the noonday healing services, with a total attendance of 51,526.
Dr. Price gets much of the credit for this vitality because of his magnetic leadership and canny management. The historical moment, however, was critical. The ministry addressed emotional problems that drew in part on the mounting tensions in American life after World War II despite the surge of middle-class prosperity: unease about social injustices at home but conflicted feelings about reform; the intensification of the modern civil and women’s rights movements and the Episcopal Church’s varying response to them. These issues in our own Diocese are well presented by William W. Cutler III, Sheldon Hackney, and David R. Contosta in This Far by Faith. . . . (2012), edited by the latter.
St. Stephen’s sense of Place participated meaningfully in this successful ministry. This is how the service leaflets of 1951 interpret Strickland’s distinctive Tudor Gothic-inspired towered façade: “The Name of the Lord is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe” (Prov. 18:10).
The interior further added consoling intimacy, endowed by its birth as a compact urban church, and serenity, imparted by its elegant final Tiffany redecoration. It was warmed, given heart, by the traces of its long and changing life as it grappled with a troubled Now.
In an echo of Hobart’s consecration sermon (a rephrasing of Matthew 11:28), Dr. Price’s service leaflets consistently invited all who suffer, mourn, need comfort, rest, friendship—and God. As part of its commitment to social diversity, in 1958 the church eliminated pew rentals, a vital source of income for most churches that was widely condemned for excluding people of limited means or the poor. St. Stephen’s was open every weekday for prayer and meditation.
Who came? According to Dr. Price, locals in need of solitary support: A young woman worker at the nearby Federal Reserve Bank came for big decisions or personal crises though not a congregant; an alcoholic came to pray for strength to resist—after another binge. The church renewed its commitment to the Deaf and hard of hearing: It installed expensive hearing aids in the church and established a special ministry by The Rev. Gustav C. Meckling for them.
St. Stephen’s could commit to such service because of its exceptional financial health, thanks to an engaged congregation and visitors: It was debt free and enjoyed a steadily growing endowment fund. It could manage the physical demands of its aging buildings and modernize them for new uses. It may be at this peak moment that the church was air conditioned, permitting use during Philadelphia’s legendary summer heat.
St. Stephen’s provided a reassuring example of a historic place that was successfully used and updated. It drew crowds to a deteriorating old city that suffered from white flight to the suburbs. It pursued a unique mission that proved the resilience of historic urban entities as Philadelphia fought decay and exodus through a two-pronged redevelopment campaign: To balance new construction, that razed old structures, with the prestige and unique personalities of historic buildings and communities.
In this redevelopment climate, in 1957 St. Stephen’s was officially recognized as one of the city’s historic places. The church was later added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Such status publicly affirmed its sense of Place.
A Search for a New Identity 1972-1988
The familiar struggles of a historic urban church in modern times began to overwhelm after Dr. Price’s retirement. The Spiritual Healing ministry continued under Dr. Roy Hendricks and his successors into the 1980s but lost momentum. Despite its vigorous medical, federal, and professional centers, neighborhood conditions worsened with more homeless and addiction. The church partnered with public and private groups to address neighborhood social problems, providing the Community House for (paid) use by Youth Emergency Services and Senior Deaf groups, among others.
The church nonetheless lost parishioners and vestry, and consequently financial resources, as the cost of maintaining its structures mounted. The need for repairs grew; even the recent church cooling equipment failed. Subsequent rectors fought to meet costs with old solutions (paying tenants) and new ones (grants) helped by the church's historic designation.
Most of all, St. Stephen’s struggled for a sense of identity and mission within its current world. The church lost staff to low morale. Interim rector The Rev. Patricia A. Oglesby called for a vestry self-examination to guide a new rector, The Rev. Robert Schiesler, who recommended transforming the church into a secular Foundation for Social Ministry as a counter-proposal to advisors who suggested selling the property. With his plan rejected, Rev. Schiesler resigned, commenting that the abundance of street people, condition of the buildings, reliance on the healing ministry, and lack of a sense of community within the church were too extreme for the parish to thrive.
Opening the Box 1988-2016
Instead of closing, like many of Philadelphia’s Episcopal churches in the 1980s, St. Stephen’s rebuilt. A young new leader was called: The Rev. Dr. Charles Flood, who committed to new directions within the traditional social structure: a vestry and parish.
Technologically ambitious, Dr. Flood introduced Wi-Fi and sophisticated electronics to produce printed matter and a website to widely disseminate presence and communications.
Much of his campaign centered on St. Stephen’s evolved sense of Place. One of his brochures affirms St. Stephen’s ongoing commitment to the urban engagement promised with its original choice to build within the complex, living city.
The church sponsored community programs outside the church such as a volunteer intern program at Thomas Jefferson University hospital. With 9/11, Dr. Flood himself participated in counseling and spiritual support for family survivors in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in New York.
The most ambitious community engagement within the church complex, however, involved the arts. St. Stephen’s hosted a performing arts center, drawing upon its long musical history, modern theatrical luminaries like the Drews and Barrymores among its congregants, and arts-related tenants who appreciated its facilities. The new complex featured The Lantern Theater Company in the Community House and a resident youth music group, Philadelphia Sinfonia headquartered in the Parish House, that used the church, famous for its acoustics, for rehearsals.
To facilitate new directions, however, beginning in 1989, the historic church interior was radically transformed. Still a painful and hotly-debated topic everywhere, the original box pews were removed to open the space for maximum flexibility of use, whether for worship or community events. A stepped wood platform that extended the raised Tiffany chancel was added for a production of 1776 and used for later performances of sacred music.
As a quasi-separate zone that was no longer needed for worshippers, the transept became first a furnished social space, then a site for the portable painted-canvas labyrinth to create a meditation space inspired by medieval examples.
Furness Transept, c. 1990
Over the ensuing thirty years, initially as priest in charge and then as rector, Dr. Flood explored various forms of worship. He phased out the Spiritual Healing ministry to focus on a traditional parish with Sunday and weekday services. However he later opened to alternative liturgies with different spatial arrangements enabled by the church’s open space.
Church interior, 1990s/2004
For Sundays and one weekday, he appealed to diverse communities with “New Age” Taizé chants and prayer and traditional sacrament. On another weekday, small groups meditated in silence in the church. To embrace other religious communities in the city, the Tibetan Buddhist community presented traditional dance and chanting within the church.
Though the experiments proceeded for a remarkable three decades, the church struggled with decreasing attendance. It reduced its activities. Like many urban churches it opened to the public only for services or appointments. In 2016 church activities were completely suspended, its vestry and staff disbanded, and Dr. Flood retired.
Launching Beyond the Box 2017-2019
In 2017 The Rev. Peter Kountz was called as vicar to St. Stephen’s, now a mission church with no vestry and a skeleton staff, to rebuild, with no instructions or limits, for three years. His first, most fundamental and most radical step was to dismiss the traditional Sunday worship structure retained at St. Stephen’s through 2016.
A sense of Place determined much, given the church’s location. Fr. Kountz concluded that St. Stephen’s location, always mixed commercial, federal, and medical, with some residential, did not fit traditional models of neighborhood and weekly rhythms. This area was primarily a workplace, a weekday world for professionals (excepting the 24/7 medical community) who lived elsewhere. So the church’s ministry should focus exclusively on weekdays for those who pass the church daily, including hospital visitors or patients and the needy who lived on the streets, all of whom might seek safety, pastoral care, and a place to worship, think, or heal, once or routinely.
He opened the church four days a week with midday worship for each that eventually included a healing service as a tribute to St. Stephen’s distinctive modern contribution and to its medical neighbors. The overall program was customized with a mix of elements: Eucharist services that focused on the Episcopal Lectionary of the saints and holy people, A Great Cloud of Witnesses. Services also celebrated important feasts in the church year as found in the Book of Common Prayer. All but the healing services included a brief reflection from the celebrant. Services took place near the chancel in a circle that produced an intimate bond among participants, the church’s acoustics enhancing the spoken Word.
The concept of congregation was radically redefined. The usual church welcome to visitors and regulars alike became, at St. Stephen’s, an embrace of both as equals, all congregants whether they worshipped there or not. They “congregated” there at will, alone or absorbed within those assembled, one time only, or many. This congregation was fluid and varied, unpredictable.
Fr. Kountz planned a series of three solo jazz piano concerts, curated by Fred Hersch for 2018-2019, to affirm that music outside the traditional domain of sacred music participated profoundly in the sacred. Both performers and audience applauded these concerts for their power in Place: extraordinary acoustics in a warm, beautiful, and intimate historic space that bound all present in a special experience.
A Facebook page and new website were created to present today’s St. Stephen’s to the world beyond. It illustrated the church’s on-line identity with images of an engaged physical Place: its open church door, whether looking in from the busy street to the warm, living space, or from inside, connecting with the street.
Fr. Kountz also sought to probe deeply into the church’s history to identify its distinctiveness through time in order to shape its path forward. Integral to this search was its sense of Place. Towards that end he commissioned the assembly of the church’s on-site documents as an archive.
That’s when I entered the picture. A longtime art museum curator and academic specializing in funerary cult, I had studied the two Burd funerary projects as St. Stephen’s activities wound down around 2015. I met Fr. Kountz as I was editing an article on them for publication just as he began. He invited me to join his small team to organize and work with the assembled church documents as well as the art and architecture, part of a comprehensive study of church history. I accepted, becoming a participant in the journey.
Our research yielded immediate and extraordinary results.
The first finds triggered another radical remodeling of the transept. I knew, though it was rarely mentioned in church guides, that all north additions were built over St. Stephen’s original churchyard. Documents gave us the location and identity of burials covered by the transept. With excavation and examination by an archaeologist, we learned the vaults were still there and, sealed, were still likely occupied. These were intact consecrated burials in their intended sites. Following Richard Upjohn’s precedent with the Burd Memorial Chapel (see the Friday Reflection of August 14), we brought the cemetery into the church. This time, we opened the transept floor to integrate the revealed burial vaults underneath.
The result in early 2019 became the Furness Burial Cloister, an eloquent and versatile space for services, meditation, and more.
The newly remodeled space encapsulated the church’s long and varied history, enriching the sense of Place. It also dramatically embodied St. Stephen’s commitment to community across time, as with the Burd Memorial Chapel, and to diversity in giving sanctuary to a community with, we learned, strikingly different paths through life, some severely compromised.
Coordinated by historic preservation consultant Suzanna Barucco, the project attracted historic preservationist advocates from the beginning. In 2020, the Preservation Alliance publicly honored the result with a Grand Jury Award.
In 2018, encouraged by the Diocese, St. Stephen’s engaged with its closest and most regular neighbors through another radical move. It established a daytime hospitality program for the needy within the church itself, at the west end presided over by our biblical exemplar of charity, Dorcas, in the stained-glass window memorial to St. Stephen’s model of charity, Anna J. Magee. With a resident theater company in its Community House, where such outreach programs typically operate, St. Stephen’s had only the sacred space to offer.
Yet the underlying Christian imperative for inclusion in the church was powerful: Living the Gospel in a new way, merging the church’s traditional function as a sacred space, for peace, worship and meditation, with helping those in need. They are the most evident of those whom Christ famously called to him (Matthew 11: 28-30). At St. Stephen’s a Tiffany window of the risen welcoming Christ nearest the altar, facing the Furness Burial Cloister, invokes the passage.
If not unprecedented, the choice to help the needy within the church is exceptional.
Within St. Stephen’s open interior, with its famously sensitive acoustics, challenges were inevitable with both activities at the same time. People seeking quiet or seclusion either refused to enter or were disturbed by the noise and movements of individuals with physical or mental problems. Those in need often disrupted worship at the east end.
The Newest Frontier 2020-
With that three-year chapter at a close, beginning in 2020 St. Stephen’s entered a new one led by Fr. Michael Giansiracusa that was unexpectedly, profoundly reconfigured by COVID-19—probably permanently in many ways. Like most churches, it went online for worship, reflection, and connection.
How will that online world and community interface with the physical St. Stephen’s in the future? Technology, with its new forms of human experience and bonds, reshapes us all. The online world also dramatically affects the evolving sense of Place. How do we shape it?
Longtime questions, as mentioned in Part I, grow more probing with an online alter ego: Do we need a physical church?
For me the answer, resting on a hefty scholarly foundation, is that we humans thrive in the physical as part of life; intellectual and spiritual though we may be, we are also physical like our world, like a building. Even if Christ himself had no church, he took on human life within the physical world to engage with us.
A physical church, in turn, is incomplete without us. This “heaven on earth” is premised on interaction: between the divine and the human, between humans, and between each human’s various dimensions.
What about the sense of neighborhood for the physical church? Research has told me that St. Stephen’s was never a traditional neighborhood church.Dr. Price rightly called it a “downtown church,” a metropolitan church with congregants who may have worked nearby or in Philadelphia but often lived well beyond even at the outset: one early family of congregants buried in the churchyard lived in Burlington, NJ.
Over the last three years we’ve learned a lot. The church interior has proven its versatility and impact in many ways over time. Now without fixed pews that so defined the congregation, we are “un-channeled.” Not only can we move and sit anywhere, facing anywhere, we inhabit an eloquent world throughout.
Why not worship in the intimate Furness Burial Cloister, facing the chancel as previous worshippers did, joining the departed community below and presided over by its powerful rose window?
Yet the space flows in various directions, as we learned on Ash Wednesday last year when the offering of the ashes took place there.
Why not more music, performances, readings, talks of all sorts in the interior to immerse us all in the magic of its acoustics and embracing space?
I can see material goods for the needy around the Dorcas window at the northwest end (see view of west wall above). Her specialty was clothing for her community.
I can see basic public health and medical resources within, thanks to specialists from neighboring Jefferson Medical College and hospitals, whose physicians were congregants and vestry at St. Stephen’s from its birth.
I see potential in today’s partnered projects here as successors to the traditional parish service model that’s no longer tenable.
I see the church’s chosen location in the heart of the city, at a transportation nexus, with a mobile, diverse population but especially the needy, as ever ideal for many types of activities.
St. Stephen’s sense of Place lends itself to new purposes. Bishop Hobart’s formal commitment of the church at its birth to a community in need within the sanctuary, if only for worship, opened and opens options. The space’s sheer architectural mix dismisses, even defies orthodoxies. Why not Live the Gospel within the sanctuary rather than outside, as St. Stephen’s did in the past, like other churches? Its congregants and clergy visited the suffering and needy throughout the city or ran programs in its annexes, separating service and worship. They are both defining features of Christian practice; some even regard service as the ultimate form of worship, action as a form of prayer.
This Place is alive with varied experience and open to more. Now slumbering closed, bring it into Now to engage with community. Knowing its past and newest experiences, we know it partners well, compassionately, with us.
We have much to work with, and many possibilities, moving forward. Avanti.
—Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s historian and curator
