(See front cover)
George Washington, a good but not essentially religious man, considered the Church a desirable adjunct to the State. He planned for Washington "a church for national purposes." Not in his lifetime, nor in the succeeding century, was anything done about founding one. There existed in Washington no official church for state weddings or funerals or solemn thanksgiving or prayer in time of stress. The religion of the U. S. President was, and is, of no concern to the State: he could worship, get married, be buried with his own kind. But for the nation itself there ought to be a church, thought George Washington and many men after him, where heroes should be entombed and citizens make pilgrimage. It assuredly must be a great cathedral.
Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Quakers are not cathedral-builders. Roman Catholics are; but there has been no Catholic President, and many a politician who hates & fears the Pope of Rome is determined there shall be none. The Protestant Episcopal Church builds cathedrals, has a personable and dignified clergy, a body of communicants who are wealthy and social. It was an Episcopal foundation which in 1893 got a charter from Congress to build a great Cathedral of SS. Peter & Paul on Mount Saint Alban, highest spot (400 ft.) in Washington. It was this Cathedral, they decided, which should fulfill George Washington's plan, become the U. S. Westminster Abbey. This week eminent Episcopalians and national officials were to gather to open for public worship the first sizable unit on Mount Saint Alban.
Ascension Day, May 5, was long ago chosen as the day Church & State would meet for the first time in the Cathedral choir and sanctuary. There would be Holy Communion, celebrated by the Cathedral's Dean George Carl Fitch Bratenahl, and a sermon, broadcast to the U. S. by stocky Rt. Rev. James Edward Freeman, Bishop of Washington. There would be a procession in which would march representatives of other sects and Episcopal Bishops Darst of East Carolina, Abbott of Lexington, Ky., Jett of Southwestern Virginia, Cook of Delaware, Rhinelander (retired) of Pennsylvania. Most Rev. James De Wolf Perry, Presiding Bishop of the Church, was to send as his representative Bishop Hugh Latimer Burleson of South Dakota. New York's small Bishop Manning agreed to come. An honorary canon of Washington Cathedral, he would preach later in the day. Eyeing the light, airy choir, Bishop Manning might reflect that his own Cathedral of St. John the Divine is bigger but darker. He might also recall a remark Bishop Freeman made in Manhattan some years ago, when both Cathedrals were campaigning for money: "If Washington is not more powerful than New York, then the Capitol ought to be transferred to New York."
Rivalry between St. John the Divine and SS. Peter & Paul, would be of little import to most of the guests on Ascension Day. One might seek to become a "National Shrine," the other a "House of Worship for All People." But in the eyes of the national Episcopal Church they were the same as any of the other diocesan cathedrals in the land.