New York sojourn

I was privileged to spend the weekend of 25-27 January in New York City. This was in response to an invitation I received at the beginning of the month to come and speak to an assembled evening church service on the subject of citizenship, based, of course, on my new book. On friday the 25th I flew from Toronto's Pearson Airport to LaGuardia Airport in New York's borough of Queens. I was picked up by Jay Harvey, one of my principal hosts for the occasion. I stayed at the Hilton Doubletree Hotel in midtown Manhattan, right across from Radio City Music Hall and within walking distance of St. Patrick's Cathedral and Rockefeller Center. This was the second time I had been to New York, as our family had taken a holiday there ten years ago.

Because my stay was so brief I did not see the sights frequented by tourists, but spending time with a very few of the city's residents was an enjoyable experience. On sunday morning I worshipped with the saints at Central Presbyterian Church, an historic congregation whose building was funded by John D. Rockefeller. Jr. Its pastor is Jason Harris, who preached an inspiring sermon on Ecclesiastes: The Enigma of Life Under the Sun, based on Ecclesiastes 2:12-17. The Lord's Supper was celebrated, as it is every week. The liturgy included the Collect for Purity and the Prayer of Humble Access, both from Thomas Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer. At the end of the service, the entire congregation sang the Lord's Prayer. In all, a most uplifting service. The church has two well-attended services at 10 and 11:30 am.

The church's history is a long one, with the congregation beginning in 1821 and worshipping at different locations in that time. A century ago the current building housed Park Avenue Baptist Church, whose pastor was the famous liberal Protestant preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969), best known to church-goers today as the author of the hymn, God of Grace and God of Glory. Two years before he became pastor of this church in 1924, he had preached a controversial sermon, "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" In that era a fundamentalist was not an extremist, as the term implies today, but simply a Christian who believed in the fundamentals of the Christian faith. When Park Avenue Baptist became too large for its building, Rockefeller built the interdenominational Riverside Church for Fosdick's growing congregation. Central moved into the building in 1929. It was a gradually fading congregation until 2006, but now it is a thriving congregation with biblical preaching in a refurbished building and now affiliated with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

That evening I spoke at a neighbouring church plant, City on a Hill NYC, which meets in rented studio facilities. The subject was citizenship, and the scripture lesson was Philippians 3:17-21. My talk can be heard immediately below:

After I had spoken and responded to questions, I realized that I had not returned to the passage from the first chapter of Genesis I read at the beginning. (You can back the video up to hear it read.) Here's the connection: as human beings created in God's image, we are granted a delegated authority over the rest of his creation (see also Psalm 8). This authority is dispersed into a variety of offices relevant to the multiple communities of which we are part in a pluriform society. One of these is citizenship in a political community. Our citizenship does not exhaust who we are as God's image, but it is an important avenue of service to God and to neighbour. Therefore our faith has everything to do with how we discharge the responsibilities that come with citizenship.

I enjoyed my time with these citizens of the largest city in the United States. I hope there will be an occasion for me to return at some point.