Alex Wright

Glide

November 17, 2003

Yesterday, we finally got around to attending a service at Glide Memorial Church. And I am hear to tell you, those people got spirit: foot-stomping, hand-waving, giving-it-up-for-Jesus spirit.

My cousin Bill Satterwhite lived in San Francisco back in the 1960s; and was one of the first-generation parishioners at Glide. He's always raved about Cecil Williams and his revolutionary brand of socially engaged Christianity.

In 1967, Cecil ordered the cross removed from the sanctuary, exhorting the congregation instead to celebrate life and living. "We must all be the cross," he explained. As the conservative members of the original congregation left, they were replaced by San Francisco's diverse communities of hippies, addicts, gays, the poor, and the marginalized. By 1968, the energetic, jazz-filled Celebrations were packed with people from all classes, hues, and lifestyles.

Which is pretty much what it's like today: walking inside, you find a panoply of junkies, freaks, down-and-out and homeless, sitting side-by-side with whitebread yuppies and beatific-looking New Age wymyn. At the front of the church you find not an altar but a pulsing rhythm section accompanying the famously hyped-up choir; a good eighty percent of the service is devoted to the music, followed by a simple, pithy sermon at the end. No liturgy, no communion, not even so much as the Lord's Prayer; just music, preaching and a whole lotta Holy Spirit. When the service concludes with everyone holding hands and singing "We Shall Overcome" - as they've been doing every Sunday since the mid-1960s - it feels not at all nostalgic, but genuine, heartfelt and hopeful.

Visit Glide Memorial

For a taste of the Glide Ensemble, visit their online store (or watch tonight's edition of Monday Night Football, where they'll be singing the National Anthem).

File under: Personal

_____________________
« Forgotten Forefather | Semantic heads »