The Tower...and The Chair

You can see a doorway. It leads to the bell tower. As we said at the beginning of the tour, the tower once had a steeple, but there is none now… Only the tower remains.

The bell was made for the third church. It was wired to the local fire department so it could be rung to warn of fires in the area! It also was rung when the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, beginning the Civil War.

The church’s bell is used regularly to this day: it sounds on the hour throughout the day, at the beginning of each Sunday and Weekday Mass, and at weddings and funerals. It also sounds the Angelus daily at noon, commemorating the visitation of the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary.

Look at the window above the door. It commemorates Saint Julian of Norwich. This is the church’s newest window. It was a gift to the Cathedral on the 100th anniversary of the building in 1986, given by the women of the diocese.

Through those doors there is an additional entrance to the church from the corner of Saint Charles and Sixth Street (which is not used today). That space is only used at weddings, as a space for final preparations before the marriage ceremony. The tower also houses two memorial windows. Go through the doors and look right. Two windows memorialize Lieutenant John Aiken, who died in World War II at the battle of Guadalcanal.

Next we’ll move to the chapel. Go back into the cathedral and walk towards the altar. It'll take you a bit of time to get up there. Once you reach the front pew, turn left  and move over to the doors directly ahead, which lead into the chapel. Don’t go through the doors yet, though. There's one more very important thing to see before you leave the Cathedral itself and move into the chapel.

Look at the large wooden chair, just at the left side of the doorway. This is a second Cathedra, or bishop's chair. This chair is the clearest representation of the conflict between the good done in the past…and the terrible injustices. This chair was first used by Bishop Polk after being crafted by enslaved people on his plantation. There was some internal discussion of whether the chair should even stay in the Cathedral or be donated to a museum. Discussion with Bishop Michael Curry, the first African-American Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States ensued, prior to a meeting of the Union of Black Episcopalians here in August of 2016. It was decided that a special service of racial reconciliation would be led by Bishop Curry during that meeting.

Bishop Curry sat in that cathedra, as the leader of the Episcopal Church in the United States. When he, as a black man, sat in a chair crafted by enslaved people, he reclaimed it for those who made it. Skilled but enslaved artisans were forced to build it for Bishop Polk…did they ever think that a black man would lead the US church and sit in the chair they made?

Bishop Curry describes this event from his perspective in his book, Love Is The Way: Quote: “It was a moment of heightened awareness for everybody – awareness of the horror of our history and of the hope that we don’t have to be what we were…It was a moment of recommitment to the hard work of redemption and reconciliation, which starts with honesty about ourselves and our complicity with the past.”