A House of Prayer for All
The Very Rev. Jep Streit '73 provides lively, creative leadership to his diverse Boston congregation.
by Sherri Kimmel
December 30, 2008
Jep Streit '73The Muslims’ colorful, patterned rugs are stored in a downstairs cupboard, ready to be rolled out each Friday afternoon, when 350 of the faithful arrive to kneel in prayer, facing east, on the hardwood floor of a downstairs chapel the size of a small basketball court.
On Sundays the homeless hold morning worship outside the 190-year-old Greek Revival-style building, while a worship service in the main-floor sanctuary is playing, instead of “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” John Coltrane’s arrangement of “My Favorite Things.” In the afternoon, the Chinese gather for a service conducted in Mandarin.
While the lofty building that houses the Cathedral Church of St. Paul on Tremont Street, across from Boston Common, is typically ecclesiastical in its architecture, what lies beneath this stately surface belies the predictable. The bushy-eyebrowed dean of the cathedral wears the de rigueur clerical collar, but his parish leadership is clearly out of the box.
The Very Rev. John P. “Jep” Streit Jr. ’73 has watched his inner-city congregation grow increasingly multicultural and diverse in interest during the 13 years of his tenure. It’s a movement he embraces with an eye toward social justice and progressive values.
“Jep is a wonderful example of a spirituality in action that doesn’t try to escape the social, political and economic questions,” says Harry Booth, Thomas Bowman professor emeritus of religion, of the former student with whom he remains close. “He won’t let people take refuge in only their personal questions; he won’t let them get away with being private Christians.”
It was in Booth’s Religion 101 class, which Streit took as an elective, that he first became intrigued by religious questions. Reading the assigned books, Dynamics of Faith by Paul Tillich, Black Theology of Liberation by James Cone, The Letters and Papers from Prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christ and Culture by Richard Niebuhr, as well as Albert Camus’ The Plague and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, showed him that “religion isn’t a narrow, closed system—it’s about engaging the world,” Streit recalls. “It was the beginning of my vocation, though I couldn’t have imagined it at the time.”
Unstructured student gatherings at Booth’s house near campus introduced Streit to a different approach to religion than he had experienced growing up in the Episcopal church. “It was open in the widest sense of religion—people would come and talk about the war, what was going on at Dickinson. I saw that you could be seriously thoughtful and engaging and take religion seriously, too.”
Son of John P. Streit Sr., a Korean and Vietnam War pilot, and grandson of Paul H. Streit, the major general who commanded Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Jep had come to Dickinson on an Army ROTC scholarship intending to be a marine biologist. When he realized his heart wasn’t in a military career, his grand- father stepped up to cover the tuition deficit that loomed when Jep abandoned ROTC.
Streit switched majors from geology to religion, still not intending to be a minister. “Then Harry Booth encouraged me to apply to the Rockefeller Foundation —go to seminary and try it out for a year. I worked a year at a parish and decided I wanted to be an Episcopal priest.”
After seminary, ordination and a first job in a parish, Streit was a chaplain at Boston University for 11 years, grappling with the issues of the day, including apartheid and gay and lesbian relations. “This is what religion is about—what is going on in the world,” he says. “How can I be present to that and help others to be present to that?”
As pastor to 80 to 100 people, a third of whom are people of color—African, African-American, Caribbean—from the poor neighborhoods of Boston, he finds himself “a white, middle-class person in the midst of people who are so different. Their graciousness is incredible. What they know and how they have endured is astonishing,” he says, sitting in his office chair, a black-and-white photo of baseball legend Satchel Paige framed on the yellow wall behind him.
Seeing the large, well-appointed cathedral and hearing of its extensive programming, one wonders how a small congregation of modest means supports all of this. It doesn’t. Streit explains that, a century ago, two wealthy Congregationalist women gave $1 million to build a cathedral. Episcopal Bishop William Lawrence suggested that, instead, the Massachusetts diocese designate the existing parish of St. Paul as a cathedral and use the $1 million as an endowment to support the cathedral. It maintains Streit’s ministry today.
While the Massachusetts diocese is known to be liberal, not all of Streit’s fellow priests applaud his activities, particularly his church’s hosting of the Friday Muslim prayer sessions. When one priest asked if it was really true that Streit invited Muslims in to pray, he responded, “Yeah, that’s right. Been doing it since 2000.”
Streit countered his critic by quoting Isaiah 56:7.
“… For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.” The priest agreed that Streit was right.
Besides serving as a house of worship, St. Paul has, for 25 years, provided meals to the homeless and, since 1929, hosted the longest-running religious radio show, now a half-hour taped distillation of the Sunday morning service.
“I open the broadcast, and I always read a nonscriptural reading—a poem, paragraph or two from an essay or novel, anything I like that either catches my attention or somehow fits in with what’s happening in that service or in the world that day,” Streit says. “We also have music, taped from our choir on Sunday.”
About that choir. They sing traditional English hymns, but services also often feature Uruguayan or Caribbean music and jazz, courtesy of a musical director who was a musician with the Blue Man Group.
“There are four other Episcopal churches in a quarter mile,” notes Streit. “I thought, ‘What isn’t God doing? I don’t want to open the fifth steakhouse when four other steakhouses are in the neighborhood.’ They do Bach, we do Coltrane.”
Streit gives the 10 a.m. sermon twice a month, while the first ordained black female Anglican bishop, Barbara Harris, and other ministers on staff fill out the other Sunday preaching slots. Another minister holds the outdoors homeless service simultaneously, and a Chinese Episcopal priest conducts the Mandarin service at 12:30 p.m.
Seeing the church as “a place of engagement and education for current events,” Streit has mounted programs exploring the civil-rights movement, featuring activists of the time, such as Howard Zinn; Palestinian relations, which drew 600 guests; and, this winter, black preaching. He’s also turned the downstairs chapel where the Muslims congregate over to a theatre troupe to perform Shakespeare “in an intimate setting.”
And, on Thursdays, St. Paul now is home to an emerging church service “that connects back with ancient practices like meditation,” Streit says. “It’s postmodern with a couple of touch points with the Episcopal church. They have their own music, and a member of that community [of 30 to 40 young members] shares thoughts about the lesson.
“Young people today are less automatic in their loyalty to a denomination,” he explains. “People are looking for a spirituality that works for them and that will matter to them.”
Streit’s aim as cathedral dean is to do “everything I can dream up.” That has included inviting horses into the marble-floored sanctuary for the October Blessing of the Animals. When a horse slipped and fell, Streit panicked.
“I thought, because of my own stupid sense of drama I have sacrificed this wonderful creature.” The Muslim rugs came in handy, providing traction for the horse to get his hooves back under him. Streit still conducts his homage to St. Francis but keeps the horses outside.
For beast, man, woman and child, Streit sees the church as “a place to connect, replenish, to make you less frantic. If you come, let it be not just business as usual but something that nurtures you and challenges you.”