Following an earthquake in 2011, the Washington National Cathedral is slowly recovering, while continuing to function as a work of gothic architecture and American history.
The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul or the Washington National Cathedral is an Episcopal church. It is the 6th largest cathedral in the world and the 2nd largest in the US. Plans for the cathedral go as far back as the presidency of George Washington. He realized the new nation needed a national church for national celebrations and national memorials.
Nonetheless, construction on the cathedral did not begin until September 29, 1907, because of the constitutional policy of ‘separation of church and state’. This prevented government funds to be used in funding the church. Construction of the church began when the Episcopal church decided to take over and finally the cathedral was built in 1990.
A 5.8 magnitude earthquake rocked the historic church on August 23, 2011. The earthquake is the most notable natural disaster to befall the church. It caused $34 million in damages to the cathedral. The rehabilitation of the cathedral has been slow, but ongoing since 2011. According to Tony Dominico, a volunteer tour guide, it took $10 million for the cathedral to be usable again. It will take another $22 million to fully fix the cathedral. Funding for the repairs came from donations and funding campaigns.
Piers, arches, and buttresses are chiefly responsible for supporting the walls of the cathedral and ensuring that they did not collapse due to the weight of the stones or major stress applied to the walls, such as an earthquake. “Those three elements make this God,” said Tony Dominico. In Gothic architecture, the three supporting structures were meant to represent God’s strength.
Despite the “three elements” the church was made of limestone, which proved too soft to withstand all the force of the earthquake. Thus, not all the damage could be mitigated by design alone.
The cathedral is shaped like a cross with a long axis serving as the main hall where the many church benches for the devout are located. The short axis located at the far end of the church house St. Mary’s Chapel on one side and the Children’s Chapel on the other.
The church is separated by a large wooden screen. Behind the screen, “Everything sacred happened there and everything ordinary happened” in front of the screen, said Dominico.
The Canterbury Pulpit depicts the Magna Carta, a charter in which the British nobility told the “King you do not have absolute power, we have power.” From that, the US drew their declaration of independence: “We the people have all the power.”
In a way, the Magna Carta helped give way for not just a constitutional monarchy, but also the decreasing importance and power of religion in government.
The secular and religious identity of the Washington National Cathedral makes it unique in a country with church and state traditionally and fundamentally separated from each other.
Being a church for a secular state, the functions the cathedral held included sanctuary during bad weather, a sanctuary for immigrants or even function as a marketplace. The church did not just symbolize religion, it also represented America’s national identity. The church is not just a church. It is a national museum, a national celebration of the independence of the United States.
Three state funerals for U.S. presidents have taken place here. President Dwight D. Eisenhower is the first president to have a state funeral in the cathedral. This was followed by President Ronald Reagan in 2004 and President Gerald Ford in 2007. President Woodrow Wilson is the only president to be buried in the National Cathedral and within the boundaries of the District of Columbia.
Presidents have also used the cathedral as the venue for the prayer services on the day of their inauguration. This included the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump. Other notable memorial services included a service for American casualties of the Vietnam War in 1982 and a memorial service for victims of the 9/11 attacks.
The fusion of church and state in the cathedral does not represent cooperation or the control of one institution over the other. Rather, they represent the shared importance of religion and secular government in U.S. history.
