In September the Washington National Cathedral celebrates its 100th anniversary. As part of our upcoming documentary WASHINGTON NATIONAL CATHEDRAL: New Century, New Calling, we sat down and talked to Dean Samuel Lloyd about what that milestone means and what he sees for the National Cathedral’s future.

Q. The Cathedral was under construction for 83 years. How did people find the energy to keep going?

A. I think people really believed they were building something far bigger than themselves that would far outlast who they were, that would have an impact on people for eons to come. There was a wonderful vision of nobility and generosity and self-sacrifice in staying with this, and believing so deeply that God's going to use this place for untold things going out into the future.

Q. Why build a cathedral in this day and age?

A. What a Cathedral does is it invites you to sense that you are part of a cosmic harmony. The cathedral symbolizes God's gracious, harmonious shaping of the universe. It has nooks and crannies and corners and chapels and staircases that are, in many ways, bewildering, as the world is. But you can make your way in. And it’s a trustworthy place that will lead you closer to God. It's a place that invites the kind of surrender to a beautiful spaciousness where you can feel safe and can discover more who you are and more who God is.

Q. What do you see for the Cathedral’s future?

A. “Come to him who is the living stone and become living stones yourself, to build up a spiritual house.” What captures our imagination in that is this notion that it has been stone after stone that got this cathedral built - over those vast 83 years - one piece of Indiana limestone after another. The opportunity in this moment is to take what has been built and use it to make even more, and different, and richer, and in many ways surprisingly new, living stones - inviting human beings to live into the vision that first captivated people to build a building, but now to become embodiments of it themselves. Can we be that bold ourselves, and trust God that much, that the resources will be there to use this place as imaginatively as those who built the place to begin with?  There’s a strong sense that we are on the cusp of something fresh and new. Because of what went before and what our forebears did, we have the freedom to focus on using this glorious space to do God's work in the world. So our life is shifting from a focus on a building, turning to how we can make of those who come here living stones, doing God’s healing work in a very complex world these days.

Q. How has America changed in the 100 years since the Cathedral construction began?

A. The America of 1907 was still a very young country. What a leap from that bygone sense of a society rooted in villages and small towns, and a rural, agricultural society - although the Industrial Revolution was asserting itself – to today. The country then was fairly Protestant. They were living fairly much a common story. That has changed over the ensuing 100 years. Changes were happening far before 9/11, but 9/11 told us that we are living in a deeply diverse world of very different religions, very different worldviews, and very different ways of engaging one another. Yet we’re deeply interconnected because of what's happening with communication and globalization. So it's in the midst of a world that is both more divided than ever before and more connected than ever before that this cathedral is called to serve.

Q. After several years of faith-based politics, what risk does the Cathedral run of having its message fall on deaf ears?

A. It’s very clear that our calling is to be Christian and Episcopal, but also to live our Christian faith in a way we believe our Lord would want us to live - which is generously and with open arms and hearts, welcoming conversations, welcoming occasions for common worship, welcoming ways for us to honor the dignity, and the seriousness, and the faithfulness of very different religious traditions from our own.

Q. You are calling for a new emphasis within the Christian Community.
I was preparing to leave Boston to come here, I was hearing more and more from the members of my congregation that they were embarrassed to tell their colleagues at work that they go to church because church had come to mean anti-intellectual, and dismissive of other faiths, and judgmental and coming with a whole political agenda associated with it. So “generous-spirited Christianity” is our phrase for this moment in history. It may not be necessary at some other moment, but we think it is now, to say that what we want to offer in a public conversation. It is a way of being classically Christian, that is interfaith-related, compassionate, able to live with ambiguity, wanting to engage in conversation with science, with what's going on in the cultural areas, and in all those ways that take seriously that we are planted in this place and this time and that God is at work in a whole array of ways. This is a kind of Christianity that may be different from what you're catching on television at 11 o'clock at night. It’s a kind of Christianity that wants you to bring your entire mind, and all of your questions and all of your hunger for God together, and experience that in this Cathedral and in other churches around the country.