Trinité magazine - Spring 2020

he clutched the lectern and leaned out to preach
on a familiar theme: The love of power is nothing
compared with the power of love. He exuded that
message, turning to beam in all directions, not just
all around the nave but behind him too, toward the
choir. Then down from the pulpit, still preaching as
he came into the aisle – offering sufficient stagecraft
to captivate. And to seem brief. Not so much, it turns
out. He preached for 29-plus minutes, and I thought
it was significant and fulfilling. He was brilliant and
funny, too, in calling for a silent offertory: no clanking
coins, please. Only folding money.
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“That was terrific,” Mary Haddad, our former canon,
said to me afterwards, “but if I had to listen to a halfhour
sermon every Sunday I’d go stark raving mad.” (She
limited her own sermons, which delighted and moved
many of us, to 12 minutes of carefully knitted arguments,
often starting with a self-deprecating anecdote.)
Bishop Curry also delivered a powerful sermon
for the marriage of Prince Harry and Meghan
Markle, memorable for a number of reasons, some of
which shocked but somehow didn’t surprise. To the
ceremonial pomp Bishop Curry injected his own style,
and Diana Evans, an English novelist and journalist,
described it aptly in The Guardian: “He preached in
the full-throated, uninhibited, theatrical and emotive
style of the traditional African-American church.”
Camilla Parker-Bowles could hide her amusement
under her giant hat, though not the paroxysm that goes
with the giggles. There were no big hats to cover other
reactions – a nearly uniform “not my cuppa” – as the
cameras caught the rolled eyes and raised eyebrows on
High Church faces. A new era at Buckingham Palace
was signaled in those moments, and William Blake’s
“green and pleasant land” seemed suddenly like
little England.
PRESIDING BISHOP MICHAEL CURRY, PREACHING AT THE CATHEDRAL
The Pew Research study can be found at:
https://www.pewforum.org/2019/12/16/the-digital-pulpita-nationwide-analysis-of-online-sermons/
Walter Wells is senior editor of Trinité magazine and a
former member of the Cathedral Vestry.