General Assembly

Very Reverend Stephen Platten

RESPONDING TO THE GIVE AND TAKE OF TOURISM

'All this new building is ridiculous - who is going to use it, and what is it all for?' So asked a visitor of a young verger in Southwark Cathedral, some eighteen months ago. The verger did his best to explain that these new buildings would provide lavatories, a restaurant and other facilities for tourists and other visitors. By now, however, this irascible gentleman had wound himself up several ratchets higher. 'It's the same everywhere,' he continued, raising his voice. 'Look at Norwich - that new dean there has an equally lunatic scheme.' Tentatively but firmly the verger replied: 'I don't think it was the new dean who started it.' 'Nonsense!' ranted the man, building himself up for peroration. 'I know Norfolk - I was even High Sheriff five years ago - it's all this dean's over-grandiose plan.' The verger responded, 'No. I'm sure it predates the present dean - the idea has been around for nearly thirty years - the last dean set the present initiative going.' 'Rubbish!' the man retorted, 'It's this new chap - anyway, young man, you seem to know a lot about Norwich - how come?' 'Well,' replied the verger, 'the dean is my father.'

Was he right? Is the development of cathedrals a waste of money? Does anyone visit cathedrals anyway? The answer is that more people visit English cathedrals now than at any time since they were built. Norwich Cathedral attracts between 500,000 and 600,000 visitors each year. It is the biggest single 'tourist attraction' in the county. But these remarkable buildings by their very existence raise many questions, requiring us to respond carefully.

To begin with they are very expensive in terms of upkeep. In my six years here we have spent more than £5,000,000 on conservation. Only £2 million of that has come from government grants. The Friends of Norwich Cathedral provide most of the rest. Visitors voluntarily contribute £150,000 per year, that is about 30p/ 20 per person. I have called this brief paper 'Responding to the give and take of tourism.' You can already begin to feel something of what I mean.

My title fits well into the context of Christian thought, for the notion of gift lies at the heart of the concept of grace. For grace is about the gift or givenness of all creation. Some years ago a Christian theologian put it well in relation to the teaching of Jesus. The essence of Jesus' teaching he described thus:

'That life is grace to us, our own lives and the lives of all those we encounter, that all things great and small are gift, the treasure we can at any moment discover, the banquet to which all are equally invited. It is also to realise that the true value of someone or something and to discover treasure, are one and the same imperative act. Finally, that the true value of all that exists is discovered in the unique way in which one values a gift; that we should therefore not crush by grasping, or tear by trying to pull away.'

Give and take is thus a key theme for the Christian church, gift is a leitmotif. How shall I interpret give and take then in reflecting on the visitors who come to our cathedrals? In addressing the word take perhaps the key issue is why do visitors come? Putting it more crudely, what are they expecting to take away, and as cathedrals how do we respond to that? In speaking of giving, the issue is perhaps what do visitors bring with them and how should we respond to that? Norwich, along with seven other English cathedrals, started life as a Benedictine monastery. One of the most famous aphorisms from Benedict's rule sets the agenda for all who would welcome tourists and pilgrims. At the beginning of Chapter 53, Benedict notes in his rule: 'All who arrive as guests are to be welcomed as Christ, for he is going to say, "I was a stranger and you welcomed me."' An attitude of gift and grace again lies at the heart. So visitors to our cathedrals are hardly a new phenomenon and deans and chapters have seen the need to respond in an appropriate way. In the early twentieth century, one dean wrote:

'Motor busses (sic) and charabancs are beginning to make even large rural dioceses and comparatively small and remote cathedrals accessible. Outings are popular; the cathedral is missing a gorgeous opportunity it if does not make the pilgrimage to itself the most delightful outing of all. It will need to have its Refectory and its kitchen (equipped for the rapid brewing of plenty of tea). It will be very unbusinesslike if it does not find the transaction inevitably profitable.'

That was written by Frank Bennett, Dean of Chester in 1925. Bennett pioneered the opening up of English cathedrals and the abolition of an entrance fee; throughout the late nineteenth century and up until 1920, virtually all cathedrals had charged for entry and some had charged a fairly stiff fee. Earlier on in the same book, Bennett writes:

'Once a cathedral is open and free - there is no need to set regulating limits to anyone's energies. The vergers must still have scope to magnify their office. The dreadful thing is the vergered tour that emits a little crowd through the choir gates grinning all over their faces, because of some paltry joke or ridiculous anecdote.'

Bennett's prose feels rather dated now, although the comment on guided tours - albeit not by vergers - may still ring true. What Bennett did achieve was to open up cathedrals for all. And, although he had his full share of Christian missionary zeal, he did not treat visitors and tourists as fodder for the Christian machine. Instead everyone was to be welcomed and the cathedral and its staff were to offer themselves and respond to the needs of every soul who arrived, for people come to churches and cathedrals for widely varying reasons. How do we follow Dean Bennett's counsel today? This involves practical questions in relation to our welcome of tourists and visitors. How precisely do we try to communicate something in Norwich Cathedral of the grace with which I began? We try to offer grace via people and grace via the building itself. First of all, grace via people. I hardly need tell you how tricky this concept is. People come into our churches for so many different reasons and with such different needs and desires in their minds and hearts.

There are four groups of welcomers with whom they might engage on entering the cathedral in Norwich. First of all there is a welcome team and, not far away, a desk manned by other members of that team.

Then there are the guides. They have been trained and sometimes have considerable historical background. We are attempting to make the training more sophisticated and help the guides to see how different are the needs of the people who enter the building. The third group, the chaplains, are priests from the Diocese of Norwich, both retired and serving, who offer themselves for a morning or an afternoon during the main tourist season.

Finally, in terms of people, there is worship. One of our unwritten rules in the Cathedral is that all worship should not only be open to all, but seen to be open to all. Where possible now mid-morning services are celebrated in the body of the cathedral.

So, then, to grace via the building. We have spent some time in recent years making sure that both the great nave font and the nave altar are well positioned such that they act as focuses to teach people something of what the Christian story is about and how the building can help tell that story.

Norwich Cathedral was a Benedictine foundation and every night during Evensong a short extract from the Rule of St Benedict is read. As I mentioned before, the best known sentence in the Rule says: 'Greet every visitor as if they were Christ.'

In Norwich we have a restaurant which in the past three years has been transformed by a marvellous team of manager and assistant manager who offer a real sense of welcome. In our current development, beginning this July, we shall increase the size of that restaurant by two and a half times. Then there is the shop. Again, we have recently begun with a new manager. He has clearly focused what he believes to be the role of a cathedral shop in relation to those who come. Then there is an exhibition about the Cathedral. It is lamentable, simply because it is too small and in the wrong place. What it says is quite good but we need something far better. Again this will be in Phase II of our present development.

We do work with local coach firms, and indeed the only tours for which anyone is charged are those which have been organised on a professional basis. Here we need to work harder, but we have striven recently to establish better links with the wider community. Ultimately, however, all these practical responses push us back to the building itself and why we are engaging in 'cultural tension' anyway. Who actually comes to visit and why?

Let me for the sake of simplicity and brevity assume just four groups of visitors for the moment; the truth is far more complex but this is a start. My four groups are tourists, pilgrims, those seeking solace and those in trouble.

One of my favourite explanations of the contemporary tourism phenomenon which has overtaken our world is in David Lodge's novel Paradise News; some of you will have read it. Let me give you a flavour: '"You're not a believer?" asked Sheldrake. "No," the other replied. "Ideal," said Sheldrake. "I'm interested in religion myself, obliquely,' he continued. "The thesis of my book is that sightseeing is a substitute for religious ritual. The sightseeing tour as secular pilgrimage. Accumulation of grace by visiting the shrines of high culture. Souvenirs as relics. Guidebooks as devotional aids ... I always hated holidays, even as a kid. Such a waste of time, sitting on a beach, making sandpies ... Later my fiancée insisted on dragging me off to Europe to see the sights. Bored the pants off me ... then suddenly it struck me: tourism is the new world religion. Catholics, Protestants, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists - the one thing they all have in common is the importance of seeing the Parthenon ... or the Sistine Chapel or the Eiffel Tower ... But it's never as they believe it will be - the objects of tourism and dream holidays never are - whoever, for example, found a deserted beach like this one in the brochure? That's what my next book is going to be about - tourism and the myth of paradise."'

Here then is a subtle blend of satire and seriousness. Tourism has overtaken us all and not only religious buildings. Of course, tourism is not pilgrimage transformed plain and simple, although some of the human instincts which took people on pilgrimage in mediaeval times may, at a subliminal level, be tangled up with the energy which fuels our vast contemporary tourist industry. That industry includes manic elements; obsessive photography, scouring of souvenir shops, doing a country (or even Western Europe) in the inside of a week. What is certainly true is that in mediaeval times holidays as we know them did not exist and so pilgrimage was a precursor of tourism amongst other things.

But how about today? Cathedral clergy often put every visitor into the all-embracing sub-set of pilgrims. Seen uncritically that will not do. If by pilgrims, clergy are assuming an overt religious motive, then that certainly is not the case. Nevertheless, tourists are, on occasion, turned into pilgrims. Back to Dean Bennett again. He writes: 'We need to get rid of the idea that the primary business of a cathedral staff is to act as policemen and showmen. The primary business is to help those who come, to feel and to profit by the religious impress of the place.'

From time to time hints of such a transformation come to the surface. But still there will be the acknowledged unbeliever. Even he or she may still see these ancient buildings to hold meaning in one sense or another. Philip Larkin wrote in his poem, 'Churchgoing':

• '... someone will for ever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious, And gravitating with it to this ground, Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in, If only that so many dead lie around.'

Then there are those who see themselves as true pilgrims who seek out these places as people did of old. They come to the shrine of Cuthbert in Durham or Thomas Becket in Canterbury; they come to Norwich because it is the city of Julian, the anchoress; they come because churches somehow focus a sense of holiness - the night-stair at Hexham Abbey or the mediaeval stained glass at Fairford.

To these people we have a more specific responsibility. This was captured sharply in the London Times in an article by Janet Martin Soskice. She began: 'Looking is different from seeing'. She mentions gardeners who see more than just greenery and blooms. They see textures, dapplings, shootings. Applying this image to churches she argues that often we do not help our pilgrims to 'see' but instead encourage them only to 'look'. She remarks on a pair of stunning frescoes in Verona. 'What did I find,' she asks, 'to help me understand these frescoes?' - 'Leaflets,' she notes, '[containing] the same indigestible art history as ever.' Soskice, without dismissing the need for this, asks for something more.

To feed the pilgrim, the iconography must speak to our generation, so she concludes:

• '... despite neglect and ignorance, gently shining forth for those who look is the life of the building, a life given to it by masons and painters and by those who have prayed in it over hundreds of years, a living breath that whispers in stone, or paint or light - "Glory, Glory." We must try to see that.'

Our task then is to transform looking into seeing and especially for pilgrims.

Finally there are those who seek for solace or who are in trouble. They come uncertain of what they really came to find - uncertain, as it were, of what they might take away.

One day I was stopped in Norwich Cathedral and asked to bless a crucifix that a couple had just bought in the shop. This is relatively commonplace, and I accompanied them to a quiet chapel and said a prayer, blessing the cross. The wife burst into tears and the husband soon followed. Out tumbled a tragic story of how their daughter had been killed in a road accident. It was a year to the day that it had happened. Countless similar tales could be told and they stand alongside the experience of the more troubled souls - wayfarers and others - who find solace in our cathedrals and great churches.

If this, then is what we have to give to our visitors, what do we hope they may take from us, and indeed what is it that they themselves give? The answer is, of course, endless and much of it will be unknown to us. Let me end with a vignette from a seeker who has given much to me in my understanding of all this - Philip Toynbee, a distinguished journalist, visiting Peterborough Cathedral on his journey towards belief:

'There is something in every cathedral to take the breath away, and at Peterborough this comes as soon as you set your eyes on the amazing west front with its three huge and equal portals. A notice on the porch door told us that Evensong had already begun and would we please sit down until it was over. If we wished to join the service we could take our seats in the choir ... we compromised by sitting down on the foremost nave pew but one. Choir, congregation and priests seemed to be islanded there.

The service came to an end ... and we got up from our places to make our circumambulation of the cathedral, guide book in hand. By now this episode has compelled my imagination in many ways ….. the dominant impression which remains is of a gracious, holy but esoteric ceremony being performed in the choir at Peterborough, massively isolated from the modern city outside .…. if we had arrived five minutes earlier we would have certainly accepted the invitation to take two of those vacant places in the choir stalls. For certainly we both belonged - wholly in spirit and largely in faith - with what was being celebrated in Peterborough Cathedral on that Saturday afternoon at the tail end of the football season.'