St Paul’s Cathedral: Exploring Religion in London

a very warm welcome to some Paul's Cathedral which has been here at the heart of the city of London for more than 300 years and its iconic dome built by Sir Christopher Wren has been a symbol both of the city and of the Christian faith ever since then and we're delighted that you can come and join us and find out more about what some paul's is all about simples is in the city of London which is a relatively small area and was the heart of the city until it grew and grew and grew particularly from 1800 onwards so people in the city regard it as their church although there are nowadays over still over 50 parish churches and guild churches in the city of London just one square mile but we are a church of significance for the city we are also of significance for the wider city and the nation because we are at the heart of the capital and we are the largest church in London so that's why it's used for big occasions we've had for example the Queen's birthday we've had significant funerals such as Lady Thatcher and Winston Churchill and that affects how we work its main purpose is as a place of Christian worship but we also are a visitor attraction because of our history and the visitors helped to fund the running of the cathedral so we can do that our main purpose though there is a tension between are we a place to visit or re a place to worship and pray in an experience will tell you that many people who come to visit will also use us as a place to pray because they themselves will have some kind of religious faith which they want to express and make use of in the building and in fact we have very few regular worshippers most of the people who come to worship and join us here are those who are here as fears of one sort or another in the cathedral we have four services every week down five on sundays two or three times a day we will have a service of the eucharist which people participate in when the high altar is the main place in the cathedral which focuses that although we will use different altars in different places around the cathedral but again you can sit and watch that and ask for prayer if you wish to do so and there are many services that we have where the clergy of a choir would be doing the speaking of singing the eastern end of the cathedral is the choir its choir spelt with a q and it's where the choir with the CH sings the singers so it's Christian worship but it is publicly open and we have a range of people some of you more fully participate some of whom will sit back and simply watch and either of those is fine in October 2011 there were the Occupy protests going on around the world and there was a march towards the stock exchange which was right next to the Cathedral which was not allowed to go into where the stock exchange was so they stopped outside some pools and the Cathedral was caught up in that movement and in that period and trying to be there for everyone whether it's people in the city whether it's the protesters whether it's just the ordinary people going about their business in London and it was quite hard to hold all those things together I came into the Cathedral after the campus had left and my role has been to help the cathedral find its own voice to be clear about its purpose and its mission so it's made the cathedral more focused and intentional about the things that we're trying to achieve in 2013 we did some work here at some polls on what we fall and the top line of our vision statement was that we want to enable people in all their diversity to encounter the transforming presence of God in Jesus Christ so our aim is to give everyone an experience of God whether they're here for half an hour as a tourist or whether they're a regular worshipper who come to church every week every day and that's what we see is our primary purpose so what we do in our worship what we do in our welcome is to try and get people not just some information but a sense of what this is here and what the building is saying about why we exist and what the world is about you

Channel: OpenLearn from The Open University

Views: 22,227

Keywords: The Open University, Church of England, Anglicanism, Cathedrals, Religion, London

Id: zIqbLTSgbzM

Length: 4min 33sec (273 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 03 2016