Filthy Lucre

 

I love this picture that Ann took as we walked up Wall Street towards Broadway and Trinity Church. Dwarfed by the incarnations of western capitalism – the Stock Exchange, banks, finance houses – the church glimmers assertively. Trinity Church used to be the largest building in New York, the centre of Christianity in the city, and has survived all the subsequent development and destruction, apparently a bastion of morality vs Mammon. Or so it would seem. Except for the following recent newspaper headline: Trinity Church Rector Gets Pay Cut…. Well, we know that the Church struggles and many have closed. But the newspaper then went on to explain that the pay cut was from $352k a year to a mere $339k. Not only that but the Reverend James Cooper’s total pay package was $1.2 million once his church-owned Soho town house, (valued at $8.2 million), and a $118,675 housing allowance for his Florida condo were taken into account.  

It seems that the church reflects its’ environment. It has assets of $2bn, and an income of nearly $200m a year. It owns large chunks of the land on which those Wall St. banks and finance houses sit. It is a property developer. It is Wall Street incarnate. Rather late in the day perhaps, the parishioners have noticed this curious ambiguity and many turned on the incumbent Rector claiming that he seemed more intent on finance and capital than his flock, philanthropy or the problems of the world. He has now moved back to his condo in Florida.