Upfront, All Souls seems like a wonderful church: great music, check; inspiring sermons, check; progressive doctrine, check; hip congregation, check. Everything you would want in a church, given you are a liberally spiritual "soul" looking for a non-judgmental house of worship that transcends the repressive Catholic or Bible-beating Baptist Church (or other banal sanctuary) that you are coming from. Regrettably, beneath the thin skin of this utopian tabernacle is a lot of undesirable baggage and hardball politics, led by the senior pastor, whose (quite unsurprisingly) family has very close connections to the Cuomos, the iconic corrupt politicos of New York.
The senior pastor, putting aside his eloquent sermons and friendly pose he displays on Sunday morning, has consistently strong-armed his social agenda in this church since arriving. He has also ensured an extreme-diversity screening process for any minister or worship associate (my friend who is a straight white male was told not to apply because he didn't fit their diversity strategy). So, this church makes the social-engineering policies of the DNC look like child's play.
Now let's talk about the finances of the church- the church leadership, again led by the senior pastor, recently embarked on a renovation of the building to fix and upgrade what they said was a necessary process of repair and restoration. Seems innocent enough, until after they relentlessly pressured congregants into giving about $14 million for the project. Well, basic needed changes like providing an adequate HVAC system for the main sanctuary were never accomplished. Just as spiteful, they didn't even repair/replace windows that leaked like a sieve. If you find this hard to believe, come on over to the church some cold Sunday morning and park yourself next to one of those ancient windows and see for your (frozen)self; better yet, come to a service on a hot summer's day and get a free sauna in the sanctuary while you listen to a "guest speaker" (that's because the senior pastor doesn't work summers, or every 7th year due to year-long sabbaticals written into his contract)- you'll love the sermon as sweat drips off your nose. Yeah, no A/C during the summer- $14 mil. wasn't enough to install/fix that. Oh, and BTW, if you're thinking about joining the church, be prepared to sign a statement indicating how much you WILL give on a weekly basis to the church, because paying staff who work 8 months out of the year on a full time salary isn't cheap.
Maybe you're willing to overlook all this and attend just for the sermons, music, and social benefits of belonging to a church you like. Well, consider this point- do you want to listen to a choir where many of the singers are paid to show up and participate in the music?; are you willing to overlook the paint peeling off the sanctuary ceiling because the church "renovation" funds went primarily to luxury furnishings for the senior pastor's office (grand oak desk); will you overlook riding on a multi-million dollar elevator when they had cheaper & just as adequate options; pay for hand-picked staff with names like "Consulting Minister" with ambiguous duties but very defined salaries and benefits (the partiality & cronyism here is as bad as on the other end of DC); and finally, help pay the senior pastor's mortgage, apart from his salary (that's right, folks, part of his contract includes the church {members} subsidizing his mortgage with an ultra-low interest rate). Welcome to All Souls, where Some Souls get the benefit of YOUR contributions.
To end this wonderful sermon, I can't leave out a horrific incident that took place earlier this year- the senior pastor and church board railroaded a long-time pastor of the church to termination, in a provocatively disgraceful manner. No one that followed this train-wreck will honestly admit that the "resigned" pastor did not have issues- she was disciplined by her mother church (not the Unitarian Church), and was disliked by some key people in the congregation. But the larger story is that the church board and two of the three members of the "leadership team" kept personnel issues that had been going on for years under tight wraps, and spent significant amounts of money on counseling and "coaching" staff in hopes of diffusing the ticking bomb. All this, by the way, was done without any notice to the church members who were footing the bill; so much for pastoral transparency and accountability. Well, the bomb exploded, and so did some of the congregation, who held a protest in front of the church, the same church that regularly displays a banner that proclaims the "beloved community". Welcome to All Souls- where absolute hypocrisy lies underneath its thin veil of enlightened morality. read more
