Chautauqua Institution – 2014
It has many elements of a fantasy land. Once one enters the guarded gates, the world seems to fall away quickly. A person living in this community does not read the New York Times, which confronts us on every page with the complexity of modern human life, its sufferings, its joys, its violence and its grace. In this community, people shrink their minds to embrace only the news that appears each morning in the “Daily Chautauquan.” It reflects life within this community, which the paper covers in intimate detail and these now “insiders” read it with interest and devotion. This place, The Chautauqua Institution, at least during the time that one is there, becomes the center of the universe.
Chautauqua sits on prime real estate that fronts on about five miles of a twenty-one mile long body of water called Lake Chautauqua. A vast array of public and private figures comes to this community for its nine week summer season. Since its founding, almost every president of the United States has appeared at Chautauqua, either as a candidate or as an incumbent in that office. Senators, Supreme Court Justices, authors, poets, musicians, journalists, scientists and professional performers have all been in the Chautauqua line up at one time or another. It is a kind of think tank for people, where ideas are presented and debated, where intellectual avant-garde thinking is welcomed and engaged; where voices that dissent from the majority opinions can be heard and even where religious ideas can be discussed in civil discourse.
In its short summer season, over 100,000 people will be in attendance and each week will see at least 7,500 people. Some are permanent residents, who live there during the entire season and perhaps even during parts of the off-season, although only a few would make this their year-round home. Winters are harsh in this community, just an hour or so south of Buffalo. The lake normally freezes over and services that sustain life in the summer don’t tend to be there in the winter. Some of the private homes are along the lake front, others on higher ground. These homes are grand in style and many are appraised to be in the $1-15 million dollar range. It is precious real estate.
Many more of Chautauqua’s summer guests are people who come for a vacation week or perhaps two. They rent houses or apartments on the grounds. These rentals have full kitchens and a Farmer’s Market at the gates serves them with the food and provisions they need to live in this community. For those who do not want to cook, there are many restaurants ranging from elegant to short order. Others stay in the hotels that are on the grounds where, like all hotels, rooms are available and dining rooms meet the most demanding culinary tastes. The “Athenaeum” is the crown jewel of this type of hotel. It is owned by the community and it sits on the lake front. It has big rocking chairs on a large porch, where those who want to rock, to read or just to gaze at the lake may spend hours. Dining on this porch is also available when the weather cooperates. Those families who bring their children will discover there is a children’s program for all ages and in that program the children develop deep friendships at very early ages, which serves to build loyalty among those who come frequently.
Chautauqua began in 1874 as a place to train Sunday school teachers for the United Methodist Church, but it has evolved into being something even greater than its founders could ever have imagined. Its religious roots, however, are neither denied nor lost. There is a worship service in the amphitheater each Sunday in which this 5000 seat structure is normally packed beyond its capacity. A one-hundred voice choir, directed by Chautauqua’s talented organist and choir director, Jared Jacobsen, provides music of the highest quality. Since the amphitheater has no walls this organ is the largest outdoor organ in the world. The Department of Religion brings America’s best known clergy to preach at the Sunday service and these clergy then serve as chaplains to the community for the following week, speaking at a daily service in the amphitheater with which each day begins. These services, at least in my experience, tend to be specifically and unabashedly Christian. On Sunday evening of each week an old fashioned hymn sing is conducted and it, too, is well attended. Many of the best loved evening hymns like “Now the Day is Over” and “Day is dying in the West” are favorites. One other mark of Chautauqua’s religious heritage is that most of the major Christian denominations have “houses” on the campus that offer rooms for rent and some denominational programming, usually with a minister of that tradition in residence. Sometimes they offer church services. The Episcopal Chapel of the Good Shepherd, for example, has a daily Eucharist at 7:45 a.m. each morning. The Episcopal Church is also the place from which a regular Roman Catholic mass is offered.
On to this religious base, however, Chautauqua has added not only an intense dedication to the arts, but also a commitment to intellectual excellence across the spectrum of human knowledge. A school of music, including both vocal and instrumental training, operates for the whole summer. So does both a drama school and a ballet school. There is a “Chautauqua Symphony” that performs regularly and there is both an opera company and a theater company. Plays are produced and normally perform to sold out audiences. Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” and Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” were among this summer’s offerings. Each evening there is a program in the amphitheater, to which world class artists or groups are invited to perform before a packed audience. Members of the New York Philharmonic once summered in Chautauqua and helped turn this community into the music center that it now is.
There are two “intellectual” or “stretching” opportunities offered each day. The first is the morning program which begins about 10:45 a.m. This is the big event of the day and once again the amphitheater is packed. Well known celebrities either speak or are interviewed for about an hour. Then questions from the audience are collected to which the guest responds. Sometimes the guest will speak every day Monday through Friday, but more typical is the introduction of a significant guest each day. I recall that on my first trip to Chautauqua in the 1980’s I spent each morning of the entire week listening to Buckminster Fuller of Geodesic Dome fame deliver five lectures. I also ate dinner each day with Bucky and thus had the chance to explore his prodigious mind. He wanted to translate the Lord’s Prayer into contemporary language. When he finished it was five pages long! Other notable guests who have graced Chautauqua’s stage at this morning session have been public figures like Tom Brokaw, Jim Lehrer and Roger Rosenblatt. Actors like Alan Alda, Julie Andrews and Margaret Hamilton, the wicked witch in the “Wizard of Oz.” were also guests as were Poets like Paul Muldoon and John Ciardi; theologians like Karen Armstrong and Cornel West; science fiction writers like Isaac Asimov; novelists like Margaret Atwood and Elizabeth Strout and politicians by the dozen..
There is no theme of contemporary concern that the Chautauqua Institution does not seek to illumine, not with partisan fervor but with competence and scholarly analysis. The intellectual quality of a week at this place is not only informative, but mind-altering. People complain of headaches from intellectual over-stimulation.
After the morning session, there is scarcely time for lunch before the 2:00 p.m. religious lecture begins in what is called the Hall of Philosophy. At this hour, Chautauqua presents qualified religious voices from across the American religious perspective. It has moved over the years to expand religious boundaries. A significant portion of Chautauqua’s residents are Jewish. An impressive Rabbi, Samuel Stahl, is on the staff of the Institution and together with his wonderful wife, Lynn, is a positive force in Chautauqua’s interfaith life. On an early visit to this place in the 1980’s, I teamed with my own personal rabbi, Jack Daniel Spiro, to conduct what we called a “Dialogue in Search of Jewish-Christian Understanding.” Sometimes, the religious hour will be filled by only one person for the entire week, sometimes that spot will feature a different person each day. I have been the lecturer at that hour for a week in eight different years. Recently, a 92-year-old retired Presbyterian minister, named Warren Martin, has endowed one week of the 2:00 p.m. summer program in memory of his wife, Eileen. In setting up this endowment, he stated that he wanted his week to present someone who not only could walk the edges of Christianity, but who would also force Christianity to be in dialogue with the modern world, modern science and modern knowledge. He also stated that he wanted “Bishop Spong to inaugurate this series,” a tribute that meant a great deal to me. I have gotten to know Warren well, since I have now been the “Warren Martin Lecturer” on two different occasions and have agreed to a third in the summer of 2016, God willing. If I am able to do that 2016 week it will be on the subject: “Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy – Studies in the Gospel of Matthew.” Readers of this column are at the moment following the development of my study in this area. I also anticipate that this might well be the final major lectureship of my career. I know of no place that I would rather do my “finale” than at Chautauqua.
I owe much to Chautauqua. I admire its dedication to expand knowledge. I appreciate its religious vocation to put religion in general and Christianity in particular into dialogue with truth arising from any and all other sources. As such, Chautauqua lives out in a very public way my ambition for every Christian Church, namely to be a place where life is celebrated, where knowledge is sought, where the arts are acknowledged and where faith is relevant.
~John Shelby Spong
Author’s Note: I do not liked being scooped by the New York Times! I wrote this column after returning from Chautauqua in late June. I then put it in line to cover the weeks of the summer when I was teaching in Berkeley, at the Pacific School of Religion. The piece on Chautauqua did not seem to me to be “time related.” On July 20th, however, The New York Times ran on the front page of its Sunday Travel Section a long feature on Chautauqua, under the title “EdificationVacation.” If you wish to
read this story click here. Like all Times stories it was extensive and well-written. I will forgive the Times, however, but only because their article referred to me as the religious “rock star” of Chautauqua, since my lectures were attended by about 10,000 people during that week.
JSS
Read the essay online
here.
