Cognitive Dissonance at the Washington National Cathedral

While in Washington DC this past week I paid a visit to the Washington National Cathedral, a beautiful and enormous church that functions as both an Episcopal church and a "national house of prayer." I of course wanted to stroll through the catherdal's gift shop and look at what they had there. It turns out that they had one of my biggest weaknesses: lots of books.

As I walked around the store, I noticed lots of Anglican-esque symbols, like crosses and icons, and materials, like the Book of Common Prayer and some other writings. There was an entire section devoted to the writings of N.T. Wright (a good move), an Anglican bishop over on the other side of the pond.

However, there were a lot of other things in the store, things that felt sort of out of place. There were aids for Buddhist meditation. There were books written by prominent "Gnostic Christianity" proponents, and prominent atheists. However, on the other hand, the conservative Catholic publisher Ignatius Press had quite a few books in there, and there was a whole freaking section with Lutheran books, most of them by Missouri-Synod authors.

It was difficult to put all of that together in my head as I walked around. I suppose this is the purpose of a "national house of prayer" for a pluralistic country such as the USA? To get literally everything, running the spectrum from Eastern mysticism to Gnostic Christianity to Roman Catholicism to fundamentalism and conservative Lutheranism all in one place? If so, it's too bad that we have to use a Christian church for that. I'd rather just stay out of that.

In any case, my head a splode.