My wife and I, when she was incarcerated in a post-surgical rehab clinic, were joking about my springing her out of the place. I told her, when she decided it was time to leave, to simply work the code word "Steve McQueen" into a sentence, then I would liberate her from their tender mercies. Perhaps by using a motorized wheelchair instead of McQueen's iconic motorcycle from
The Great Escape.
While I wasn't surprised to discover that the 20-something physical therapist didn't get the reference, neither did a 40-something nurse or an 80-something relative. So much for Hollywood's "King of Cool".
At any rate, the Episcopal Church's King of Cool, as far as I'm concerned, is a 19th century priest named William Augustus Muhlenberg [1796-1877]. Among other achievements, he founded what's now St. Luke's/Roosevelt Hospital, the Fresh Air Fund, one of the first pension funds, a couple of religious orders, pioneered new ways to use flowers and colors to enhance liturgical presentation, allowed people to sit in any pew they wished [as opposed to those that families had purchased for their exclusive usage], and generally made more sense than any other cleric of his time. Naturally, he was never a bishop.
Oh, and he founded the Church of the Holy Communion in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. The congregation could no longer support the parish as of the 1980's, so it was sold by the Diocese of New York. It then became the rather notorious
Limelight nightclub and is now, I'm told, a mini-mall. God help us. So, in a way, Muhlenberg may also be credited with helping to create the now-infamous nightclub scene of thirty years ago. Not a bad legacy, really.
Here's a photo of the Episcopal Church's King of Cool and, by extension, nightclub progenitor:
Do not let your Church close its eyes, O Lord, to the plight of the poor and neglected, the homeless and destitute, the old and the sick, the lonely and those who have none to care for them. Give us the vision and compassion with which you so richly endowed your servant William Augustus Muhlenberg, that we may labor tirelessly to heal those who are broken in body or spirit, and to turn their sorrow into joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
