More Money Than God: Reverend James Cooper and Trinity Church
This is the story of a church with over a billion dollars in assets, $200 million a year income and $2.7 million in yearly donations- ‘scarcely one percent’. It is also the story of a minister who was determined to take control of the money. It is also the story of real estate investments, money managers and blue blood parishioners and who control the Trinity Church real estate portfolio and church giving.
Insiders refer to the contentiousness as ’ a political knife fight’ over what they call the issue of ‘separation of powers’.
Finally, this is the as yet unfinished story of a minister who just won’t leave.
The Fat Lady hasn’t even yet entered the building.
More Money Than God: Reverend James Cooper and Trinity Church. « Sigmund, Carl and Alfred
It is Sunday morning at Trinity Wall Street, the historic Episcopal church in Lower Manhattan. The season of Advent is beginning, and underneath the soaring Gothic vaults, the pews are mostly full. The organ strikes up, song fills the air, and the service begins, a long procession slowly snaking through the nave in a figure eight: two by two, black cassocks, white cassocks, gray habits, candle bearers, bell ringers, censers filling the air with sweet white plumes of incense.
At the end of the procession comes Trinity’s rector, Reverend James Cooper, a small man with gray hair, in white vestments with a blue-and-gold stole around his shoulders. The procession ascends to the dais, and after more hymns, prayers, and announcements, Cooper steps up to deliver his sermon.
Working from the Gospel of Luke, Cooper moves quickly to talking about the recent hurricane.
“A roaring sea,” he says. “A surge! Of desolation and distress. Frightening. Jesus says when you see those signs, be alert. Pay attention! They’re warnings.”
But scripture also offers comfort, Cooper continues.
“We still live with a reasonable hope and expectation that we’ll survive. And we have. These signs and portents—I don’t know that they come to test us; they just come, but they do test us—they cause us to reflect and set priorities and really come to grips with what is important.”
Many of Trinity’s parishioners have only recently returned to their Lower Manhattan homes; the neighborhood is full of flooded-out businesses whose owners still don’t know if they will reopen. Cooper’s sermon is certainly topical.