St. Paul’s Cathedral has come up with a novel way to fill the pews: It is becoming a concert venue. Under a newly inked agreement, London nightclub Fabric will be the “exclusive partner for contemporary music events” at Christopher Wren’s masterwork to God’s glory, or, as St. Paul’s describes itself in a press release, “one of London’s most iconic spaces.”
Two years ago, Fabric organized a concert by Australian synth-pop artist RY X, whom it credited with “bringing synthesizers, electronics and live performance into a space built centuries before any of them existed.” The revelation that live performance at St. Paul’s originated in 2024 will be news to its nine-hundred-year-old choir. If only they had sampled some EDM in their evensong.
Critics who fear a repeat of the silent disco at Canterbury Cathedral, dubbed “the rave in the nave,” have been assured that events on Ludgate Hill will be “done respectfully,” with the cathedral’s director of visitor engagement, Sandra Lynes Timbrell, telling Church Times the plan is for “seated concerts” with “minimal amplification.”
The partnership deal has seen the Church of England admonished by Robert Barron, the Roman Catholic bishop of Winona–Rochester, in Minnesota, who accuses the Anglican leadership of having “lost any sense of the crucial distinction between the sacred and the secular.”
Rev. Marcus Walker, a thoughtful commentator on ecclesiastical affairs and rector of St. Bartholomew the Great in London, tells me that “God uses beauty to draw us to him.” He contends that certain forms of music, such as symphonies, can be in keeping with the reverent character of a church. He cites a candlelit concert given by Nick Cave at St. Bart’s last December, in which the singer interspersed musical performances with discussions of his faith, as “one of the most profoundly spiritual moments of the year.”
Rev. Walker admits, however, that the involvement of Fabric “makes it more complex.” The club shut down briefly in 2016 when its license was withdrawn following the drug-related deaths of two eighteen-year-old patrons. The venue reopened four months later with more stringent checks and safety measures.
Some of the consternation is down to a post on X from Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, which welcomed the partnership agreement in less than graceful terms: “Fabric. St Paul’s Cathedral. Name a more iconic duo. Bringing together these two institutions will create a one-of-a-kind experience, pairing world-class music with one of our most special landmarks.”
The sight of London’s Muslim mayor celebrating the transformation of a crown jewel of the Anglican estate into a semi-secular setting, and doing so while reducing a venerated place of English Christian worship to the status of a landmark, felt like a provocation to some. Taking up Khan’s challenge, the journalist Tom Harwood proposed: “Heaven nightclub. Baitul Futuh Mosque,” referencing a prominent gay nightspot and a south London masjid.
The mayor’s disregard for England’s Christian heritage notwithstanding, the Fabric collaboration comes at a time of profound tribulation for Anglicanism. Read it all at First Things