Rick Fabian thought he was right where he wanted to be in 1967. After graduating from Yale with honors and picking up a master's degree from Cambridge, the deeply religious 24-year-old settled in at the College of the Resurrection, a stately Anglican seminary in Muirfield, England. But he did have one small problem.
"I remember the evening it happened," Fabian says. "I was kneeling in the monastery church. There was singing. I looked around and it dawned on me that all these people around me actually believed this stuff, and I never had. At Yale, most of my friends were not religious, but I was. So I lived in a kind of fortress that I was always defending. But I realized at Muirfield that night that I never really believed any of it."
Fast forward nearly 30 years to a striking, cedar-shingled building at De Haro and Mariposa in Potrero Hill. Completed last year, the structure was inspired by everything from Siberian wooden architecture to Japanese cinema. Inside, dressed in tie-dye, the same Rick Fabian glides on a dance floor. He rings bells from Tibet. He burns frankincense. He chants.
Odd thing is, the Rick Fabian engaged in all this seeming shamanism is of a piece with the doubting Anglophile of 30 years ago. True, the tie-dyes are African vestments, the incense is designed to recall the synagogal practice of Jerusalem's temple, and the chants are Navajo. But the building is St. Gregory Nyssen Church. And Rick Fabian is an Episcopal priest.
The dances he leads are a sacred two-step that calls the congregation to Communion and a more festive number marking the end of the service. His sermon is predicated on the unlikely notion that "the more we study the New Testament, the less and less we know about Jesus." He invokes Zen-like meditative silences after the Gospel readings. And it's all sanctioned by one of the putatively stodgiest, ornate Christian denominations on the planet.
How did Fabian go from questioning the very fundaments of Christianity to building a church of his own and filling it with provocative works of art? How did the affluent son of a successful businessman go from riding out his stint at seminary to creating a groundbreaking liturgy?
The answer is a mix of faith and serendipity.
There was the architect who collects vintage Italian motorcycles and whose most visible work before St. Gregory's was a Chinese restaurant. There was the painter of icons, who had chosen his career based on a vision of himself dirty, destitute, and dressed in rags. The Yale alumni network and pictures of grain elevators came in handy. The millionaire sure helped. And there was the influence of John Coltrane, Akira Kurosawa, the Maori, the two Russians, and the folks at Anchor Brewery.
Of course, none of it might have been possible without the help of Surfer magazine.
All in all, it adds up to one weird little church -- but a church that offers a window on the soul of San Francisco and, perhaps, the future of religious devotion.
With the right wardrobe -- maybe an austere black cassock with a pair of starched white L.L. Bean boxers underneath -- the Rev. Richard Fabian would be the Episcopalian cleric from central casting. Tall, fit, and upright, Fabian could easily pass himself off as the sort of pious, gray figure George Bush might listen to on Sundays in Kennebunkport. He's even got the lifestyle. An Ivy Leaguer who prepped at Choate, Fabian lives in a tasteful Cow Hollow home with a view that's remarkable even by San Francisco standards. He's an art collector. In addition to his priestly duties, he moonlights as the chief of a successful corporation. He drives a nice, tasteful Audi.
But the stereotype of a stuffy, upper-crust priest falls apart with Fabian's first remarks to a visitor. Few men of the cloth quote National Lampoon: "There are three hells," Fabian says with a sly grin that makes him look a bit like a slender, angular version of actor John Lithgow. "The Roman Catholic hell is where you're sent for masturbation. The Methodist hell is where you're sent for having crab grass. And the Episcopal hell is where you're sent for eating oysters with your dinner fork."
Sundays at St. Gregory's can be as refreshing -- or startling -- as Fabian himself. The priest admits that it's not unusual for visitors to walk out during the service, but it's less common than it was during the church's early years. A Hebrew canticle, a Russian folk tune, and an early Christian hymn from the fourth century -- all sung in challenging harmonies -- are likely to be on the playlist. Fabian sits while delivering the sermon in a symbolic gesture that eliminates any fire-and-brimstone podium-pounding. What's more, his perch is a Thai howdah, a carved wooden chair used for riding elephants. After a brief meditation period, church members are called on to "complete" the sermon by relating highly personal reflections on depression, relationships, or whatever.
Via Fabian's jig -- an age-old step -- the congregation then proceeds to another room to celebrate the Eucharist. They line up, place a hand on the shoulder of the person in front of them, and take three steps forward and one step back until they reach the altar. Their arrival is announced by the rhythm of sistrums, thurible bells, drums, and processional crosses beating the floor. Later, worshipers link arms and perform the grapevine step popular at Greek weddings.
Fabian recalls that the bishop used to view visits to St. Gregory's as "white-knuckle time," but the leader of the Episcopal flock in the Diocese of California has nothing but praise now. "St. Gregory's took a shovel, did a little digging, and found buried treasures in our faith as well as other religions," says Bishop William E. Swing. "On balance, the church as a whole has scoliosis of the imagination in terms of liturgy. That's not the case at St. Gregory's. Of course, the clientele in San Francisco is a bit more adventuresome than most places. I doubt very seriously if St. Gregory's approach would work in a small town."
Fabian has been making it work since 1978 when he founded St. Gregory's. He was soon joined by the Rev. Donald Schell, a close friend from seminary. On the surface, the two are an odd match to run a church. At 53, Fabian is lanky and bald; the 49-year-old Schell is more solidly built with a thick head of wavy, dark hair. Fabian prefers Rick to Richard; Schell practically winces if you call him Don instead of Donald. Fabian is into long-distance swimming and snowboarding; Schell holds a third-degree black belt in aikido, which he describes as "the most Christian of the martial arts." Fabian rattles off one-liners; Schell's speech is slow and measured.
"Someone once told me we're the perfect good cop/bad cop team," Fabian says. "Most churches have a superior and an inferior, but that's never been the case with us."
Then, as if he can't pass up the opportunity, Fabian adds with mock solemnity: "The friendship works because Donald likes doing all the work, which is a great convenience to me and satisfaction to him. He hates it when I say that."
On a deeper level, it makes sense that the two became fast friends while completing a project at St. Edward the Martyr in Spanish Harlem shortly after they met in the late 1960s. Both had transferred to the General Theological Seminary in Manhattan, and both had traveled winding spiritual paths to get there. Schell had seriously considered leaving the Episcopal Church and becoming a Russian Orthodox priest during his first year of seminary.
"The first time I went to an Orthodox church, I was just blown away," Schell says. "I loved the music; I loved the way people were participating. It seemed so chaotic on the one hand and enlightening on the other. I wanted something that was beautiful and expressive instead of just well-reasoned."
After much soul-searching and meetings with an Orthodox priest, Schell decided he didn't necessarily have to choose between one branch of Christianity and another: "I realized I could love elements of the Orthodox Church without turning my back on anything," he says. "I could incorporate it into my work in the Episcopal Church."
And Fabian had survived his spiritual crisis at Muirfield by looking outward as much as inward.
"I sort of entered into a dialogue with life, and I began to discover faith and virtue in the people around me," Fabian explains. "It was like taking a telephone receiver off the hook, laying it on the floor, and waiting to see if any voice would ever come out of it. I found all the things Christians say the world is all about in the people around me. It's life that's been instructing me after I abandoned defending my faith with arguments."
"Ultimately, faith means betting on things," he adds. "It means you're going to go ahead and live your life based on certain beliefs without any conclusive proof to support them."
These experiences taught Fabian and Schell that questioning their belief was essential to their Christianity. They also discovered that the nature of spiritual progress, like the liturgy and the Gospel itself, is not carved in stone.
The two put their beliefs into practice at Yale, which became an unlikely liturgical test market in 1970 when Fabian was appointed chaplain after completing seminary. Fabian asked Schell to join him, and the two created a liturgy that was soon more popular on the New Haven campus than the guitar-driven "electric mass" -- the standard alternative form of worship at the time.
"It's not that different from people rediscovering the mambo and the tango at the dance halls today," says Fabian. "There's the same realization that, 'Hey, this stuff is fun.' "
Fabian left Yale for San Francisco in 1975 to serve as an assistant to the bishop, and Schell headed for a church in Idaho. The pair wouldn't be separated long, though. Fabian founded St. Gregory's three years later and set up shop in an unused chapel at Trinity Church near Japantown. Schell, along with his wife and children, arrived in 1980 and eventually found a home on the ground floor of Fabian's house. The next step was to find a permanent home for St. Gregory's.
Fabian and Schell never imagined how difficult that task would prove.
San Francisco architect John Goldman was at a Yale Club luncheon in March of 1986 when he saw a familiar face. He introduced himself to Rick Fabian and remembered seeing the chaplain around the campus when he was an undergraduate studying ecology.
The pair hit it off immediately. Fabian mentioned he had majored in Chinese studies at Yale and now collected Asian art. Goldman's most visible local work to that point was Brandy Ho's on Broadway. The conversation was soon centered on Chinese and Japanese architecture. Fabian's eagerness to build a church of his own after eight years as a tenant at Trinity also came up.
A few months later, Fabian was out for a walk with another Yale alum who had joined St. Gregory's. The church member pointed out the apartment of his old Yale roommate -- who just happened to be John Goldman. Although Goldman had never created a sacred space before, he seemed destined to design the new St. Gregory's. Several architects submitted plans for the job, but Goldman landed the commission in late July. An act of God or the power of the Yale alumni network? Perhaps it was a little of both.
The synchronicity that brought together client and architect was not as evident over the next nine years, however. The project suffered a series of fits and starts. "We always expected to have our own church," Fabian explains, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. "We just never expected it to take this long."
After much frustration, Goldman found the Potrero Hill property in the summer of 1987. It was late 1988 before the first set of plans and a model for the new structure were completed. Based on the desires of Fabian, Schell, and several church committees, the ambitious scheme had a $2.5 million price tag. For a church with about 40 members, it would have taken a miracle to raise the cash.
Despite the high cost, it was Schell's dream church. A devotee of architecture, the priest had files of clips and ideas for church design. He had made his own careful sketches. Standing before an intricate wooden model of an early design that sits in the vestry of St. Gregory's, Schell's face clouds as he talks about the version that was never built.
"We thought the church would be so wonderful and create so much interest that it would generate donations from outside the congregation," he says. "But it simply didn't happen."
He pauses, looks at the model, and flatly adds: "It was a disaster."
It was an equally unsettling experience for Goldman, who began to wonder if his first foray into religious architecture would ever materialize. Goldman was not reassured when an elaborate tentlike structure was proposed as a cheaper alternative. Only after much internal discussion was Goldman commissioned in 1990 to draw up a far more modest plan, based on a $450,000 budget. The result was a simple, rectangular box with a gabled roof that combined standardized metal building systems with custom-built elements. Boring, yes, but the idea was to use this temporary building until money could be raised for a more elaborate church.
"The plan was very disturbing to me," Goldman admits as he sits in his office near Washington Square, the walls decorated with blueprints, photos of his work, and calendars showcasing the stylish old Italian motorcycles he collects. "It wasn't great architecture. It wasn't inspiring."
Fabian and Schell agreed. For the first time, they launched an all-out fund-raising campaign. The congregation dug deep. A handful of sizable contributions guaranteed $500,000, and the bishop allowed the church to take out loans on the Episcopal Diocese of California's credit line. But, ultimately, it was the Fabian family's personal wealth that made the church a reality.
Fabian is the president of For Better Living Inc., the remnant of a conglomerate created by his father. Only two enterprises are left under the corporate umbrella, but they include the publisher of Surfer, Powder, and Snowboarder magazines.
Back in 1974 Fabian had leveraged the family wealth to found All Saints' Co., a non-stock, nonprofit religious corporation. And when it came time to fund the new church, All Saints' kicked in more than $850,000. Fabian's parents donated $1 million of their own money along the way.
"We have the good fortune," Schell says of Fabian, "to have a creative genius who also happens to be wealthy."
By the time Goldman finally went to the drafting board for a third time in the fall of 1992 with a revised budget of $1.75 million, Schell and Fabian had not only re-evaluated how much church they could afford, but they had changed their minds about what it should look like. Schell gave Goldman everything from the picture of a Midwest grain elevator to the image of a New Mexican adobe monastery for inspiration. Fabian lobbied for a flared stone or concrete base borrowed from the Chinese structures he so admires. Goldman aimed to draw on classical architecture while paying tribute to the Bay Region Tradition popularized by Bernard Maybeck and characterized by the use of wood, exposed structural elements, and a strong connection between indoor and outdoor spaces.
In the end, the strongest reference Goldman worked from was the castle that burns to the ground in Ran, Akira Kurosawa's stunning 1985 adaptation of King Lear.
"The ideal is to offer a sense of all the different elements while the overall building holds together as a unique structure," Goldman says. "You want people to be able to see different things in the building, but it shouldn't turn into some sort of pastiche with no real identity."
To accomplish this goal, Goldman maintained a consistent vocabulary of details in his design. The peaked roof above the main entrance and the two roofs over a pair of large, multipaned windows nearby are set at the same angle and feature the same detail work. And both cupolas -- located at opposite ends of the church -- use four smaller hip roofs to move from a square to an octagon before they rise to a point. It's a technique popular among Siberians building wooden houses of worship modeled on the Byzantine-influenced stone churches of Russia. Schell became intrigued by Siberian architecture after discovering a book on the subject, a book he quickly passed on to Goldman.
"It's good to work with a client who is knowledgeable and has ideas about what they'd like to see," says Goldman, who studied architecture at the University of Oregon.
Schell and Goldman did not always share the same architectural vision. Goldman arrived one day to discover that Schell had instructed the building supervisor -- who happened to be the priest's brother -- to insert wooden shingles between the windows circling the main cupola. Goldman had purposely left the shingles out to create the image of a continuous band of windows that matched the other cupola. It was another attempt to unify the design, and Goldman was not willing to compromise.
A heated discussion ensued over the next few days, but neither Goldman nor Schell would back down. Finally, a member of the church's building committee was given the unenviable task of settling the dispute. The shingles were removed.
Goldman also had to work with active Potrero Hill neighborhood groups. Obviously, this wasn't a classic case of concerns over low-income housing or undesirable commerce. Instead, homeowners were concerned about their view of the downtown skyline being interrupted. Goldman conducted sightline studies and looked into the possibility that the church would block sun to some houses. A friendly meeting at the Anchor Brewery taproom gave residents a chance to meet Fabian, Schell, and other church members. In the end, no complaints were raised -- about the beer or the church.
The building that was finally competed in October 1995, nearly a decade after Goldman's fateful encounter with Fabian, is stunning. As are its interior appointments. Goldman went so far as to alter the height of the main cupola to make room for what is surely one of San Francisco's most ambitious creative endeavors in years -- five dozen larger-than-life icons.
In a loft on the second floor of the old Art Rattan furniture warehouse in East Oakland, Mark Dukes is preparing to paint the outsize images of 60 saints -- one by one -- that will eventually adorn the walls of St. Gregory's. Primarily associated with the Eastern Church, icons are symbolic, highly stylized renderings of sacred figures. They are labor-intensive, and the project will take at least four years to complete. Dukes says he is prepared.
"Look at this place," he says with a big smile, spreading his arms and surveying the space he moved into a few months back. "It's so big I ride my bike around in here sometimes. It's got everything I need: a bed, a kitchen, a bathroom, and one big wall."
At 38, Dukes has good reason to be happy with his station in life. He chose an obscure career path based on his religious convictions and landed what is quite possibly the world's biggest icon project in the last 100 years. The decision to become an iconographer is not something that an artist makes haphazardly. After all, few wealthy patrons are in the market for a rendering of St. Basil that matches their couch. Madonna With Child is not going to spruce up many dens.
"I had this vision of me standing on the corner in rags working on a tiny little icon," Dukes says. "And I had another vision of me in some big studio, doing commercial work and looking very prosperous. Well, I just couldn't be a commercial artist. It would have destroyed me."
Dukes hadn't exactly been overwhelmed with commissions before he made his momentous decision in the summer of 1990. He had produced two icons for a Texas monastery he had visited, and he was finalizing plans to create icons at St. John's African Orthodox Church. In exchange for the cost of paint plus a small stipend, he would begin by painting jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, the church's patron saint.
By late 1991, the St. John's project was Dukes' only active artistic work. He was helping Father Tom Flowers, an Eastern Orthodox priest, distribute soup to the city's homeless at the time. With Fabian and Schell's permission, Flowers was using a warehouse as a staging area on the site of what would eventually become St. Gregory's. Dukes had set up a tiny work space in one corner, nestled among the freezers and other equipment, to work on the icons for St. John's.
The patron saint of being in the right place at the right time must have been watching over Dukes.
"Donald and Rick walked in one day, and I think they were really surprised when they saw what I was doing," Dukes says as he widens his eyes, mimicking the astonishment he saw on the faces of the two priests. "They said, 'You do icons? We love icons!' It was like it was meant to be."
Dukes became what he describes as an artist in residence while the St. Gregory's building project crawled along. He perfected his art and prepared for his first big assignment -- a 20-foot-high mural icon in the apse of the church behind the preacher's chair -- that was completed soon after the church was built. Based on Gregory's interpretation of the biblical Song of Songs, it represents the mystical marriage of Christ with the believer's soul. Painted in rich, vibrant colors, it is the focal point of the space where the congregation gathers for the Gospel and sermon. In Dukes' opinion, it was also a test.
"I suppose the congregation could have had buyer's remorse after the first one and that would have been it," says Dukes, who regularly attends St. Gregory's. "Instead, they gave me their sincere and permanent stamp of approval."
Dukes may be ready to start painting more icons, but St. Gregory's has to come up with the subjects first, and it's not as easy as it sounds. For one thing, the 60 icons aren't necessarily saints in the traditional sense. Malcolm X will be one of the first icons created; Anne Frank, John Muir, and Feodor Dostoevski are under consideration. An official Saints Selection Committee is charged with making the final picks, but disagreement abounds. Queen Elizabeth I is favored by some for her contributions to the Anglican Church. Should the possibility that her support was motivated by politics more than theology be factored into the deliberation?
"I say she makes the cut, regardless of why she did what she did," Fabian says with a shrug. "But some don't agree with me."
Whichever icons do make it into St. Gregory's will share space with a wide variety of religious art and artifacts. The four entrance doors of the church feature a flowing interpretation of Creation carved by New Zealand Maori artist Shane Eagleton, who now lives on Potrero Hill. An intricate mosaic immediately above the doors uses a more traditional Byzantine style to depict the story of the burning bush according to St. Gregory. Two visiting Russian artists, Felix Boukh and Sasha Fomina, created it using oddly shaped half-inch pieces of colored tile.
Inside, a visitor will find a menagerie that includes Japanese temple lanterns, 18th-century Russian menorahs, Tibetan singing bowls, Muslim crosses, Puritan pewter chalices, and an Ethiopian calendar icon. A nearby closet is filled with a variety of drums used in ser-vices and an odd item even Fabian and Schell don't quite know what to do with: a green Ethiopian "liturgical umbrella" with gold lame trim given to the church by Haile Selassie's granddaughter.
"We emphasize continuity, and one way to do that is by establishing a connection with Jesus' own form of worship, the Christian tradition, and other faiths," Fabian says. "But this isn't just theory. The connection should be visual and tactile. You should be able to reach out and touch it."
St. Gregory's may be an aesthetic delight, but the building and art go well beyond the merely visual. The open, inviting entrance may be modeled on a 1,300-year-old Japanese Shinto shrine, but the first object greeting a visitor inside is a simple wooden altar inspired by early Palestinian banquet tables. The table stands before the baptismal font, which is carved into the wall of rock that shelters the church (much like the wall that shelters Goldman's Brandy Ho's design). The symbolism is at the heart of St. Gregory's: Everyone is welcome at the table, not just those who have passed the test of baptism. The altar doubles as a coffee bar after services.
"Many Christian churches take just the opposite approach," Schell says. "But at St. Gregory's, if somebody is going to be baptized, it's probably the result of their experience at the table. It's extremely evident in the Gospels that Jesus welcomed sinners unconditionally. He accepted them in all their conflicted ordinariness. There were no entrance requirements.
"Rick is proposing that we carve the accusations made against Jesus into the altar: 'This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.' He's also been toying with 'This guy hangs out with fuckups.' There's a real startling sense in the Gospels that Jesus is eating with people who are not worthy, people who've got a long way to go before they can hear what he has to say."
The more than 80 church members who now come to hear Fabian and Schell's sermon have religious backgrounds as eclectic as St. Gregory's art and architecture. Some have been Episcopalians all their lives. Many have been followers of other religions. In fact, some still describe themselves as Jews or Catholics. Dukes briefly subscribed to the teachings of a Hindu guru before joining the church. Even members of the clergy bring varied experiences to the mix. Associate Rector M.R. Ritley spent 20 years as a teacher in the Sufi/Hanafiyya order -- a mystical offshoot of Islam.
"We have people who are all over the religious landscape, and that's one of the things that keeps St. Gregory's vital," says Ritley. "There is nothing more deadly than being in a religious community where everyone agrees with you 100 percent."
Church member Paul Delbene, whose father is an Episcopalian minister, agrees. "No one is fixed on religious categories like Judaism, Catholicism, or Buddhism," says the 26-year-old who lived in Alabama before moving to the Bay Area. "Those things don't mean anything here. If you're at St. Gregory's, you're a friend first and foremost."
But this open admissions policy should not be equated with the fuzzy, New Age concept that anything goes. Fabian and Shell investigate their faith by poring over the latest in biblical scholarship, even when the discoveries are challenging and uncomfortable. Fabian says he truly experienced the power of scholarship when he learned that descriptions of Jesus' resurrection were probably written generations after his crucifixion.
"As our knowledge of who Jesus really was changes, we have no choice but to change everything else to correspond to what we've learned," Fabian says. "Everything falls apart if we don't."
Scholars familiar with St. Gregory's point out that this intellectual rigor and spiritual honesty make St. Gregory's a model for thoughtful innovation and, quite possibly, a blueprint for the religious worship of the future. While fundamentalism and so-called "megachurches" get more press, recognizing the interconnectedness of various beliefs and combining both faith and intellect to shape religious practice is becoming increasingly common.
"I wouldn't trust every priest to do what Rick and Donald do at St. Gregory's," says Louis Weil, a professor of liturgy at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. "They aren't typical garden-variety priests who come out of seminary having read two books and thinking whatever damn thing they do is fine. They certainly push the envelope at St. Gregory's, but they know what they are doing. The church could only work in a city like San Francisco now, but I have the sense that their approach will become more and more common as time goes on."
While Fabian and Schell love to discuss the theology behind what they do, both priests understand that dry scholarship is the last thing most people are searching for in a church.
"My impression is that members of our congregation are drawn to St. Gregory's by the music, the dancing, and the chance to really participate," says Schell. "They don't come because it's so sophisticated and based on research and has this amazing interconnection between religions, and blah, blah, blah. There is careful intellectual work behind everything, but it's almost invisible. You don't have to recognize it to appreciate St. Gregory's.
