Drama at the Altar

The Church of the Middle Ages consecrated all art to God's service--a precedent that the Rev. William Bell Glenesk thinks has a lot of validity today. In the manner of an ecclesiastical impresario, he incorporates everything from jazz bands to barefoot modern dancers in his freewheeling, experimental services at the Spencer Memorial Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn Heights.

Ruth St. Denis once danced at Spencer's Sunday morning worship. Metropolitan Opera Basso Jerome Hines came in to sing Negro spirituals. Last week Christmas Eve services featured a modern ballet based on the medieval legend of the Juggler of Notre Dame. Glenesk, who is a good enough dancer himself to work out with Martha Graham's company, produced the performance, recruiting dancers from Graham, the New York City Ballet and the Metropolitan Opera. He has even donned a leotard himself to prance through the sanctuary in his own choreographed version of Jacob's ladder (Genesis 28: 12: "And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven").

"That Big Clown." Seeking well-known names for his pulpit, Glenesk has lured to Spencer speakers as different as Theologian Paul Tillich and India's agnostic ex-Defense Minister Krishna Menon. His own arts-conscious sermons are more likely to refer to Edward Albee than to Cain and Abel.

"If God works in dramatic ways, then the ministry must," he says.

A handsome, lithe, Canadian-born bachelor of 37, Pastor Glenesk was educated at the University of Toronto and Columbia, worked as a professional teacher, actor and social worker before his ordination. He was called to Spencer in 1955. It was then a staid little parish faced with the prospect of expanding or closing shop. Much to the dismay of oldtimers at Spencer--one of them calls him "that big clown clunking around the church in leotards"--Glenesk decided to make a play for the newcomers in Brooklyn Heights, many of them arts-conscious, church-shy refugees from Greenwich Village. Glenesk has lost some veteran members of the congregation, but he has also brought to Spencer hundreds of people who never before bothered with church.

Walking or Crawling. Do jazz and modern dance really have anything to do with the worship of God? Glenesk believes that any creative art is somehow touched with the divine. Moreover, drama at the altar attacks what he regards as the greatest enemy of meaningful worship: habit and routine. "You should not go to church out of habit," he says. "I am all for the idea of enjoyment. You should go because it is exciting. One week you can come out walking on air, another time crawling on the ground."

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