Listen, my children, and you shall hear [Boston's historic Old North Church challenges government policy to get grant to restore its 280-year-old windows.] (June 2003 issue of Saint Andrew's Net)

IT PANES HIM TO WATCH: The Rev. Stephen Ayres, vicar of Old North Church, points out some of the 2,055 window panes in need of restoration. A $317,000 grant will assist that work.

By TRACY SUKRAW, Episcopal News Service

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton made a trip to Boston’s North End on May 27 to announce a federal grant to Old North Church from the Save America’s Treasures Preservation Fund. One of Boston’s most familiar landmarks, Old North Church is known for its steeple, from which church sexton Robert Newman on April 18, 1775, hung the two lanterns associated with Paul Revere’s ride and the beginning of the Revolutionary War. The church receives more than 600,000 visitors a year.

The $317,000 grant is significant to the church because the much-needed funds will go toward the $700,000 cost of restoring its 280-year-old windows. But the award is also getting significant public attention because it is the result of a change in federal policy against government funding of religious sites.

Old North’s original grant application, made last fall, was rejected. Because the church is a significant historic site as well as home to an active Episcopal congregation of 150 people, Old North Church risked wading into the debate over separation of church and state by appealing for reconsideration. The appeal led to a legal review which found that the government’s policy discriminated unfairly against historical sites used for religious purposes, Secretary Norton said in her announcement. She said of the policy change: “It ends discrimination against religion. In essence we have to deal with places only with historic value.”

Among the host of officials joining Secretary Norton for the announcement were Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Secretary of State William Galvin and the White House’s director of faith-based and community initiatives, Jim Towey.

Old North’s vicar, the Rev. Stephen Ayres, took advantage of his captive audience of city, state and federal government officials to give them his own policy reminder: “The question of the appropriate separation of religion and government is raised not only by the state, but within religious communities as well. Many are concerned that religious institutions may lose their moral and prophetic voice if we become too dependent on government support. We must always ask ourselves whether receiving government grants will compromise our vocation to remind our representatives of God’s concern for peace and for the care of the poor and marginalized.”

—Tracy J. Sukraw is editor of The Episcopal Times in the Diocese of Massachusetts.”