In 1794, workmen building the White House worshiped in a carpenters’ shop on the grounds. On September 21, workers on the National Presbyterian Center, the Gothic-modern descendant of that makeshift church, were invited to hear George Meany speak at a commemorative service for them and their families.
Two weeks earlier, after 169 Sunday services at a Seventh-day Adventist Church, the National Presbyterian Church and Center opened the doors of its $8.5 million complex. More than a thousand Washingtonians filled the sanctuary and overflowed into the Chapel of the Presidents. When the year of dedication begins in January, the chapel will be dedicated to Dwight D. Eisenhower, who unveiled the cornerstone for the center in 1967 and who, while President, was baptized by the church’s pastor.
Dr. Edward L. R. Elson, who is Senate chaplain as well as National Presbyterian pastor, conducted funeral services for Senator Everett M. Dirksen in the new church September 10.
“It is not what we see here but what we become as persons that will be determinative,” said Dr. Elson at the first public service in the new church. What worshipers see is a marble, glass, and stone structure with a 173-foot tower dominating a 12½-acre site in an exclusive section of northwest Washington, D. C. Inside the church, the liturgical center, flanked on three sides by the congregation, includes a communion table under a suspended cross, a baptismal font, and a massive 16½-ton marble pulpit carved in Italy. Using 63,300 pieces of faceted glass, windows in the nave aisles, transept, and Presidents’ Chapel depict the Christian’s faith and hope. Still in the five-month process of installation is the 102-rank organ with its 5,820 pipes.
On the assumption that the United Presbyterian Church “will one day be part of an ecclesiastical entity not yet defined,” the denominational name was omitted from seals inlaid in the narthex and forecourt.
The completed center will offer ecumenical and community groups twenty-two conference rooms with closed-circuit color television. The new center is for “all God’s people,” said Elson in a sermon based on First Corinthians 16:9: “For a wide door for effective work has opened.”
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