The Pickup's Arts & Culture coverage is supported by Brut Hotel, featuring a rooftop VIP after party for Tulsa Irish Fest on March 14.
Goff Week isn’t just about Bruce Goff. It’s about the others in his circle, too, as well as the times he was working in. One of Tulsa’s 1920s-era architectural jewels, Boston Avenue United Methodist Church, has been the subject of some controversy about who actually designed it—Goff himself or his teacher, Dr. Adah Robinson. (The church itself is firmly for attributing the design to Robinson.) As it turns out, the building reflects more than Art Deco thinking; it emerged from then-pastor John Rice’s progressive ideas about faith and evolution. We spoke with Dr. Gary Peluso-Verdend, Boston Avenue’s theologian-in-residence, about the links between the church’s architecture and the shape of its congregation’s faith and practice.
If you’re interested in experiencing the innovative spirit of Boston Avenue’s design for yourself, stop by on March 21 for “EQUINOX,” an immersive experience curated by Trueson Daugherty, which will include a creative salon, performances by Ramsey Thornton and Micaela Young, and a full organ sound bath in which the building itself becomes the instrument.
Alicia Chesser: How did you get interested in the architecture of Boston Avenue in the first place?
Gary Peluso-Verdend: I’m the former president of Phillips Theological Seminary here in Tulsa—I’m retired from that—and I was also the founding director of the Center for Religion and Public Life there, so I’ve been interested over time in the intersection of how people practice their religion out in public, both for good and for bad. One of my favorite replies to people who say things like, “I don’t know if Islam is compatible with democracy” is, “well, I’m not sure Christianity has always been compatible with democracy.”
One of the things I wanted to do in preparation for the 130th anniversary of the Boston Avenue congregation is spend some time digging through the archives; that was around the anniversary of the Race Massacre here in Tulsa. And we knew that there was a fairly infamous sermon that had been preached the Sunday after the Massacre, from the pulpit at Boston Avenue, by the resident bishop.
We were really interested: what were the connections of the congregation? There weren’t a whole lot, but there were some [connected] with white supremacy and Christianity as that played out in Tulsa in 1921. I got interested in the pastor who replaced that pastor in 1922 and was there until 1927: John Rice. He was the pastor who worked with Adah Robinson on designing the church home that is there now at 13th and Boston.
At the time, in 1922, the church was located at 5th and Boston. There’s a plaque on the street if you ever walk by it. They were outgrowing it.