Wednesday, October 17, 2018 // The Statement
6C

band that plays Albert Ayler and John 

Coltrane and if that’s what you want, we can 
do that,’” Rush said. “I said, ‘I’m not willing 
to do it once a month. It needs to be every 
week because otherwise, you’re just messing 
around.’”

Every Sunday at 5:00 p.m., Canterbury 

House would fill with students and jazz 
fans alike to hear Rush and his band 
Quartex play newly arranged hymns and 
experimental jazz pieces. This blending of 
worship and music was both a callback to 
the folk services attended by Rubin and the 
like in the ’60s, but also a step further.

I don’t normally enjoy phone interviews. 

You can’t engage with your source the same 
way you can in person. Also, you always 
step on each other’s comments when trying 
to make it a conversation because you can’t 
see the other person slightly open their 
mouth when they want to say something.

Chatting with Rush feels like shooting 

the breeze with an old friend, even over the 
phone.

“What I always did was whatever read-

ing that was going to be used by the priest for 
that sermon that Sunday, I would find music 
from avant-garde jazz tradition that would 
fit that really, really well,” Rush said.

As someone who was not raised in a reli-

gious household and could count the num-
ber of times I’ve set foot in any church on 
my hands and toes, the music of the church 
was always the only thing that could get me 
inside the door. I can say I would have been 
at Jazz Mass every weekend.

In Rush’s eyes, Canterbury’s role on cam-

pus is an incubator for students to not only 
to examine faith and beliefs, but also explore 
their range as musicians –– just as Franke 
did in the ’60s –– and engage in social justice.

“Lots of groovy music that students are 

doing on their own, there’s just not really a 

place for them to do it, so they do it at Can-
terbury,” Rush said. “It’s a scene and scenes 
are really, really important historically and 
scenes are important socially, and out of 
scenes come activism.”

L

ining the walls of the Canterbury 
House foyer above the large bay 
windows facing North Quad Resi-

dence Hall are CD cases — Ornette Coleman, 
Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder and the like — 
interspersed with images of what appear to 
be saints like Mary Magdalene and Hilde-
gard of Bingen. But not all of them are reli-
gious figures. Martin Luther King Jr., Isaac 
Newton, Albert Einstein make appearances. 
No one else could have constructed this 
symbolic exhibition of the bonds between 
Episcopal sainthood and jazz iconography 
other than Rush.

Chaplain Matthew Lukens, in a green 

flannel with the typical black shirt and white 
collar underneath, confirms my suspicions. 
When I asked about his casual attire mixed 

with the collar, Lukens said he will probably 
wear the collar less as he gets older. For now, 
he wears it because, to him, it means the 
Episcopalian Church is “willing to invest in 
leadership with someone who’s young and 
queer.”

Lukens celebrates his one-year anni-

versary as chaplain at Canterbury in Octo-
ber. Prior to his accepting of the position, 
Lukens was hiking the Appalachian Trail 
and, before that, was working as Vicar of 
Emmanuel Church in the Diocese of Hawaii.

At Lukens’s feet rests Bear, the House’s 

pet dog, who is skittish at first but just wants 
you to chase him and play. Naturally, I have 
to oblige.

Next to Lukens is Music, Theatre & Dance 

senior Kenji Lee, the coordinator for Can-
terbury’s Concert Series. He also goes by 
“Music Guy” or “Dude of All Concerts.”

When Lukens first arrived in Ann Arbor, 

Lee gave him the rundown on what this 
space was and what it had the potential to be. 
Lukens said he had always wanted to work 
at a student ministry and when Lee outlined 

Canterbury’s four main pillars of opera-
tions — faith community events, food min-
istries, the concert space and social activism 
— Lukens quickly discovered Canterbury’s 
goals aligned with his own.

“The first time we met, you talked about 

Canterbury House as a ‘compassionate space 

for all people,’” Lukens said to Lee.

In Lukens’s eyes, Lee’s description 

lives up to its history. But Lukens quick-
ly discovered, after learning more about 
the institution’s legacy in Ann Arbor, 
that he could not have bigger shoes to 
fill.

During his first month at Michigan, 

Lukens attended a lecture on the Lav-
ender Scare, the moniker given to the 
persecution of LGBTQ individuals in 
the federal government during the Cold 
War. Upon talking to the lecturer and 
other faculty members who had attend-
ed the University in the ’60s, he got to 
know how important the building was 
and the duty he inherited.

“I said ‘My name’s Matthew, I’m the 

new chaplain at Canterbury House’ and with 
that, their entire expression changed on 
their faces and they lit up and said, ‘Canter-
bury House? When I was an undergrad here 
back in the ’60s, that was where all the activ-
ists hung out. I’m a secular Jew but I was at 
Canterbury House. It was great.’” Lukens 
said some recounted to him. “The history 
here is really well established … and I really 
take that as a mandate in my time here to fig-
ure out how can we best live up to that.”

However, Lukens knows reveling in the 

past and trying to restore the glory days of 
Canterbury won’t serve the community 
as well as allowing Canterbury to evolve 
with the present times. Lukens still encour-
ages any student groups, be they political 
in nature or not, to use the space and plan 

Alec Cohen/Daily 

Evan Chambers performs at the Canterbury House Thursday, October 4. 

“In Rush’s eyes, Canterbury’s role on 

campus is an incubator for students to 
not only to examine faith and beliefs, 
but also explore their range as musi-
cians –– just as Franke did in the ’60s 

–– and engage in social justice.”

Alec Cohen/Daily 

SMTD senior Kenji Lee, concert coordinator, at the Canterbury House Thursday, October 4. 

