A Key to Spirituality

Gone for a while – My Apt flooded on 10-23-24 and I’ve been living ‘hand to mouth’ ever since – a heavy-duty learning adventure for sure! Stable for now: (they say) two more weeks before I can move back in (probably more). Meanwhile I pick up my life, as best I can, and every Friday’s Blog. And Please: I read emails and comments – But don’t expect a reply.

“The Key to Spirituality
A CHURCH IN SAN FRANCISCO GIVES
NEW MEANING TO THE TERM
“GOSPEL MUSIC”
BY BRANDON TENSLEY

Beyond his pathbreaking musical accomplishments, John Coltrane might be the most spirituality divine jazzman in history. At least, that’s what congregants think at the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco.
The church was established by two young lovers, Franzo and Marina King. While celebrating their first wedding anniversary in 1965, the couple went to a show at the Jazz Workshop, a beloved San Francisco nightclub. When Coltrane began to play, the Kings say, the performance felt like a message from God—almost a baptism by sound. The couple became convinced that Coltrane’s art was a path toward spiritual enlightenment. By 1969—two years after Coltrane’s death—they’d established the church at 1529 Galvez Avenue in San Francisco, and that same year, Franzo became a bishop in the Church of God in Christ.
For congregants, the holy text is not the Bible, but rather A Love Supreme, Coltrane’s 1965 album, considered by some to be his masterwork, which includes audio of Coltrane intoning a prayer. On the first Sunday of every month, the church invites jazz fans to participate in its “Love Supreme Meditation.” The lights are dimmed, and the congregation hears Coltrane’s spoken-word poetry from the album: “I will do all I can to be worthy of thee O Lord. . . . There is none other. God is. It is so beautiful.”
The church has faced spiritual and logistical challenges over the past five decades. In 1981, for instance, the Kings battled a lawsuit from the musician’s widow Alice Coltrane, after what the Kings say was a theological falling out. (Among other things, Alice wanted a more staid approach: Fewer saxophones more meditation.) The congregation has moved often amid San Francisco’s cycles of gentrification, enjoying seven addresses since 1969. In 2022, the church moved to its current home at 2 Marina Boulevard. The African Orthodox Church granted sainthood to Coltrane in 1982.
Services at Saint John’s are held each Sunday at 11 a.m., with a combination of Coltrane’s spoken-word recordings and traditional Scripture. The Kings ecstatic experience of discovering Coltrane is reflected in the church’s Byzantine-style paintings (above) that depict Coltrane in a white robe, flames flaring from his saxophone.”
– Smithsonian, January + February 2024, p 21.