Visiting Liverpool Cathedral, I encountered a guide who shared so much valuable insight, which helped me understand Christianity in a way I hadn’t before.
In the past, I participated in Christian activities back home, but I always found it difficult to grasp the rationale behind faith. However, through this cathedral, it became much easier to comprehend.
The cathedral truly serves as the heart of the city, preserving its history and connecting the community.
Liverpool is primarily known for its identity as a “port city” and its significance in both World Wars, and these city characteristics are deeply embedded in this cathedral.
In the 1920s, the cathedral compiled a record of every soldier from Liverpool who died in World War I, with over 40,000 names and related details. The entire archive is displayed in a glass case, and the cathedral flips a page every few days—taking many years to complete the cycle.
Wealthy locals contributed directly by donating stained-glass windows, and beneath each window is the name of the donor (I even saw that the captain of the Titanic had donated one).
The guide explained it as a form of competition among the wealthy elite to donate, and I thought of it as similar to the modern “fan voting” phenomenon, where people compete for the top spot.
Many sculptures inside the cathedral are unconventional, featuring sailors, naval officers, the air force, and dockworkers.
There is even a spotlight on a Titanic-related sculpture.
In sum, the cathedral is an incredibly direct community project. It is a religious, political, and cultural project all rolled into one.
The cathedral was constructed from 1904 and completed in 1978, enduring two world wars, with generations of people raising funds to bring it to life. It is the largest cathedral in Europe, and had the public not recognized its value over time, the project would have failed.
In some ways, it represents the “Good Old Times,” a period with less division and a shared sense of honor. It’s hard to imagine any organization today raising such large sums of money for a similar project (it’s said to have cost nearly 1 million pounds at the time, which would be equivalent to about 200 million pounds today).
Additionally, the guide shared something rather amusing: the cathedral removed all traces of Judas. His figure was left out of sculptures, and his image was excluded from paintings.
He said he didn’t understand why, as those stories no longer make sense today. I replied that I understood now—this was essentially an early form of cancel culture.
It made me reflect on how, compared to that era, we now have much more powerful tools to enforce “narrow-mindedness and hatred” on a larger, more complete, and ruthless scale. In comparison to their time, we modern people have far less leeway to make mistakes, and the space for forgiveness has greatly diminished.
