Learning from St. Saviour’s, Riga, Latvia
Cultivating and strengthening religious collectives is the most important thing to do in offering pastoral care in our time, but only if the community embodies the care of soul.
—Bruce Rogers-Vaughn
During the summer of 2025, my wife, Helena, and I spent two weeks in her native city, Riga, the capital of Latvia. We went there to visit family members and to enjoy the cultural and architectural treasures of the Latvian capital. Yet as can happen with international travel, there came to be other rewards as well.
For some time, I’ve had issues with my left knee, and I finally decided to do something about it. The process was remarkably smooth. I soon had an appointment with a skillful and humane physician. A simple injection made me far more mobile, and I managed the sidewalks and cobblestones of the city better than before. Hip surgery may be in my future, but that’s another story. Thanks to my sister-in-law’s recommendation and Latvian medical care, I found my footing again.
Besides the clinic, I came upon another place in Riga where people find their footing, in this case their spiritual balance. Over the years I have worshiped several times at St. Saviour’s in Riga, Latvia’s sole Anglican church, and I did so on the two Sundays of my recent trip. English is a very popular language in Latvia, including at St. Saviour’s, a multinational Church of England parish using a contemporary liturgy, simple ceremonial, and Hymns Ancient and Modern.
There I came upon a trifold offering basic information about the parish. This folder was a masterpiece of its genre, effectively addressing such questions as “Why come to church?” and “What if I’m spiritual, but don’t like organized religion?” It makes clear that St. Saviour’s is inclusive; all are welcome no matter how strong or weak their faith may be.
The trifold set forth major features of this parish that aims to be “A Sanctuary in the City.” The Sunday 11 a.m. service draws people from all over the country, as well as visitors from abroad like me. A monthly potluck after worship provides opportunity to share a meal together and get to know, or know better, one another. Members of the parish speak more than a dozen languages and are of many ages and backgrounds.
A soup kitchen every Saturday serves disadvantaged people in Riga. Helena, a member of the parish before she came to the United States, recalls the soup kitchen’s founder, the wife of a British diplomat, who drove ambulances during World War II, then launched another life-saving ministry, feeding the hungry, no questions asked. That ministry continues.
Today’s technology has brought to St. Saviour’s a WhatsApp prayer group in which participants share their joys and sorrows with each other and intercede for one another according to everyone’s needs. How frequently does this group interact? Every day!
Other ministries go on as well, including a recently launched Bible study that follows the soup kitchen on Saturday. It is described as an opportunity “where we can help each other understand the Bible, debate meanings, and consider the texts as literature.” This approach rests on a belief that through Scripture God still speaks a liberating message.
Latvia is a nation of music lovers. St. Saviour’s normally hosts free concerts every Wednesday, a unique feature of the Riga cultural scene. This is a wonderful opportunity for people to attend who cannot afford tickets. That the concerts take place at lunchtime makes them accessible to senior citizens, even on days when it gets dark early.
These concerts provide a platform for both young talents and veteran performers. The St. Saviour’s organ also sounds forth regularly as organ students prepare for their examinations, and charity concerts are presented throughout the year.
Consecrated in 1859, the church’s building is a red-brick Neo-Gothic structure located north of the Old Town center, close to Riga Castle and the banks of the Daugava River. It was designed by Johann Felsko, a Baltic German who was the chief architect of Riga for a generation, and whose most significant accomplishment was the development of the city center.
The original congregants of St. Saviour’s included British merchants and sailors who had come to a place unfamiliar to them. One way they transplanted their tradition was by building their house of worship using materials brought from Britain: a shipload of earth and bricks. Thus they witnessed to where they came from and to a commonwealth greater than either Britain or Latvia.
The Sundays I attended St. Saviour’s this past summer involved me in an architectural parable of sorts. On each occasion, I entered by a back door that took me on a circuitous route and put me in the chancel on the way to the congregational seating. Construction required this path. Construction also required my path several years earlier, when entering by the main door put me in a truncated nave in which the chancel had been relocated.
In both cases, a stately 19th-century building was in the midst of major renovation due to the parishioners’ firm belief that they and their building have a future coming to them from God.
St. Saviour’s is officially recognized in Latvia as a place of cultural and historical significance, and high renovation standards are maintained. However, the Latvian government provides less money for the renovation of this site than in the past due to the geopolitical situation. Funding the extensive renovation now depends almost entirely on the members and friends of St. Saviour’s, both nearby and around the world. The church aims to raise €35,000 (U.S. $41,000) so that the work can be continued without costly and disruptive interruption.
In his valuable book, Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age, Bruce Rogers-Vaughn explores how neoliberalism radicalizes individualism in ways that result in isolating, deadening, and calculating forms of existence. The primary challenge for pastoral care and any other forms of caring for souls is not the effort to fix personal problems or to redress specific social injustices. Rather it is to help people, individually and collectively, to find their footing—“to articulate the deep meanings that ground their lives and to strengthen healthy collectives and social movements that hold some residue of transcendent values.” These collectives and social movements, some of them faith communities, constitute resources necessary to confront human suffering.
Rogers-Vaughn recognizes three orders of human suffering. The first simply accompanies the human condition. It includes death, grief, illness, and much else. The second order is the distress caused by human evil, whether collective or individual. Third-order suffering arises beside the other two, and the three become entangled. This new variety occurs because people are spiritually homeless, left to their own devices to handle distress. They lack the resources to deal with what they are experiencing. At most all they have are dubious narratives of personal recovery provided to them by the market. This third-order suffering often goes unrecognized as suffering even by its victims. Rogers-Vaughn identifies the blending of the three orders as “the new chronic.”
Collectives must amplify hope in a way that refuses to give precise measurements to the superior society for which it waits. Hope thus exceeds optimism. It is not visualized, but something for which we dare to listen.
My brief experience of St. Saviour’s left me with a sense that I cannot shake off. Here is a congregation that helps people find their footing, wherever they come from. It is also a community that works to find its own footing, aware this task is never quite done. There is no elegant master plan directing St. Saviour’s and its diverse activities. Instead, the main features of congregational life, to one degree or another, help to articulate deep meanings that can ground people’s lives, and they hold at least some residue of transcendent values—maybe a great deposit of those values. In this way, human—and planetary—suffering can be confronted and even overcome, all in the name of the living Christ. Simply put, here is a church that embodies the care of soul.
St. Saviour’s in Riga can serve as an energetic model for multicultural, metropolitan parishes around the globe, whose numbers are likely to increase as the world becomes more urban and cities grow increasingly diverse. In such places, sure footing is essential. Moreover, it is possible. This Anglican congregation at the center of the capital of a Baltic nation lives on hope, and hope can be contagious.
The Rev. Charles Hoffacker is an Episcopal priest who lives in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The Rev. Charles Hoffacker is an Episcopal priest who lives in Greenbelt, Maryland.
