"We serve the Episcopal Church, but welcome Christians of every label. We are a Christian community, welcoming people of any faith, or none. Our community is diverse in terms of age, race, gender and orientation. Jesus is our Way, but not to the exclusion of all other paths to God."

A recurrent theme of the Cathedral’s life is journey, said Giles. "As well as being a way of life, journey is expressed clearly in our Sunday Liturgy when the whole assembly moves through the renovated space between ambo, font and table. Journey suggests that we are called to travel, rather than to arrive, to be dynamic rather than static."

The cathedral community honors the question as much as the answer. To seek and to enquire is higher calling than knowing all the answers. We are learners to the end, he said.

The cathedral sees transformation as process rather than event. "In response to the question ‘Have you been saved?’ we warm to the answer given by Fr Raymond Raynes, sometime Superior of the Community of the Resurrection; ‘I’m damned if I know.’ Like St Paul, we ‘press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus’ (Phil 3:14)"

"We seek to be progressive in our faith, grateful for the Biblical scholarship which now uncovers the deep meaning of the Scriptures beneath their literal face value. Inerrant Scriptures seem to us about as believable or supportable as infallible popes. The cathedral is affiliated to the Center for Progressive Christianity (www.tcpc.org)"

Giles blasted what he called the tragic and brutal consequences of absolute certainty in religious conviction. "Total certainty of an exclusive relationship with God leads to the dismissal of others and a denial of their right to find God in accordance with their own tradition. It leads eventually to crusades and inquisitions and militant fundamentalism."

"As a cathedral of the Anglican Communion, we rejoice in the Via Media, the middle way between extremes which is a mark of our tradition and a reminder of our call to understanding, mutual respect, and reconciliation," he said.

Horrified at his remarks, Canon Gregory O. Brewer rector of Church of the Good Samaritan in Paoli, the largest parish in the diocese and orthodox in faith and morals, wrote to Giles saying that his vision for interfaith dialogue would "require a complete renunciation of the Christian faith."

"How is it acceptable or desirable for people to deny the very sacrifice Christ has made on their behalf? It appears to me that by that remark you have denied both the teaching of Scripture and the faith expressed in the creeds of the Church. How is this acceptable for the Dean of our cathedral?"

Declaring that he was not opposed to interfaith dialogue and the ongoing task of mutual understanding and that God has revealed a portion of his divine nature in a variety of religious traditions, "to enter into religious dialogue in the way you have described it is to sacrifice the mission of the Church and promote an understanding of the Christian faith that both the authors of the Scriptures and the Creeds, indeed most of Anglicanism, would find unrecognizable."

Brewer blasted Giles saying, "Such a declaration on your part fulfills the description of what Paul describes in Galatians as 'another Gospel'."

Brewer signed his letter, "with genuine sorrow".

Pennsylvania is the oldest diocese in the United States (1784), with one of its newest cathedral foundations (1992).

Last week the Dean of the Cathedral in Denver hired an Imam to be on the full time staff of the cathedral as a new theological development and experiment in "interfaith dialogue."

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