Reflections Of a Community Church

"For where two or three are gathered

in my name, I am there among them."

Matthew 18.20

Reflections of Cascade Church

There are two symbols that will always be meaningful elements in my life... the continuous-forever-flow of our Thornapple River and the shape of our historic white steeple framed against the layers of trees. They represent answers for me. It is appropriate on the 125th Anniversary of Cascade Christian Church that we look to them as simply symbols of continuity and innovation.

On the occasion that I attend the Sunday 8:15 A.M. worship service here in Cascade, I listen to the various voices singing and reading. I find myself wondering about all the different people who came before me to worship in the chapel... about who might have sat in the pews 50 or 100 years ago... about their life journeys... about how we change and grow through our struggles... about how we keep coming back.... Just as it is now, 125 years ago, Cascade was a growing village of newcomers settling in the Thornapple River valley. They were raising families, making a livelihood, experiencing the birth of technology and exploring the new ways of living. Although our daily activities have changed, we have many of the same challenges as those pioneers.

  

The Victorian Age... A Rural Period

Imagine for a moment a worship gathering on October 8th, 1864. It's likely that it was one of the homes of the Stows, the Browns, or the Richardsons. These 16 people gathered simply to pray together, to share their concerns, worship God, and remember Christ. For fifteen years the faithful people of Cascade Christian Church brought their new neighbors to their weekly gatherings. They baptized people in the river and took turns preaching. The villagers met in homes or the school house or in the Red Ribbon Hall which later became the home of Mr. & Mrs. Fred Carr. As it remains today, it was a community effort.

In 1876, in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, George Steward Richardson planted 100 oak, maple and elm trees at the heart of Cascade Village. In the late1870's, Mr. Richardson, often called "a public-spirited individual," gave a building site on Orange Street for a new church to the congregation. Being that the new "church house" would be used for community gatherings as well as for worship, everyone in the village and community helped with the project. I'm sure many prayers went up for the structure. In October of 1880, the new chapel's bell called the villagers to worship. I wonder if the builders and founders had an idea that their little chapel would still be in service 125 years later.

For about 60 years the village maintained 58 people, and the township totaled 1200.  Newcomers could travel to Grand Rapids or to Ada by train. In Cascade, just down [the] river, magnetic springs were discovered, thought to have the "power of healing all known diseases." It was truly a rural community. Horses parked in the shed across the way. Everyone knew everyone.

Cascade Christian Church was, and still is, what we might call a networking group. A farmer could call upon the congregation for help bringing in a crop or raising a barn, or whatever need there might be. In all the personal testimonies written about Cascade and about Cascade Church, there always seems to be mention of community outreach and an interest beyond the church membership.

The community outreach programs can be traced as far back as our first full-time minister - Elias Sias. In the 1890's, the Christian Endearment Group formed with "the young people" for the purpose of community projects and charities. As it was the only one of its kind, the group drew youth from many denominations. Although the gathering and activities were religious in nature, many young men and women met their spouses this way.

The Age of Automation

Cascade felt the nudge of technology with the introduction of the Model T Ford. By 1920, the horse shed where the horses parked during church was pulled down. It was the beginning of the Roaring Twenties. The chapel was freshly painted inside and the monthly bulletin said that, "the church building will gladly be opened to the community for any righteous purpose."  The church had competition then. People could get in their cars and really "go somewhere." The carbide lights were replaced with electric ones. People concentrated on what was new. Rev. Lester Doerr gave much of his time to the youth in the church.

The depression of the Thirties was truly a challenging time for Cascade Christian Church. Mr. Doerr, like other minsters at Cascade, who always returned much of their salaries back to the church, served several years without stipend. Yet, there were almost twice as many new members as in the Twenties. Many of Mr. Doerr's youth became, and possibly still are, leaders here in the community.

Mr. Doerr resigned to enter the army in 1939, turning the church over to Frank Green who served until 1945. In spite of the war, during the Forties people gradually moved into the area. A social room was added on over the church kitchen. Attendance fluctuated. Harold Chambers, a superintendent of the Forest Hills Schools District served for a year, remembered for stressing Christianity in our everyday living and daily responsibilities. He sponsored various programs for returning servicemen.

Both Mr. Green and Mr. Doerr returned for a few years; Doerr paving the way for the postwar exodus from the city and the mushrooming suburbs. This period in the late 40's and 50's was the time when the church was concentrating on opening minds and doors. Youth groups rallied for various community projects. The Tri-Cees (Cascade Christian Crusaders) formed to promote "Christian fellowship and recreation for the community, and to undertake projects which would help the growth of the church and community." The scout troops formed in the church as did youth groups and ladies guilds. It was a time of zest and vigorous growth. With Sunday School classes overflowing into the town hall our Christian Education Building took priority. The building was dedicated in 1957, again to the church and community.

As written in the Centennial Issue and in Rev. Gaylord's beautiful story of his three decades here at Cascade, the development of this church is truly fascinating. Again it is not just a history of a growing church; it is a story of people and of how we change and grow through and because of our struggles.

Growing up in Cascade Church

When the chapel services were overflowing - 125 people - past the fire safety code, the congregation built the sanctuary. Most likely I came, still in my first year, with my parents and brothers to the dedication service. Probably my brothers participated in some part of the service. Like my brothers, I went to nursery school, Sunday school and choir. I went to Camp Crystal for several summers for youth camp, family camp, and CYRO camp. Truly, my first spiritual awakening happened at camp. Rev. Gaylord baptized me there in chilly Crystal Lake. 

I spent many learning hours in youth groups, church awards and Tags... stuffing envelopes... visiting area community projects and churches... working all day... and falling in the creek... at camp Gaylon... sending Valentines to Kent county jail inmates... anonymously delivering baskets of food to the poor... [and] traveling with the youth choirs. We learned, not necessarily by words, rather by doing, and by following the examples set by our teachers.  Although I didn't realize it at the time, these experiences were formative. I was learning ways in which to take Christ as my personal [role] model.

With a history of conflict and criticism between the various "Christian" denominations, I now find it truly a "Christian" concept to put aside the grievances and invite a Catholic priest into our church every Thanksgiving. This is what setting a "Christian" example is all about.  I will always have fond memories of the Christmas season at Cascade Church... of the Christmas Eve Worship service... of my Dad dressing up as a Santa with black eye-brows poking out from underneath a white wig... "What a sight!" All for Operation Santa Claus! I will always remember him standing in our kitchen talking about the faces of the under-privileged children to whom he was distributing gifts. Operation Santa Claus has expanded into various other non-seasonal pro­grams. The people at Cascade Christian Church give to literally thousands every year. Ultimately, I learned that "Christmas giving" is meant to go on through out the year.

There were other examples... My mom [was] always baking pies or bread for supper at church or sewing choir robes or bringing a meal to someone... or she was off on a "Save the Tree Mission". Perhaps I too that effort for granted when I was growing up. But these last few years, I have developed a great respect for the countless hours of work women like my mom quietly contributed to the Christmas Workshop, and church meals, and all of the behind-the-scenes charities. Whether they know it or not, there are so many women here in the community who have taught me important lessons just by giving their time... in all of those little things! It's the effort that counts!

The interpretive choir will always be dear to my heart. It was one of those things that touched me deeply the very first time I saw the group. like the other choirs, and special music, I found it to be another mode of worship and spiritual expression. It is important to find these creative, spiritual avenues. As things come around [during the annual church calendar], here I am working [again] with the interpretive choir.

The social element was a strong pull. Like many youth before me, I too met my first love one Sunday after church, eating cookies over in the East Parlor. I remember noticing him in the Christmas programs, and in the older TAGS classes. He became a camp counselor, a junior deacon, and an Eagle Scout. Yes, he was, and still is, a beautiful person, and had we lived 100 years ago we might have been one of those pioneering couples in Cascade. But, like our river, we change, grow and continue to move on, following out little niches here and there [even as the Thornapple River rolls itself through our community].

Of course, when I went off to college I thought that I would find a different church, maybe a new way of worship. I thought that somehow if I didn't go to the same church as my parents then I would be truly grown-up. In fact, I visited many different churches - I even stopped going for a while. And although I have met some delightful people, when I came home, I suddenly appreciated Cascade Church for what it [was and] is. It struck me that church was never just church or self contained. It always managed to integrate with the community. That is the essence of the outreach. After I graduated, I went off to Oxford, Ohio (Cincinnati), to work and just grow. [But years later], once again, I live along the river in the Fredrick Wykes' home in Alaska, [Michigan].

It touched me when I returned... in so many ways things haven't changed here at Cascade Church. Like always there are lots of new faces on Sunday... new programs... and struggling issues. That's what makes it the same Cascade Church.

New Faces... New Programs... New Issues...

but it is still Cascade Church

by Dianne VanStrien

date of writing unknown

*1989 would marked the

church's 125 year anniversary

 

 

ORIGINAL DOCUMENT

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES

Cascade Christian Church will celebrate its 150 years all year long

November 19, 2014

Cascade Christian Church website

CHURCH PICTURES

2021-2022

 

THE GOOD OL' BOYS

CASCADE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

 

 

How Not to Speak of God...

 

How Not to Speak of God...

by R.E. Slater

Setting: Russia's attack on its brother state, Ukraine, on February 24, 2022.

Here is a post I had read on Facebook which I will leave anonymous from a fellow Christian friend I admire but whose theology of God is austere and ungenerous.

An evangelical Christian whose faith is built on Reformed Neo-Calvinism which sees God as an unloving God disinterested in caring or helping those in need (such as the unfortunate Ukrainians in the loss of their freedom and democracy to Russia's bombs and forced subservience).

On the post was the recital of Romans 9:14-24 NLT without further commentary. Thereto were a number of "likes" and several comments agreeing with its posting. Knowing the person, their faith, and their followers, I then understood why it had been posted. Simply, it was to show a blind trust and faith in God regardless of world's events (such as the Covid pandemic we all have experienced).

Which is all well or good as blind faith goes but has become a misleading source to God's character impugned by Christians believing all sin and evil in the world is from His hand and by His direction.

Who further believe that God controls and determines all events in this world, whether good or evil, and that God may use both the wicked and the good to set His purposes aright in the outcome of His divine rule (as depicted in their minds by the book of Revelation).

At one time I was of the same mind and belief. But no longer. I do not consider God to be aloof from this world like the Greek Olympiad's Zeus, who came-and-went at his "good" pleasure leaving mankind to its fortunes or fates.

Nor do I attribute to God a determinative control over a freewilled creation birthed out of his love and not by divine fiat. A God who gave to creation the multiplying gifts of valuative wellbeing to bless one another with boundless opportunities of love, kindness, and recreation.

Nor do I attribute to God any-and-all wickedness which a loving, holy God cannot do. It would be out-of-character with whom God is. No, all sin and wickedness can only be attributed to a freewill creation which has abandoned its holy charters of love to enact unloving words and deeds upon itself. These things are not from God but from a creation choosing sin over love.

This kind of fundamental, or evangelical, or "biblical" faith is the kind of dogma I now reject and can not longer approve, defend, or wish to fix. Instead, I have chosen to abandon this kind of faith which believes in a God such as this and move to a Reformed process version of my faith

I should explain that since I am not Lutheran, Catholic, or Orthodox, the Lord took what I knew and helped me express my post-fundamental and post-evangelical Reformed faith using process philosophy as its base, and process theology as its outcome. In doing this, my rejection of Calvinism for Arminianism, and its subsequent uplift towards Open & Relational Arminian Theology can now include Open & Relational Process-based Arminian Theology. One which I now call Process Christianity so that it might include Lutherans, Catholics, and Orthodox believers.

Moreover, by quoting and interpreting Romans by Calvinistic standards I have found such theological outlooks to be implicitly harmful to Spirit living. Evangelical Calvinism has become over the years a very dark, misleading theology about God, God's promises and hope, and Christian living. But from personal experience it can also be a place where the Spirit of God might lead a follower of Jesus away from even as the Spirit had done with my own evangelical outlooks and beliefs many years earlier.

Which is why I write. In hopes that what spiritual light is spoken here at Relevancy22 may lead other Jesus-followers away from similar Christian systems of spiritual bondage and oppression to see the light-and-life which lies in Jesus our Lord and Savior when beheld in the love of God, our Father and Redeemer.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

February 25, 2022

* * * * * * * *

The God who is Not There for You

Posted by Anon

February 25, 2022

ROMANS 9.14-24 NLT

14 Are we saying, then, that God was unfair? Of course not! 15 For God said to Moses,

“I will show mercy to anyone I choose,

and I will show compassion to anyone I choose.”

16 So it is God who decides to show mercy. We can neither choose it nor work for it.

17 For the Scriptures say that God told Pharaoh,

“I have appointed you for the very purpose of displaying my power in you and to spread my fame throughout the earth.”

18 So you see, God chooses to show mercy to some, and he chooses to harden the hearts of others so they refuse to listen.

19 Well then, you might say, “Why does God blame people for not responding? Haven’t they simply done what he makes them do?”

20 No, don’t say that. Who are you, a mere human being, to argue with God? Should the thing that was created say to the one who created it, “Why have you made me like this?”

21 When a potter makes jars out of clay, doesn’t he have a right to use the same lump of clay to make one jar for decoration and another to throw garbage into?

22 In the same way, even though God has the right to show his anger and his power, he is very patient with those on whom his anger falls, who are destined for destruction.

23 He does this to make the riches of his glory shine even brighter on those to whom he shows mercy, who were prepared in advance for glory.

24 And we are among those whom he selected, both from the Jews and from the Gentiles.

        END

* * * * * * * *

HOW to Speak of God aright...

A Suggested, But Brief, Interpretation

of Romans 9.14-24

by R.E. Slater

Here Paul speaks to an audience of Jewish and Gentile Christians who have questions about Israel's rejection of Jesus. From personal experience the Apostle Paul (once the Jewish Rabbi, Saul) understood the pride and hard-heartedness of his fellow tribal congregants and templed Jewish theocracy.

Firstly, Judaism was a monotheistic faith - but at Jesus' Incarnate Advent, the Jews believed Christians were holding to an apostatizing faith of two Gods, not One. For centuries later, both Jews - and later Muslims - misunderstood the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation of Christ. It kept both faiths to their own monotheistic faiths rather than convert to the trinitarian monotheism of Christianity.

However, here, in this passage, time, and setting, Paul gets a bit rough in his speech to his fellow brethren saying that if willful pride and the blasphemy of Jesus' redemptive atonement kept Israel from Christ, so too can pride and short-sighted theology keep the Christian church in its error and apostasy from Christ.

Paul makes full usage of the Judaized teachings of the Mosaic Law to show how far apart their idea of God is from whom the true God is. In affect, Paul's speech here of the OT God was purposely using the genre of sarcasm to compare Israel's hard-hearted, pagan perception of God to that of the Christian idea of a loving God who is always present with His people.

When Christians read these passages in a literalizing way they will find what they are looking for... a doctrine of a God of fear and judgment. But for the child of God who knows the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, there is no spirit of fear but of trust and affinity for the "Lover of Our Souls."

Romans 9 is the assurance to the converted Jew or Gentile that the God they had once pictured as doing "this or that thing" is but a fiction to the real story of God's steadfastness of love not only to the believer, but to all men and women living in a world of disruption, harm, and suffering.

God is a God to all people of all faiths even as God can never be a God to those who misunderstand Him and purposely refuse to change their beliefs teaching of an austere God who does what He wants, forgives whom He wants. A God not of love - but of bounded edges and withholding grace. Who is so far removed from creation as to become a God one fears instead of a God one loves. A God who is worshipped as a pagan would do, mistrusting the very God they sacrifice to rather than worshipped as a God who is good and kind and selflessly sacrificing to His creation in all His ways, actions, and deeds.

Romans 9 is a declaration to austere religions that the very God they worship is justified in treating their faiths exactly as they believe. But in Paul's rant, this same God is spoken of untruly and is not the graven image He is made out to be:

22 In the same way, even though God has the right to show his anger and his power, he is very patient with those on whom his anger falls, who are destined for destruction.

23 He does this to make the riches of his glory shine even brighter on those to whom he shows mercy, who were prepared in advance for glory.

24 And we are among those whom he selected, both from the Jews and from the Gentiles.

R.E. Slater

February 25, 2022

*After writing this post I came across an interpretation of Romans 9 which may or may not help show how Calvinists and Arminianists think on the same passage. Perhaps this will enlighten a bit further. Here is the link.

Denzel Washington's Interview on the Film "Macbeth"

MACBETH

The Irish Times

Actor Denzel Washington stars alongside Frances

McDormand in Joel Coen’s new film version of Macbeth

by Maureen Dowd

Dec 7, 2021

The Tragedy of Macbeth - Official Trailer (2021)

Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand

Sep 21, 2021

Explaination of Shakespeare Macbeth

Shakespeare - The Tragedy of Macbeth: "A Play for Our Times"

Reviews of Coen's Adaptation of Macbeth

The Tragedy of Macbeth

The Tragedy of Macbeth Is a Frighteningly Good Shakespeare Movie

Is ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’ (2021) Movie Based on a True Story?

Explained, Ending & Review Of ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’ (2021) Movie

The Tragedy of Macbeth Ending, Explained

‘The Tragedy of Macbeth': How Joel Coen Diverged From Shakespeare’s Classic Verse

* * * * * * *

Denzel Washington: ‘In heaven there are two

lines. I’m interested in being in the short one’

Denzel Washington photographed by Dana Scruggs/New York Times

The Irish Times

When Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand began rehearsing to play the Macbeths, he asked her how she thought the couple had met. Oh, she replied blithely, the Macbeths met when they were 15. They were Romeo and Juliet, but they didn’t take their own lives. They just stayed married for 50 years. But they didn’t have any kids and his career stalled, so, thinking legacy, they suddenly went gangster and killed their nice, old friend, the king.

“This is one of the only good marriages in Shakespeare,” says Joel Coen, who adapted and directed The Tragedy of Macbeth, which opens just after Christmas. “They just happen to be plotting a murder.”

James Shapiro, a Shakespeare scholar at Columbia University, backs up the director, adding dryly, “But there’s not much competition, is there? The Capulets? Richard II and his nameless queen? Richard III and the doomed widow, Anne?”

Coen and McDormand, who are married and who met on the Coen brothers’ debut feature, the 1984 film noir Blood Simple, have teamed up with Washington to do another noir, the Scottish saga of “Blood will have blood.”

Denzel Washington. Photograph: Dana Scruggs/The New York Times

As in all film noirs, the guy is a sap and the lady is trouble. Lady Macbeth pushes her husband into killing Duncan by taunting him about his manhood. When you watch McDormand – who defied all Hollywood odds to became a soaring star in middle age, specialising in playing women who, as she puts it, “are not necessarily redeemable” – you absolutely believe she has the will for regicide.

Mirroring the plot of Macbeth, McDormand pestered her reluctant husband until he gave in and agreed to direct the movie – without his (also reluctant) brother, Ethan, no less.

“Frances McDormand is a beast,” Washington says, admiringly. A few weeks into filming, she asked her leading man if she had earned the right to call him D, as some close to him do. “Sure,” he replied. Coen was amazed at what it was like to work with the pair, an old-school Hollywood match-up of titans. “They are such powerful, intuitive and fascinating performers,” he says. “You were just floored by what happened on the set.” He shot in a square “academy” format, so it’s all about the faces of Washington and McDormand filling the frame.

I’m more interested in directing because I’m more interested in helping others. What I do, what I make, what I made – all of that – is that going to help me on the last day of my life? It’s about, Who have you lifted up? Who have we made better?

“The three of us are at the top of our game,” McDormand says. “Denzel’s 66. I’m 64. Joel is 67. We’re still taking risks. We’re still willing to fall flat on our faces. Working with Denzel was delicious because of all those things.” It was a tricky artistic three-way. She says her husband had to trust that “Denzel and I weren’t going to gang up on him as actors”, and Denzel had to trust that she and Joel “weren’t going to be too intimate as husband and wife”.

Over coffee at a midtown Manhattan hotel, the morning after the movie’s premiere at the New York Film Festival, Washington looks casual in black Under Armour sweats but seems beat. He says he has had very little sleep. He has just put the final touches on a film he directed, A Journal for Jordan, the true story of the romance between Dana Canedy, a former New York Times reporter and editor, and Sgt Charles Monroe King, a soldier who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, after meeting their infant son only once. It stars Michael B Jordan and Chanté Adams, and opens in Ireland in late January.

“It’s just a beautiful story of loss and love,” Washington says, “a story about real heroes and sacrificing, men and women who have given their lives so that we have the freedom to complain.” (The star, who has played a policeman more than a dozen times, recently made similar comments of respect for cops who put their lives on the line.)

He says that before his 97-year-old mother died, a few months ago, he promised her that he would “attempt to honour her and God by living the rest of my days in a way that would make her proud. So that’s what I’m trying to do.”

“I’m more interested in directing because I’m more interested in helping others,” he says. “What I do, what I make, what I made – all of that – is that going to help me on the last day of my life? It’s about, Who have you lifted up? Who have we made better?

“This is spiritual warfare. So I’m not looking at it from an earthly perspective. If you don’t have a spiritual anchor, you’ll be easily blown by the wind and you’ll be led to depression.” Sounding like his father, a Pentecostal minister who died in 1991 – “That’s what got my father, he couldn’t give up the meat and fried foods” – Washington asks me: “Have you read the Bible? Start with the New Testament, because the Old Testament is harder. You get caught up in the who-begot-who-begot-who thing.”

If they see you free all week, they won’t pay to see you on the weekend. I don’t tweet. I don’t have Instagram. I embrace my inner analogue

He says he wants to mentor young actors like Jordan, Adams and Corey Hawkins, who did an acclaimed turn as Dr Dre in Straight Outta Compton, and now plays Macduff, the lord who beheads Macbeth.

Washington talks about working with Chadwick Boseman last year on his final film, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Even before he met Boseman, Washington had agreed to Phylicia Rashad’s request to help pay the young actor’s tuition, along with eight other students at Howard University, to go to a summer acting programme in England.

“He was a brave young man, strong, and he had a strong woman next to him,” Washington says. “Once, I remember going in the trailer and thinking, Something is going on there. I didn’t know what it was. Nobody did. Bless him. He kept it to himself and did his job. But he needed the time between takes to get his energy back.”

Hawkins says that he sometimes prayed with Washington on the Macbeth set in Burbank, California. “Sometimes we get talking, and you see the preacher in him,” the younger actor says. “He’s just a natural-born charismatic leader who is not afraid to talk about his own faults or misgivings or shortcomings.”

Washington was eager to go to directing school under Coen, saying, “Joel is just a genius, focused.” Alex Hassell, a British actor who plays a Scottish royal, Ross, as a “sexy Rasputin”, says Washington often pressed Coen to explain his technique. “Denzel would be asking, ‘Why this? Why that?’ He was so excited to get to work with Joel.” Hassell says Washington could go so “deep in his cortex” that watching him was hypnotic, and he would sometimes forget to act.

“I’d be like, ‘Oh my God, oh, hang on. I was supposed to be there as well.’ It might have just been him coming out of a tent. There is some quality that some people have which you just want to bottle.”

I read Washington a quotation from Maya Angelou: “Denzel Washington appears to me a classical contradiction,” she said in the March 1994 issue of Ebony magazine. “He is totally contained as a vault of rare gems and is as totally accessible as air.”

I don’t know what Hollywood thinks. It’s not like it’s a bunch of people who get together on Tuesdays

He smiles, saying: “Beats a sharp stick in the eye, I guess.” I wonder how he maintains an air of mystery in this oversharing era. “If they see you free all week, they won’t pay to see you on the weekend,” the star says. “I don’t tweet. I don’t have Instagram. I embrace my inner analogue.”

I tell Washington he is so peerless at speaking Shakespearean verse in a conversational way that he could be the love child of John Gielgud and Spencer Tracy. “That’s 45 years of training,” he says. When he was growing up in Mount Vernon, New York, a mentor told him: “Your natural ability will only take you so far.” With that in mind, after playing Othello at Fordham, he started searching for a school that would give him a foundation in the classics and ended up attending graduate school at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.

“The whole thing with Joel and Fran was they wanted ‘No stick-up-the-butt Shakespeare,’” Washington says. They wanted “dope Shakespeare,” Hawkins adds. Todd Black, Washington’s producing partner, who worked with him on the movie versions of August Wilson’s Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, says, “His whole thing with young people is ‘Don’t act.’ He will stop an audition cold and say, ‘You’re acting, please don’t act.’ He always checks their resumes to see if they’ve done theatre.”

I ask Washington if Hollywood had become more diverse after #OscarsSoWhite. “Hollywood is a street,” he says. “I live in Los Angeles. I don’t live in Hollywood. I don’t know what Hollywood thinks. It’s not like it’s a bunch of people who get together on Tuesdays.”

Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand in The Tragedy of Macbeth.

Photograph: Alison Cohen Rosa/A24

When the New York Times’s movie critics put Washington atop their list of the greatest 25 actors of the 21st century (so far), Manohla Dargis said that his dominance “is a corrective and rebuke to the racist industry in which he works”.

“Okay,” he says, chuckling, when I ask him about it. “You know, put the work out there and then people decide it’s this, it’s that.” There were some who thought that, after the Black Lives Matter protests, having a black Macbeth would cause the play to resonate in a different way. At the start Washington asked Coen about the black and white of it all. But it turned out he was just asking the director whether he was going to film in black and white. Washington believes that if you look at everything through the lens of a political agenda, you lose the plot as an artist.

The director and his stars wanted to make a Macbeth that was universal, not topical. McDormand tells me she was not interested in modern interpretations of Macbeth as an emblem of toxic masculinity or in correcting the stereotype of Lady Macbeth as a harridan. “It’s banal” to make Shakespeare politically correct, she sniffs. “It’s bigger than that.” But the casting still makes a difference.

A fan approachs Hawkins to tell him how amazing it was to see two black actors, representing good and evil – Macduff and Macbeth – in the final, searing sword battle on a bridge.

Coen goes for abstraction and chiaroscuro in the movie. Besides removing colour, all the costumes and sets are stripped of ornamentation. The gray gloaming and hallucinatory mists envelop a spare and savage landscape, with the witches shape shifting into three black birds.

The disorienting first scene features the whispery, scratchy voice of the staggering British actor Kathryn Hunter, who plays one witch divided into three; she sounds as if she’s gurgling blood.

I’m a God-fearing man. I try not to worry. Fear is contaminated faith.

It’s Coen’s first cinematic adventure since his brother traded the silver screen for the stage – “Of course, I missed him,” Joel Coen tells me – and he doesn’t want us to know if we’re in Macbeth’s wild mind or on the wild moors. “It’s the essence of Joel, I have to say,” McDormand says. The director was careful about fiddling with the verse, noting, “You don’t want to sing the song without the melody.” In keeping with the vision of a “postmenopausal” Macbeth, they did change a line Macbeth speaks to his wife: “Bring forth men-children only/For thy undaunted mettle should compose/Nothing but male.” “Should compose” has become “should have composed.”

“They’re a couple at the end of their ambition, not at the beginning of their ambition,” McDormand says. “In our interpretation, she starts realising that she’s become expendable, and that’s what drives her insane, not the fact that they kill Duncan and there’s blood on her hands. She’s given up her soul to the dark forces, and he’s not confiding in her any more. He’s not asking for her help.”

The actor says that, for her and D, their long marriages provided insight: “Denzel and Pauletta have been married as long as Joel and I have. We had to learn how to be parents together and life partners together because it’s an ever-changing landscape.”

Coen says he wasn’t scared of the Macbeth curse “until Covid shut us down on Friday the 13th in March 2020”. But Washington was never worried. “I’m a God-fearing man,” he says. “I try not to worry. Fear is contaminated faith.” Unlike some other top movie stars, Washington is just as comfortable playing villains, antiheroes and deeply flawed men as he is portraying heroes. If there was ever any pressure on him, as there was on leading black actors like Sidney Poitier, to choose saintly, role-model parts rather than demonic, criminal parts, he ignored it.

Denzel changed my life. To be 30 and get to work with one of the greats of all time? I’ve never seen anybody be a flat-out better storyteller. He knows what the audience is thinking. He knows how to surprise them

“What he decides he will do, he will do,” says Brian Grazer, who produced Washington’s hits American Gangster and Inside Man. “What he decides he won’t do, he won’t do.” The actor is nonpareil at playing lethal and unpredictable. His eyes can go dead and scary, full of razor blades, even as he offers that magnetic smile. In life, as in art, Grazer says, you know that this is not a guy you want to mess with. Washington was chilling as the bodyguard out for revenge in the 2004 film Man on Fire, and as the sociopathic narcotics cop Alonzo Harris in the 2001 thriller Training Day, for which he won an Oscar.

“Training Day, I ad-libbed, like, 50 per cent of what you hear,” Washington says. Its director, Antoine Fuqua, used real Los Angeles gang members named Bone, Killer and Hitman as extras. “We had a lot of real folks that had done real things, so I used those people. I learned from those people.”

Ethan Hawke, who was taken on a terrifying ride as Jake Hoyt, Washington’s tyro partner in that film, recalls the actor’s threat of violence. “It was like playing music with Miles Davis or baseball with Babe Ruth,” says Hawke, who was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actor for his role. “Denzel changed my life. To be 30 and get to work with one of the greats of all time? I’ve never seen anybody be a flat-out better storyteller. He knows what the audience is thinking. He knows how to surprise them. His imagination is so thorough.

“The greats can play offence and defence, and most people can’t. Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman and Denzel manage to be equally compelling as protagonist and antagonist.”

Washington’s other costars are equally effusive. Meryl Streep talks to me about his “mesmeric power over an audience” onstage. Tom Hanks says, about their dazzling duet in Philadelphia, “I sat beside him for three weeks shooting the trial. I had no dialogue. It was a thriller of an acting class. He follows no rules but pursues the moment. No nonsense, but a looseness that can’t be faked. A one-on-one scene with him is a game of hardball catch – he is both daring you to keep up and propelling you to do more.

“He is our Brando. Nicholson. Olivier. And, like me, he steals office supplies and notebooks from the set dressing.” Hanks recalls that, at one point on the set, “we were talking about our New York City days as broke actors – about the same age, peers, trying to learn craft and get work. I noted that we were in the same boat at the same time. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘But you could catch a cab in Manhattan.’”

Denzel Washington. Photograph: Dana Scruggs/The New York Times

Those who know Washington say he can be guarded; he can be suspicious of putting himself in others’ hands, or of being taken out of context because he doesn’t want to play into someone else’s narrative. He keeps it low key, driving himself places without a posse. He isn’t a regular on the Hollywood party scene.

Actors who work with him are never sure where they stand. He can be charming or elusive but not buddy-buddy.

“I did not try to be his friend, hang out at a Lakers game or go to birthday parties,” Hawke says. “I just wanted to offer him my best.”

Melissa Leo has worked with him in three movies – Flight and two of the Equalizer films – and still calls him Mr Washington. McDormand agrees: “He’s actually a really lovely human being, but he does really need to protect his process. He has a very trusted team of people that he’s worked with for years, that was his pod.”

When Liev Schreiber starred with Washington in The Hurricane, he says, he expected a friendly Denzel and got a prickly Hurricane instead. “I thought he really hated me,” Schreiber says. But, later, he got a call from Jonathan Demme about appearing in The Manchurian Candidate remake with Washington, who had pushed for him. “I was completely shocked by that,” Schreiber says. But, he adds, Washington plumbs such dangerous and painful depths as an actor that small talk could be distracting. “I never worked with an actor who seemed to care more.”

Grazer says Washington told him that he wouldn’t play Frank Lucas in American Gangster unless the Harlem murderer and drug trafficker was shown paying for his crimes in the end.

Bruno Delbonnel, the French cinematographer for The Tragedy of Macbeth, says he is accustomed to being the first on set at 5am, so he was surprised to see Washington beating him there. “Denzel was there, always,” he said. “It was a competition between him and me. He tried to beat me, because he was rehearsing alone for an hour or so on set with no light. Just himself walking on set and trying to have a feeling of what he could do.”

Washington and Ethan Hawke in Training Day (2004) Photograph: Warner Bros

Washington doesn’t whine. Spike Lee made his displeasure clear when Washington lost the Oscar in 1993 for his stunning performance in Malcolm X to Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman, but Washington said graciously that if he had won, “I would have felt badly. It was Pacino’s time.”

When he accepted the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in 2019, it was clear that he was getting more publicly spiritual. He called himself a vessel of God and played an old video of his late father-in-law talking about how we must love and care for one another. He talked disdainfully about the “Twitter-tweet-meme-mean world that we’ve created” and said we’d better do our best to “turn this thing around” for young people.

He continued this theme at our coffee. “The enemy is the inner me,” he says. “The Bible says in the last days – I don’t know if it’s the last days, it’s not my place to know – but it says we’ll be lovers of ourselves. The No 1 photograph today is a selfie, ‘Oh, me at the protest.’ ‘Me with the fire.’ ‘Follow me.’ ‘Listen to me.’

“We’re living in a time where people are willing to do anything to get followed. What is the long- or short-term effect of too much information? It’s going fast and it can be manipulated obviously in a myriad of ways. And people are led like sheep to slaughter.”

In heaven, he says, “there are going to be two lines, the long line and the short line, and I’m interested in being in the short line.” He advises me to read the Daily Word, an inspirational message that has an app. (As I write, the daily word is “compassion.”)

“You have to fill up that bucket every morning,” he says. “It’s rough out there. You leave the house in the morning. Here they come, chipping away. By the end of the day, you’ve got to refill that bucket. We know right from wrong.” As he leaves, he turns back to remind me: “Get that Daily Word.” – This article originally appeared in The New York Times

*The Tragedy of Macbeth opens in Ireland on Monday, December 27th