Getting an Overview
The Rev. Benjamin Campbell is shown at Richmond Hill.
Sitting atop Church Hill in a former monastery now known as Richmond Hill, the Rev. Benjamin Campbell talked about what he has witnessed living in one of Richmond’s oldest neighborhoods for the last few decades and shared his thoughts on what makes the city such an interesting place.
“For those who really ... think that the human drama is a great drama, in which human beings actually learn how to build civilization and learn what it is to be one another’s brothers and sisters, [Richmond] is probably one of the great living dramas in human history and we’re sitting right in the middle of it.”
“I’m proud of the fact that we’re constantly working to redeem our history here,” he said. “I think America is the story of the ideals of three peoples,” Campbell said, referring to the Native Americans, African-Americans and Europeans, who are “gradually overcoming their prejudices and their idiocies.”
“I love the fact that you can see the entire panoply of American history from 1607 to today within a mile of where we’re sitting right now,” he said. What he loves about Richmond’s history is “not the history that’s told as much as the history that isn’t told, some of which is horrible and some of which is good.”
In Richmond, “you can see the class system, you can see the race system, the economic oppression. You can see the brutality, you can see the prejudice, and you can see the struggle of human ideals and the spirit of God against those things to bring about a constantly changing human picture.
“We get to watch the thing unfold sitting right here in Richmond, in a way that very few people do,” he said. “The people who get a kick out of that really do enjoy Richmond because we can see the change from where we are.”
A sixth-generation Virginian, Campbell said he likes the sense of commonality and a “sane conservatism” that Virginians — and Richmonders — seem to share.
“It means you take human values seriously. It means it matters whether people talk to each other or not. It means it matters whether society is civil or not. I like those things and I’m proud of them when they come out,” he said. “I think you can see, at this moment, in this town, and probably for the first time since I’ve lived here, a real ... celebration of people’s desires to work with each other.”
The strain of the previous city administration “has made people realize how important it is to work together,” he said. The current city leadership has “created an environment where you can see what happens when people attempt to accomplish something together. People do have a sense, despite all their warring, that we live in the same place and that what we do together is important.
“I don’t think you can say that about a lot of modern metropolitan cities,” he said.
There are places within Richmond where these connections are seen and felt and heard.
Campbell remembers the first time he walked into the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart.
It was the 1980s and he was working for the newspaper of the Episcopal diocese. The Catholic diocese had allowed the Episcopalians to use the Cathedral for a celebration.
“I walked in with a camera and a pad just expecting to do one more story on a church,” Campbell said. “I had no idea there was anything like that in this city. The power of the space overwhelmed me.”
It’s “the most beautiful space in the city of Richmond [and] in metropolitan Richmond,” he said.
He returned to the Cathedral years later during an interfaith prayer service that he and others organized after a particularly horrific slew of murders in the city. About 800 or 900 people were there.
“I can still feel the kind of civic electricity within that environment,” he said.
If nothing else, Richmond is a hilarious place in a lot of ways, Campbell said, citing Byrd International Airport — now Richmond International Airport — as an example.
“There weren’t any international flights flying in and out of Byrd International Airport,” Campbell said. “But we figured that it was Byrd International Airport because, Richmond being the capital of the Confederacy, any flight in and out was an international flight.”
“There are some funny things about Richmond that you just kind of have to enjoy,” he said.
This article originally published in Discover Richmond. Click here to view more Discover articles, or send us an e-mail to request a copy of the magazine.
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