John Coltrane - Religious Figure

Religious Figure

After Coltrane's death, congregants at the Yardbird Temple, in San Francisco, began worshipping Coltrane as God incarnate. The Temple was named for Charlie Parker, whom they equated to John the Baptist. The St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church, San Francisco, which is fondly known as the "Coltrane church", is the only African Orthodox Church which incorporates Coltrane's music and his lyrics as prayers in its liturgy. In order to become affiliated with the AOC, Coltrane was "demoted" from being God to a saint.

In 1996, documentary filmmaker Alan Klingenstein made a short (26 minute) film called The Church of Saint Coltrane. Another documentary on Coltrane, featuring the church and presented by Alan Yentob, was produced for the BBC in 2004. Samuel G. Freedman writes in his New York Times article "Sunday Religion Inspired By Saturday Nights", December 1, 2007,

... the Coltrane church is not a gimmick or a forced alloy of nightclub music and ethereal faith. Its message of deliverance through divine sound is actually quite consistent with Coltrane’s own experience and message.

In the same article, he comments on John Coltrane's place in the canon of American music.

In both implicit and explicit ways, Coltrane also functioned as a religious figure. Addicted to heroin in the 1950s, he quit cold turkey, and later explained that he had heard the voice of God during his anguishing withdrawal. In 1964, he recorded A Love Supreme, an album of original praise music in a free-jazz mode... In 1966, an interviewer in Japan asked Coltrane what he hoped to be in five years, and Coltrane replied, "A saint."

John Coltrane is depicted as one of the ninety saints in the monumental Dancing Saints icon of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. The Dancing Saints icon is a 3,000-square-foot (280 m2) painting rendered in the Byzantine iconographic style that wraps around the entire church rotunda. The icon was executed by iconographer Mark Dukes, an ordained deacon at the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, who has painted other icons of Coltrane for the Coltrane Church. Saint Barnabas Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey included Coltrane on their list of historical black saints and made a "case for sainthood" for him in an article on their former website.

In 2011, Christian Vander of Magma released an album called John Coltrane l'homme suprême, which translates into John Coltrane The Supreme Man.