Valentine's Day brings us to but one subject - love.
London has an endless supply of weirdness for those who have a mind for such things. On Valentine's Day I can think of no more deserving place to ponder than the Georgian Orthodox Cathedral whose vast steeple overlooks Clapton Common, these days surrounded by synagogues of the Stamford Hill Jewish community.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, this was not always a Georgian Orthodox Cathedral. Just one look at it tells you it was formerly a Church of England parish church (or just possibly a Presbyterian, Congregational, Methodist or less likely Baptist imitation of one).
Wrong.
Notwithstanding its appearance, this building has never been any of those kind of churches and has written into its former trust that it can never be used by the Church of England or the Salvation Army. In the early 21st Century it passes for just another old religious building, but at the end of the 19th century it was, to put it mildly, the centre of attention.
This 'Ark of the Covenant' as it was called, was the London location of the Agapemonites. Together with a vast communal estate in Somerset and various minor outposts in Britain and Europe it represented the influence of an End-Time preacher who centred his followers on the Song of Solomon. Mr Prince's followers included several wealthy Victorian merchants and several more Victorian single and separated women.
Like countless before, contemporary with and following his day, Mr Prince gathered a following of those who knew they would not die for they were the last generation. As it was to turn out they did die and so did he, but that was just the start: into his shoes had stepped the ample figure of Mr Smyth-Pigott, formerly of the Anglicans and Salvation Army (note above) under whose charismatic auspices this phenomenal building was erected. And later besieged by rioters.
The Abode of Love (the community) and this building (the Ark of the Covenant) gave the Victorian press plenty of juicy speculative material of preachers with multiple wives (spiritual brides) and various goings on imagined. Well, not entirely imagined because a spiritual bride fell pregnant . . .
As the Church of England worries itself sick about same sex marriage it might look a little closely at a building from which it is banned in Upper Clapton and figure that even a church with a high steeple is not enough to give spiritual dignity to an entity that has misunderstood the kind of love the church should really be talking about to the world.
Like countless before, contemporary with and following his day, Mr Prince gathered a following of those who knew they would not die for they were the last generation. As it was to turn out they did die and so did he, but that was just the start: into his shoes had stepped the ample figure of Mr Smyth-Pigott, formerly of the Anglicans and Salvation Army (note above) under whose charismatic auspices this phenomenal building was erected. And later besieged by rioters.
The Abode of Love (the community) and this building (the Ark of the Covenant) gave the Victorian press plenty of juicy speculative material of preachers with multiple wives (spiritual brides) and various goings on imagined. Well, not entirely imagined because a spiritual bride fell pregnant . . .
As the Church of England worries itself sick about same sex marriage it might look a little closely at a building from which it is banned in Upper Clapton and figure that even a church with a high steeple is not enough to give spiritual dignity to an entity that has misunderstood the kind of love the church should really be talking about to the world.
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