Christianity from the 43 bus: 15. The Old Priory

Concluding a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

Leaving the City of London, the 43 bus heads over the current London Bridge, a bridge lacking any of the excitement of its ancient predecessor.  Just as it turns left into the bus plaza of London Bridge Station the 43 passes our final Christian observation - and a very large one - Southwark Cathedral.

London - Greater London that is - has many Cathedrals. Almost any Church that has Cathedrals has adherents in this world city so various redundant churches have been repurposed as cathedrals for Ukrainian Orthodoxy, Russian Orthodoxy, Greek Orthodoxy and so on.  Even limiting it to Catholics and Anglicans London has four Cathedrals (plus Westminster Abbey - a former Cathedral).  Two of them are in Southwark, which has thereby tried more than once to gain City status, without success.

Southwark (C of E) Cathedral is very old, but it is not very old as a cathedral (1905).  It can be seen on old pictures of London and began life as a Priory, later becoming St Mary Overie (i.e. over the river).  Here was founded the Hospital which has now become St Thomas's - one of London's most conspicuous hospitals, now over the river from Westminster and the Houses of Parliament.

Leaving its liberal-on-steroids theology aside I think Southwark Cathedral is the nicest in London - more homely than its Catholic counterparts and the far more famous St Paul's.  Yet still with the grandeur of a cathedral in the midst of bustling Borough Market.

What is perhaps most astonishing to the modern observer is that, like St Clements (see blog 14.) on the London side of London Bridge, this building, then a parish church, was eyed for demolition when plans for London Bridge's new structure were made in the 19th Century.  Yes, that's right - just pull it down for the new road.

It is a sobering note with which to finish our journey.  London has little time for romanticism unless it can make money out of it.

Christianity from the 43 bus: 14. The Bells of St Clements. Perhaps.

Continuing a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

King William Street takes the 43 bus from the Bank of England to the City end of London Bridge, a wide straight road that therefore cannot be old and dates from (unsurprisingly) the reign of King William, immediately prior to Queen Victoria. 

Probably far above the various offices there is a flat or two, but on the face of it nobody seems to live in King William Street these days.  Yet at the other end of it from St Mary Woolnoth is another C of E Church, St Clement.

St Clements Lane, on which corner the church stands, is a tiny apology of a road off Eastcheap.  Eastcheap was one of the main thoroughfares of the old city, long before the likes of King William Street were built.  Eastcheap is seriously old dating back to Anglo-Saxon times!

The famous old nursery rhyme goes . . .

Oranges and lemons

Say the bells of St. Clement's

You owe me five farthings

Say the bells of St. Martin's

When will you pay me?

Say the bells of Old Bailey

When I grow rich

Say the bells of Shoreditch

But is this that St Clements? It is a dispute with St Clement Danes which plays the nursery rhyme tune on its bells to assert its point.

Squeezed between office buildings with next to no residents the existence of this church is a point of remark.  More surprising still in that in the early 1800s - when King William Street was built - there was a cull of City churches.  The population was moving to the new suburbs and there were churches - but not residents - everywhere in the old City.  St Clement very narrowly survived.

An obvious question is what is the usefulness of this church in the 21st century.  From the noticeboard above we can see that, like all City churches, it has its full complement of Alderman, Clerks, Beadle, Priest-in-charge and Councilmen.  Then there is the other noticeboard:

This board is in better shape than most churches I preach in, and quite cool. It is a reminder that the Church of England has operated imaginatively with its City of London church buildings.  A handful operate as normal parish churches but many otherwise.  Both St Mary Woolnoth (previous blog) and St Clement are part of three churches under the Imprint branding, providing contemporary ministry among London's many young professionals.

For me, this illustrates exactly the problem with my own Baptist 'tribe' and other non-conformists.  Under our umbrellas this church would simply have closed, greedy central funds drooling at the real estate value incoming.  St Clement lives on - for God's sake.

Christianity from the 43 bus: 12. Bunhill Fields

Continuing a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

If you've followed through this blog series you will be starting to understand how many amazing Christian stories litter the 43 bus route.  But one place, opposite John Wesley's house, has so many stories that a long blog series would be needed to tell them.  That place is Bunhill Fields.

For people like me, at least, it contains so many figures whose writings I have come across - but most notably perhaps Isaac Watts (so many hymns), Daniel Defoe (As in Robinson Crusoe etc.) and William Blake (Author of the hymn Jerusalem).  The Wesleys mother Susannah is buried here as well as other worthies like the three Johns: John Owen, John Rippon and John Gill.  The reason for this galaxy of non-conformist names is that this was a convenient burial place just outside the City of London available to non-Anglicans for burial.

The grave that catches the eye - mainly because of its prominent position - is that of John Bunyan.

For someone who spent so much of his life in Bedford gaol - which we have to thank for his unequalled Pilgrim's Progress - this seems an unlikely place to be buried.  A preacher of such brave heroism I felt sure I would discover an amazing story, matching his writings, of how his death came about in London.  Perhaps if I were wiser I would have considered that there is probably a reason why I have never heard a story about Bunyan's actual death.

Anyhow, here it is.  He rode his horse from Reading to London in very heavy (August) rain.  He got soaked.  He fell ill at his friends house as a result.  His cold turned to a fever.  He died.  In summary, he was killed by the British Summer . . .

Christianity from the 43 bus: 7. Caledonian Church

Continuing a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

These days are not auspicious ones for the Church of Scotland, declining at a breathtaking rate.  There are two Churches of Scotland in London - presumably to offer a purer form than the supposed English version buried within the even-more-rapidly declining United Reformed Church.

Neither of the C of S churches are on the 43 bus route.  But one long closed was, and lends a surprising tribute to an entity that will perhaps forever be part of the London namescape.

Today it is the Ramsay Scout Centre.  This is an unlikely spot for a scout centre, but once on this site stood Caledonian Church of Scotland.  It had a Scout Group in large numbers and Mr Ramsay was enterprising enough to secure the derelict site for the scouts' use as a centre.

Caledonian Church may seem an obvious name for a Scottish Church, but it was not that simple.  Caledonian Road nearby - with an Underground Station of the same name - vaguely points north toward Scotland but that isn't how it got it's name either.  Then there is Caledonian Market - but it doesn't really sell kilts.

All these Caledonianisms owe their existence to a school (an asylum in old terminology) for the children of poor Scots, not from this area but from the whole of London.  The Caledonian Church was a spin-off to provide a spiritual outlet and support for what became (thanks to Queen Victoria) The Royal Caledonian School.

So one way or another, this site owes more to children past and present than to adults. 

I like that.

Christianity from the 43 bus: 5. Beauty and the Beast

Continuing a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

It's Hallowe'en so an appropriate day for something a little scary.  This building doesn't look scary to me - but it is very noticeable in a long row of anonymous shops with flats above them as the 43 trundles down the Archway Road towards London.

In bright sunlight it shines as the rays hit the golden statues and surroundings.  It doesn't look like it belongs in its setting, but it generally cheers the place up.

It isn't a church, and has never been a church.  Rather, it is a Hindu temple in what was formerly a synagogue.  As it happens it does not belong in its setting in another sense because the actual Sri Lankan community this type of temple serves does not live in this part of London.  Still, there's not much gold visible from a 43 bus so it is nice to see.

Then there is the parish church, just a block further along the road. 

A critic, upon its completion in the Victorian era, called it the ugliest church in London.  It is quite hard to know every church in London so this seems like an exaggeration.  Speaking for myself I would be inclined to place it on any shortlist though, notwithstanding some of the celebrated architects who helped to design (I use the word loosely) it.

As a Baptist I am not at all of the view that the church is the building.  Nor am I well disposed to golden images on the outside of Places of Worship.  Yet taking a step back from my theology and imagining myself on a search for a God who might welcome me I cannot escape the thought that on Archway Road it might a lot easier to step through golden portals to seek Him than enter what appears to be Europe's first nuclear bunker with its ventilation shaft.

World Cup Churches 5. England

It's World Cup year - taking place in November/December in Qatar instead of the Northern Hemisphere summer as it has always previously done.  Heading round the 32 qualifying countries I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is a exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Moving into World Cup Group B we are on familiar territory with England.  

How can I choose a church in a place where I have visited and perhaps even taken some part in hundreds?  I found it surprisingly easy because one church epitomises more about England and churches than any other I know.

Westminster Abbey was an obvious kind of choice.  

But this is not Westminster Abbey - though it is consciously almost exactly the same as one end of the Abbey.

At least it is obviously a Church of England building.

But this is not a Church of England building.  Or a Roman Catholic one.  Nor has it ever been - although in another way it has been several Church of England buildings . . .

Welcome to Christ the King Church, Bloomsbury, London, a building so monumental that any first time passer-by will inevitably look at it - though it is far harder to see inside.  It is/was/is a Catholic Apostolic Church (building).

English church life has never been simple and full of quirks - but this is a church that almost defies description in that regard.

Although it is my choice of English church it does owe a great deal to Scotland - more specifically to Edward Irving.  He was a Church of Scotland Minister who developed what might now be called Pentecostal theology.  Irving was part of a great 19th century revival.  As a Church of Scotland minister in London he was thrown out of his church.  In a long story which I tell in one sentence his story inspired followers who brought the Catholic Apostolic Church into being.  As you can see from the picture (you could also hear it from the organ at a recital or see it in the ceiling vaulting) his followers were not poor.

After various splits the tradition lives on in derived denominations in America and Germany in particular.  But the original thinking was based on the Apostles, Angels (as per the Book of Revelation), of the End-Time church preparing for the Return of Christ.  It represented one of the countless Christian movements birthed in England - and indeed in London.

As such no provision for succession was made and eventually the church died out through lack of key leaders.

The building is set in the middle of London University - by far and away the largest university in the UK.  The Church of England University Chaplaincy eventually took over the use of the building for its work.  Many former London University graduates will remember the building (without probably ever realising it was not, in fact, an Anglican church).  

Then the Chaplaincy moved out.

All of us in church life in England know that the Church of England is a fantasmagorical mix of Catholicism that is almost too Catholic for the Pope and Evangelicalism that is indistinguishable from an independent Charismatic Congregation, or a sturdy Bible Teaching Centre.

Forward in Faith, representing Catholic Anglicans looking to stem non-traditionalism  (including feminine leaders) has its home - you've guessed it - here.  In the shut-off end where the altar is, they hold mass on weekdays.  It is a building that epitomises the grandeur of a Catholic-minded liturgical incense-fest.

On Sundays Euston Church meets here.  Euston Church is an Evangelical Anglican mission aimed at the international students, dynamic, biblical, young.

If you've read all that, you are now bewildered.  You are asking of this monumental building, "Yes but what is it then?".

And the answer is, it's English.

Karl

Not far from where we live is Highgate Cemetery.  It is an amazing place for the conglomeration of famous people's corpses that lie there.  It is unusual in being one of very few cemeteries where you pay to visit as a living person; thankfully the admission fee for those expected to walk out again is a lot lower than if you are brought in to stay.

Though he is not at all the only famous person here, for whatever reason Karl Marx has the centre of attention.  His grave is more like a statue from the town square of a country behind the old Iron Curtain.  But whereas many old communist dignitaries have been unceremoniously removed from their Eastern plinths, Karl has been given more dignity in London.  In fact he was moved within the cemetery, but only in order to give him a better position.

Herein is the irony.  For day after dead day, Karl looks across his little lane at several graves with prominent crosses.  As far as history can tell, Karl's main connections with the cross were too early and too late.  Too early in that when he was baptised into the Lutheran church the sign of the cross meant nothing to his infant mind, and too late in Highgate Cemetery when his soul has returned to God who made it.  

In between?  Some historically significant philosophy that is looking somewhat out of date while the cross continues to change the lives of all kinds of people.

Psalm 91: A Psalm for a Pandemic in Lent

The text of a sermon preached at Muswell Hill Baptist Church on March 15, 2020.  This was the church's last meeting before the growing pandemic led the Government to instruct all religious groups to stop gathering in order to hold back the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

We are in unusual times – for us.  

But these are far from unusual times for the human race.  More locally, these are far from unusual times in London.

Every so often you may be checking out the increasingly grim coronavirus statistics.  But in the Diary of Samuel Pepys we find him reading the 17^th century Bills of Mortality:  

Thus this month ends, with great sadness upon the public through the greatness of the plague, everywhere through the Kingdom almost. Every day sadder and sadder news of its increase. In the City died this week 7496; and all of them, 6102 of the plague. But it is feared that the true number of the dead this week is near 10000 - partly from the poor that cannot be taken notice of through the greatness of the number, and partly from the Quakers and others that will not have any bell ring for them. As to myself, I am very well; only, in fear of the plague . .

So we are not at all the first London congregation to turn to Psalm 91 as a pestilence happens around us.

1. This Psalm is for You - personally

Psalm 90 begins this 4th book of Psalms. 

1 Lord, you have been our dwelling-place

throughout all generations.

. . .4 A thousand years in your sight

are like a day that has just gone by,

or like a watch in the night.

5 Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death –

they are like the new grass of the morning:

It makes uncomfortable human reading  (until you trust in God.)  The individual human being seems very small, part of a tide.  This is what a global epidemic feels like - numbers and statistics and curves and percentages.  And it always was:

The Bills of Mortality began to be published regularly in 1603, in which year 33,347 deaths were recorded from plague. 1625 saw 41,313 dead.  The 1625 outbreak was recorded at the time as the 'Great Plague', until deaths from the plague of 1665 surpassed it.  The official returns for 1665 record 68,596 cases of plague, but a reasonable estimate suggests this figure is 30,000 short of the true total.

Into all these fearful statistics comes Psalm 91.

1 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High

will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.

2 I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress,

my God, in whom I trust.’

In every ‘you’ in this Psalm it is addressed to the singular.  

HE who dwells – that’s just him, you, me.

The numbers are here of course: 

7 A thousand may fall at your side,

ten thousand at your right hand,

but it will not come near you.

But the number that matters is just you. 

This is a pointed and opportune time to ask this question – how is your personal relationship with God?

ISAIAH 55:6 Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near.  7 Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

If  you must self-isolate in this epidemic – take this Psalm with you – and remember it is for you, not for church.  Provided you too can say:

2 I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress,

my God, in whom I trust.’

2. This Psalm is for Salvation but not for Show

a. For Salvation

3 Surely he will save you

from the fowler’s snare

and from the deadly pestilence.

4 He will cover you with his feathers,

and under his wings you will find refuge;

his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

14 ‘Because he loves me,’ says the Lord, ‘I will rescue him;

I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.

15 He will call on me, and I will answer him;

I will be with him in trouble,

I will deliver him and honour him.

16 With long life I will satisfy him

and show him my salvation.’

There are many troubles in this Psalm:

5 You will not fear the terror of night,

nor the arrow that flies by day,

6 nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,

nor the plague that destroys at midday.

But His feathers are enough.  They are as a shield, as a rampart.  Feathers so gentle, so powerful.

Lord Craven lived in London when the plague raged. On the plague growing epidemic, his Lordship, to avoid the danger, resolved to go to his seat in the country. His coach and six were accordingly at the door, his baggage put up, and all things in readiness for the journey. As he was walking through his hall he overheard his servant saying to another servant. "I suppose, by my Lord's quitting London to avoid the plague, that his God lives in the country, and not in town." The man said this really believing a plurality of gods.

Lord Craven paused. "My God lives everywhere, and can preserve me in town as well as in the country. I will stay where I am.”

He continued in London, helped his sick neighbours, and never caught the infection.

It is a Psalm to place our trust in because God is personally with us where we are.

b. Not for Show

A Psalm for a Pandemic  - in Lent.  What has it to do with Lent? 

Lent is framed around the forty days when Jesus, in the wilderness, confronted and overcame Satan, the tempter.

LUKE 4:9 The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. ‘If you are the Son of God,’ he said, ‘throw yourself down from here. 10 For it is written [Psalm 91]:

‘“He will command his angels concerning you

    to guard you carefully;

11 they will lift you up in their hands,

    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”’

12 Jesus answered, ‘It is said: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”’

Satan tempts Jesus with Psalm 91.  It is Jesus’ chance to display his invincibility.  Jesus, instead, shows his obedience to his calling.

Even the most wonderful promises are part of our discipleship, our discipline, our self-denial.  Like the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the promises of God are for Service and for Salvation, not for Show.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great Baptist Preacher in Victorian London told this account of service and salvation in pestilential times:

In the year 1854, when I had scarcely been in London twelve months, the neighbourhood in which I laboured was visited by Asiatic cholera, and my congregation suffered from its inroads. Family after family summoned me to the bedside of the smitten, and almost every day I was called to visit the grave... I became weary in body and sick at heart. My friends seemed falling one by one, and I felt or fancied that I was sickening like those around me… As God would have it, I was returning mournfully home from a funeral, when my curiosity led me to read a paper in a shoemaker's window in the Dover Road. It bore in a good bold handwriting these words: "Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling." The effect upon my heart was immediate. Faith appropriated the passage as her own. I felt secure, refreshed, girt with immortality ... The providence which moved the tradesman to place those verses in his window I gratefully acknowledge, and in the remembrance of its marvellous power I adore the Lord my God.

Nobody can have two homes — two places of ultimate resort. And if the Lord be truly my dwelling place then even in these times, my home is enough and is secure - a home of divine feathers in a hard world.

Lamping Out

The Harvest season comes to an end and the dark evenings are upon us.  But London doesn't easily sleep.

Although London has long had all-night buses it now has all night underground trains.  As well as being helpful to people who must travel at night, it certainly doesn't make hectic London any more restful.

And although there are currently only a few lines on two nights it threatens the unique moment - unknown to all but a handful of Londoners - of lamping out.

I thought about this the other day when I hurried down a passageway only for the doors on the train to shut in my face.  It is not a rare thing for London travellers.  Except on one train.

The exact exception to this common experience takes place nightly when the last train runs.  A member of staff stands on the platform, another in the entry upstairs.  On the platform the train does not leave until anyone counted into the station has boarded the train, whereupon it is lamped out.  Instead of the passenger being held up by the leaving train, the passenger becomes the focus, the pivotal crux of the leaving train.  

And I thought about it again when I heard the harvest hymn about 'all is safely gathered in'.  The story of harvest but the metaphor of salvation.  For not one of God's elect will be missing; for every believer a place, for every place a believer.  Continuation of the current universe is because there are still sheep that are lost, still prodigals in a far country who must come home.  

Brexit and the folk on Thorney Island

Brexit has preoccupied another week of UK news, and it has taken (briefly) the horror of the New Zealand terrorist attack to dislodge it.  Brexit has proved and is proving a very thorny issue for the House of Commons.  Just round the corner is a street that perhaps makes that point:

Perhaps a Lord Thorney was a nobleman, or a mayor of Westminster or the owner of a big house in the street.  But no, this street is named after the island once nearby - Thorney Island.

The island was formed by the Tyburn River dividing as it entered the River Thames. It was surrounded by mud, almost fully flooded when the rivers overfilled and it was populated, we assume, by much wild, thorny vegetation.

Its inhospitable, isolated setting explains why it was chosen by the monks of the first millennium for their house and abbey.  The abbey was unsurprisingly called Thorney Abbey.  In relation to the East Minster in London, this abbey became known as West Minster and, as you know, the name has stuck.  A king added a Palace and then a Parliament arrived.

The monks, to put it mildly, would be surprised to find the Westminster of today.  Perhaps, though, they would not be surprised to find that all the collected wisdom of the 650 (actually 642 thanks to Sinn Fein abstentionists and the ever present spectre of death) souls who famously occupy the spot amounts to nothing much more than the thorns they cut down long ago.  The journey from prayer to palace to parliament to pandemonium is an invitation to complete the cycle back to prayer.

Mercy on the 134 bus

A few stops down the road from us one of London's latest knife attacks took place - on a bus.  The next day I sat on the same numbered bus and all of a sudden a 134 bus felt all bad.

The Curate's Egg is famously used to describe the part-good, part bad.

The wit derives from the curate awkwardly answering the Bishop that his bad egg is good in some parts.  Awed by the Clerical Eminence he is too timid to agree that it is all bad.  But a bad egg is, of course, just bad.

Life is a curate's egg of good and bad.  Only in the bad, such as on my 134 bus, it rarely feels that there's another chunk that is/was/will be good.  Only one organ may be diseased but the whole body seems bad;  only one neighbourhood gang is hostile, but the whole place feels unsafe; only one charge relating to one incident is made in court against you but you feel wholly criminal; only one relative is dangerously ill but the whole family lives under a cloud.  And so on. 

Psalm 23 does this in reverse. 

Goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. 

Part of life is goodness from God.  And the other part?  Well, others may call it badness, the wrong side of the street, a run of bad luck or the going getting tough.  But for the believer it is interpreted as the place of God's Mercy.  Was my bus ride no longer good?  Then it had become a place, for me, of mercy instead.  But no less divine.

Selling Baptist Life: Part 2. Alexander MacLaren

'This Memorial Stone was laid by Alexander Maclaren D.D. LittD., President of the Baptist Union 1875-76 and 1901-2 on Wednesday 24th April 1901.'

Many of us have benefited from the Dr Maclaren's sermons, published with an enthusiasm not so far short of those of C H Spurgeon (though without the same earthy wit).  What would the good doctor make of the disengagement of this building that he witnessed in its proud inauguration?

He might do quite well - here is Maclaren preaching on God's refusal, delivered by the prophet Nathan, to allow King David to build him a house (i.e. a Jerusalem Temple):

Unless we can with our hearts rejoicingly confess, 'Thou art the King of glory, O Christ! Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,' we do not pierce to the full understanding of Nathan's prophecy.
He, that is Christ, has built the true Temple, in that His body is the seat of sacrifice and of revelation, and the meeting-place of God and man, and inasmuch as through Him we are built up into a spiritual house for an habitation of God. In Him is fulfilled the great prophecy of 'My Servant the Branch,' who 'shall build the Temple of the Lord' and 'be a Priest upon His throne.' In Him, too, is fulfilled in highest truth the filial relationship... In that filial relation lies the assurance of Christ's everlasting kingdom, for 'the Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand.'

God's work is never ultimately about buildings.

Selling Baptist Life - Part 1: The Statue

Years ago, in the heart of one of the world's greatest cities, there was a building that was used by Baptist Christians.  I could have found that out by research, but the actual reason that I know is that I went there.

It was not a building that was especially encouraging.  It looked and smelled as though the maintenance level was determined by the needs of the budget more than the needs of the premises.  Nevertheless it represented the Great Baptist Headquarters and it was in Central London.  (To be technical it is not in London at all but in Holborn aka London Borough of Camden - the Free Churches have always been and remain almost entirely outside the City of London).

The Grand Vision that bequeathed the building to the current generations of British Baptists was that of early 20th Century Free Churchmanship, the same sense of Grand Vision that bequeathed a beautiful Edwardian church in Muswell Hill where I serve - complete with its galleries that imitate the old Langham Hall where the Promenade Concerts first began.

No Baptist congregation today would build such a chapel, and neither would the Baptist Union of today build the building in Southampton Row.  And so, in 1989, the building was sold. Today it is a hotel. Yet these old buildings are hugely instructive and symbolic and Baptist House is the more so for having been sold.

Here's the outside:

Yes, that's right.  A statue.

It is not very easy to understand a statue on Baptist House.  Baptists, after all, have scant love of statues and even at the height of ecumenism (the movement that blurred some lines between denominations in the hope of a visible unity) Baptists rarely had much positivity toward statuary.

Given the Biblicist nature of Baptists we might have expected a Biblical figure - John the Baptist perhaps?  Instead, leaving Biblical figures to the Catholics and High Anglicans the Biblical Baptists resorted to congregationalist John Bunyan.  He was probably, but not certainly, a Baptist too.  And famous.  But quite what a passer by is supposed to do with him remains a mystery.  Surely not a slight bow?  Not a garland on a saints day?  What, then?

Anyhow, fascinatingly the renovation of the building to an upscale hotel included bringing the statue into pristine condition, such as had not been seen since, perhaps, about 1905/6 as the London grime took hold.

Statues, you see, pose no threat.  Whereas the real John Bunyan was put in gaol, his statue can be secularly renovated without fear that it will ever do harm.  That's why we need living faith and not stonework.

St John Roberts

Today is the Anniversary of the execution of one of the many namesakes of mine.  Saint (for that is how he has become known) John Roberts was Welsh (as Robertses always ultimately are), born in 1577 to a farming family.

Namesake he may have been, but in very many ways our paths seem quite opposite.  Born into a Protestant home John was converted to Catholicism in France.  In the febrile world of Reformation and Counter-Reformation religious politics he found himself in the wrong religion in the wrong place.

In returning from Europe to London he knew he was in mortal danger, but he wanted to work among London's poor anyhow.  From this act of foolery or bravery came his execution.  Yet even at his Tyburn execution the usual cruelties of that age were mitigated by his popularity with the poor.  They would not permit the authorities to treat his body with quite the cruelty they normally would have done - at least not before he was dead.  London has a very long list of cruelties on its hands;  it has also, as Charles Dickens for one reminds us, always had plenty of The Poor.

From his village birth to die at 33 years of age in the capital city after having a reputation for looking after the poor?  Well, for all my Protestantism I can see some reasons to think of him as saintly and a reminder of Someone else.

World Cup Blogs 17: Morocco

In an earlier blog I told how my wife attained Morocco in her workplace sweepstakes. (Workplace sweepstakes are a vanishingly rare experience for Baptist Pastors so I have to live my excitement through hers . . .).  Not for the first time, Morocco have failed to set this World Cup alight - they have prevented my wife catching any gambling addiction bug -  but they do provide a happy byway for my blogging.

Morocco is obvious enough as a nation - it's on the North African Mediterranean coast spilling round the corner to the Atlantic coast.  Isn't it?

A couple of bits of what looks like Morocco are in fact part of Spain (Yes, Spain is in Africa too).  But then, moving round to Morocco's southern border we come to . . . um . . . Morocco.  Or is it Western Sahara?  On that issue many lives have been expended.

There is, then, a vast but sparsely populated chunk of Atlantic Africa which may or may not be a country, two countries or part of another country or some such combination.

Western Sahara does have a team (they also have a stadium but that's in the part most certainly claimed by Morocco so unusable to them).  Like many similar awkwardnesses, Western Sahara are part of the CONIFA group.  Here you will find Tibet, Northern Cyprus, Zanzibar and the like.  These nations (or otherwise) are the refugees of International Football.  This is typified by this year's CONIFA World Cup which was hosted by Barawa (an area in Southern Somalia).

Perhaps you are wondering how Barawa found the stadia in their war-torn bush country to host the tournament.  The answer is - they hosted it in and around London.   Here's Northern Cyprus playing Tibet - in Enfield.

You thought you understood Morocco?  You thought you understood International Football?  Human beings have made the world a complicated place. London somehow always ends up involved it seems to me.

Foundling Hospital

Growing up attending Church services yields surprising snippets of information.  This is because during seemingly interminable sermons and sometimes prayers, and lacking the multiple resources of mobile phones, the hymnbook became a permissible and available distraction.  So, for example, I always know (but never need to know) that Charles Wesley lived from 1707 to 1788 because on so many pages a hymn ended;

Charles Wesley 1707-88

More mysteriously an occasional hymn hinted at more exotic origins: Scottish Psalter or Latin 4th Century. And then, in a riddle I have only solved in very recent years, Foundling Hospital Collection. 

This Mothers' Day at Church we thought about the story of London's foundlings, children who were taken in to the Foundling Hospital when a mother could or would no longer care for them.  Great chapel services at the Hospital demanded a hymnbook and this hymn, anonymously written, first appeared there.

We reflected on Psalm 27:10 - Though my father and mother forsake me, Yahweh (the Lord) will receive me.  No human being needs to be entirely abandoned, whatever the vagaries of family or city life may inflict upon them.  It was part of London's story then.  Praise God that in very many ways it remains part of London's story in the 21st century through countless agencies of Christian goodwill to the needy of this metropolis.

Billy Graham

Today's news of the passing into glory of Billy Graham reminds me of the great debt I owe to his ministry.  It has come in the form of people whose lives were changed during his London evangelistic meetings, several of whom have been key leaders in churches I have served.

Not so long after arriving in the (now) London Borough of Haringey, I had reason to travel to the old site of his 1950s Haringay Arena  meetings.  It is now a retail park.  You may not find the Lord there but you will find plenty of casual workers waiting for vans to pick them up for another illegal (?) day's work.  It was a stark reminder that times move on.

Sixty plus years later secular and social pressures would make such an evangelist and such an event very difficult to keep on its intended track of winning souls for Christ.  Mind you, the harshest things I have seen written about Billy Graham and/or his ministry have been written by (alleged) Christians and it is unlikely that any contemporary internet troll could come up with anything any more vitriolic.

Billy Graham diligently rose above all such political and theological spewing anger and simply preached Christ.  Was he always infallibly true?  Of course not.  Did he point people toward the One who is?  Of course he did.

It is easy to complain about a signpost.  It's worded incorrectly, it has spray paint on, it should be positioned differently, the typeface is ugly, the colour is wrong.  In the end, if it points uncounted numbers of people to the right destination - that is a good signpost.

And when it is gone, it will be missed unless it is replaced.

And today we miss Billy Graham.

“Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God.” Billy Graham

Free News!

There are very many things that you see in London that you are unlikely to see in many, or any, other places in the UK.  

This seems to be such a thing, outside one of our nearby underground stations.  A Jewish Newspaper stand.

The big word FREE also made me think.  The message of Jesus the Messiah is surely the most wonderful free news ever to be disseminated to the world from the Jewish people, and we pray that many of them, as well as others, in London and beyond may learn to embrace it by faith.

Of gods and men

People have been noticing that whereas in previous years there was an unpredictability about the news, now there is guaranteed at least one daily news item involving the word Trump.  Though on reflection there has probably not yet been a day with only one such item..

My attention was caught by the superfan of Donald Trump who prays every day in front of a cardboard cut out of his hero. A thousand comments flood my mind but for now I return to Upper Clapton and The Ark of the Covenant of the Agapemonites I referenced last week on this blog.

On September 7 1902 Smyth-Pigott, the leader of the Agapemonites (and still a priest of the Church of England which he had banned from his newly built church building) replaced the Communion table with an elaborate chair on which he sat. 

And then he stood.

And then he infamously said (as reported in the Hackney and Kingsland Gazette) that his predecessor had prepared the way and that

'I am that Lord Jesus Christ who died and rose again and ascended into heaven; ... Yes I am he that liveth and behold I am alive for evermore.  The Lord from heaven and the life-giving Spirit to those who know me and come to me.

... I am the Son of Man and you, each one of you, must be judged by me . . .'

Most of the congregation agreed with this astonishing revelation.  The cardboard cut out of God had his followers.

The locals were less happy and near riots ensued whenever Smyth-Pigott appeared thereafter.  He decamped to Somerset with his several spiritual brides.

Which, I contend, only goes to show that you can fool some of the people any of the time.

The Abode of Love

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.