Ministere De La Parole De Foi Hackney (translates as Word of Faith Ministry) on Sandringham Road , 18.12.12

The more God’s will is translated for me the more confused I get. On my penultimate Sunday I deliberately chose a non-English speaking service so I could escape the moral contemplation of theology and indulge in the physical pleasures of worship i.e. singing, dancing and waving your arms around. One of my largest discoveries over the year has been to learn to appreciate the importance of singing, dancing and waving your arms around with a congregation of strangers. Dancing, singing and waving your arms around has become a cathartic ritual response to the blinkered moral musings of a number of sermons. However theology, morality and scripture are far more difficult to translate than the singing, dancing and waving your arms around. So when entering the Ministere De La Parole De Foi Hackney (translates as Word of Faith Ministry) on Sandringham Road I was looking forward to getting my gospel groove on and ignoring the daily dogma. In the past at the Greek and Georgian Orthodox churches I had the opportunity (due to the language barrier) of appreciating pure ritual over religious rationalizing. My hope was that the Ministere De La Parole De Foi would provide the opportunity to get lost in the music but I had forgotten that the Ministere De La Parole De Foi was a Western church and unlike Eastern Orthodox churches (who believe in the sanctity of the Holy Scripture) it was essential I understand the Lord’s Word whatever the language. 

Like most churches with lavish names in East London, Ministere De La Parole De Foi Hackney has humble surroundings. Positioned just off the Kingsland Road High Street its heavily decorated open front window stands out from the surrounding Christmas displays of Argos, Tesco and Boots. The church’s dramatic and colourful emblem is too extreme for any shop sign, peering out down the road it’s a symbol that demands attention from all, not just local shoppers.  Arriving late to a packed room, the congregation stared at this lone white faced intruder and slowly made space as they realised that I had not mistaken the ministry for the pound shops further down the road but was here to join the worship. The congregation, predominantly from Cote D’Ivore and The Congo, went across various generations and classes as illustrated by their fashion. Some dressed in African traditional clothing, others wore more expensive smart suits and long regal dresses,  while the younger generation where noticeably more casual in their attire wearing the latest designer labels. At first I could feel their eyes on me and a mixture of French and English whispers at my arrival before one of the many large mothers of the congregation came to question me. Warm and friendly she quickly adopted me and grew concerned that I needed a translator. I declined out of politeness but she reassured me she would find one. Appreciative of her charity I was yet to realise that one altruistic act was going to affect the entire service. After a quick hymn I sat unaware that my translator had taken to the stage and would devotedly attempt to articulate the minister’s rhetoric in the most dead pan pigeon English voice.

 Unintentionally my visit had prolonged the service running time all in an attempt to save me, ironically the only person that didn’t want saving. The trick of Christianity is that you can’t be cruel to people who are so kind. No matter how much I protested to the translation I would have been perceived as an ungrateful guest in need of saving. So I stayed, sat speechless and smiling in appreciation of the service and attempted to decipher the nuances of my translator’s audio commentary.

Most of the translation was unnecessary, even with my D in GCSE French could tell that “gloreux” was glorious and “benis” was bless. The congregation also seemed more interested in singing, dancing and waving their arms around with a live drummer, keyboardist, bassist and three female singers often undermining the clergy. Even the guest minister opened his sermon in song and throughout the majority of the service most of the testifying was accompanied by a gentle humming bass and slow melodic piano playing. The fusion of music and preaching coupled with my own audio commentary caused a confusing cacophony that was intoxicating but shallow. The commentary was a constant reminder that I did not fully understand the Lord’s Word and missed a morality hidden between the French and English words. My separation was not simply spiritual but essentially social. The minister would have his devotees in rapturous laughter but my translator looked lost to explain the comedic elements of The Book of Romans in French. Culturally the gulf between me and the congregation had never felt so big ironically due to the attempt to bridge an understanding between us both. I was apprehensive to draw conclusions from the unfinished sentences spoken within the sermon yet I realised projecting a personal interpretation onto open ended dogma is an essential element of religion.

From my hazy impression I took away some worryingly so called “moral truths.” The minister claimed that “It’s a sin to do nothing,” like “not have a job,” “be single “and “not supporting ones family.”  I was unaware that these mini sins were in the Bible regardless of what language it may have been written in. However I did not feel I could trust myself, let alone the church’s moral agenda as it all seemed lost in translation. Religion can be dangerous as the scriptures can lend themselves to egocentric interpretation, be it my own or the minister, or translator, or that edition of the Bible. Writing about being confused is very difficult as you attempt to articulate the unarticulable (which is not even a real word) but through the ritual of my blog I have been forced to retrospectively form opinions in an attempt to discover my own gospel.  The result is never the truth but a translation that inevitably loses the nuances, complexities and reasons behind a church’s belief. My accounts are just another layer of confusion to add to the mountain of personal delusions that masquerade as theological musings but at least you know not to trust the translator. Personally I am looking forward to not thinking so much and I will finally get a chance to cut loose to sing, dance and wave my arms.

The Newington Green Unitarian Church, Newington Green, 10.12.11

In 1967 The Beatles broadcast a performance of "All you need is love," into 26 countries watched by 400 million viewers, creating a global profile for the hippy movement of late 1960s. Long before Beatles, hippies and bad fashion it was the Christian radicals of the 1700s that pioneered such humanist values and in particular the non-conformists of Hackney.

The non-conformist movement of the 1700s was Britain’s original Christian counter culture. They believed that liberty, freedom and equality were essential values of the Bible that had been lost under the oppressive dogma of the Catholic and the Anglican churches of the time.

Visiting the Newington Unitarian Church built back in 1704 I stepped on to the grounds that were not just the longest practising non-conformist church in London but also one of the most historically important churches outside the Protestant/Catholic hegemony. In these walls the role of Christianity drastically changed from being an oppressor to a liberator and even now the current Unitarian service has developed away from the religious dogma of so many churches into a diverse community with a shared sense of spiritualism. The service did not mention God, Jesus, and The Holy Spirit but did allude to the concept of a shared higher consciousness. The congregation were not asked to simply pray to God, but were given the choice to pray, meditate or reflect on ones thoughts. We had no Bible readings or scripture heavy hymns instead non-religious fables and speculative stories were used in the sermon and the music was a collection of organ reworkings of pop classics and gospel songs focusing on the need to change society through love. How had this church become so politically correct? Was it so politically correct it was blasphemous? And had I found the first church that would accept me as a voyeuristic agnostic and not see me as a potential convert? All these questions raced through my head and led me back to the history books.

The Newington Unitarian Church only stands out because of its age, lacking the gothic architectural glamour so common in the Anglican churches of 17 hundreds. An almost square building, its modest front entrance was decorated with understated Tuscan pillars, a small pediment and low key arched windows. Inside the tiny church is a collection of wooden pews, boxes and a gallery that makes the space feel not cluttered but close; The miniature size unavoidably but pleasantly smothering you with its presence. Sitting in the boxes I found it impossible not to contemplate the legacy of the church’s past congregation.

The Newington Unitarian Church history of radicalism began in the 1700s when Newington Green was an agricultural village outside the city of London. After The Restoration of Charles II many non-Anglican church groups faced persecution. Non-conformists found refuge around Newington Green in which alternative theological and political ideas could freely circulate. Alternative education establishments were formed by Non-conformists named Dissenters Academies, creating the only alternative non-Anglican higher education. Most notably the Newington Green Academy is praised for its intellectual aristocracy and for propagating new ideas from The Enlightenment. By the late 1700s Newington Unitarian Church became the haven for political and social reform under the leadership of preacher Dr Richard Price (looking very stern in the far right). Price was a republican,
libertarian and supporter of the French and American Revolutions. Enormously influential, Price gave counsel to the founding fathers of America, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Pain and was a mentor to Mary Wollstonecraft (a key founder of feminism). Price died before Newington Unitarian Church could practice non-Trinitarian worship publically (After the government Act of 1813) but many history books have vaguely described his beliefs as "Unitarian,” due him criticising the claim that Jesus had eternal existence. After Price’s era the church continued to propagate liberalism within society, many of the congregation were abolitionists, supporters of the suffragette movement and campaigned against the legal persecution of Jews in the1800s. I have become particularly interested in how the Unitarian Church, from its radical roots, has continued to adapt The Bible so it challenges the inequality within society instead advocating the status quo.

In recent years the church has continued to challenge institutionalised inequalities in our society by supporting gay marriage. In March 2008, Newington Green Unitarian Church became the first religious establishment in Britain to stop any weddings at all until all couples have equal marriage rights. The current incumbent minister Andrew Pakula stated that the same-sex couple "are being treated like second-class citizens when they are forbidden to celebrate their unions in a way that heterosexual couples take for granted." Andrew Pakula is sweetly small, warm and charismatic New York Jewish man who has been Minister of Newington Green since 2011, Pakula, like Price, shares a belief in equality but I wonder would Price recognize the origins of Pakula’s liberalism as his own? Unitarian faith more than any other strand of Christianity seems to have helped develop society for the better and in doing has developed itself away from the Holy scripture and towards promoting a shared social consciousness. In the development of the Unitarian faith God has not been lost but he now shares the throne of omnipotence with Buddha, Shiva, Allah and many more.

So what is Unitarianism in the modern world? The You Tube videos below give you a general impression.

A key facet I personally took from Unitarianism is the rejection of the concept of original sin and the conscious decision to not ask the congregation to believe in something they know not to be true and respect their individuality. So this Sunday was a service without communion, sharing the peace, liturgy and Bible readings and instead new rituals replaced them from the reading of a poem, lighting of a candle, shared prayer/mediation/contemplation, a sermon on the importance of hope and individuals sharing the highs and lows of the week. The general atmosphere was like a group therapy session except nobody had experienced a real trauma (to my knowledge) but that did not stop people from "sharing," and nor should it. It was refreshing that a service was dependent on the congregation’s participation and lucky that they were an affable bunch. Personal stories ranged from the touching to the slightly mundane but at least everyone felt they had something to say and more importantly people wanted to listen. Oddly this inclusive environment did leave me in limbo as I did not feel I had anything to "share."

The lack of scripture and context led to words being debated instead of parables. We were asked to contemplate the meaning of "hope," and I imagine other services may debate the importance of "tolerance," "freedom," "equality." The problem with the lack of context means the debates become hugely personalised which is good but does lead to the parishioner being unchallenged in their views. The congregation were asked to write down a subject on a postit which they had lost hope in and then decorate the nave with their reflections.  I and the incredibly warmed hearted elderly woman sitting next to me both felt we had never lost hope in anything on principle but after longer consideration I could use the exercise to cathartically express my feelings. I wrote "I hope I don’t feel guilty." I found it strange that in a church environment that did not believe in original sin and advocated the acceptance of all I would feel so guilty but I did. I felt I was not participating to the extent I should and no longer had the excuse of being unbeliever.

The reason for myself loathing is that I don’t go to church for myself, I go because I am interested in people and enjoy meeting people who hold a different theological perspective, these people fascinate me and asking to look to myself I was caught off guard. My views on spiritualism had been defined in opposition to the people I had met over the last year but when asked to form a belief without countering my experience I was lost.

The Newington Unitarian Church was built in opposition to corrupt religious institutions and continues to advocate equality but when you do feel free and have nothing to oppose, what are you left with? I have never viewed life as a struggling trial that leads to heaven and have been critical of religions that advocate this perspective but faced with spiritual freedom I can see the comfort. I would like to think "All We Need is Love," but love means many things to many people and the cost of love can be great. The highest praise I can place on The Newington Unitarian Church is that in the more modern and liberal era it continues to ask questions than provide answers and for a church that’s hugely refreshing.

Quaker Meeting, St Mary's Community Centre, Daniel Defoe Road, 4.12.11

Hi,

Oh

my names Joel (hand out)

um

this is my first time

righ

at a Quaker meeting

No, its jus

Ohh sorry!

It’s very hard to transmit absence

Personally I blame Gareth, not because I blame him for most things but because he was my Quaker chaperone. Gareth is a great friend and has Quaker ancestry. In recent ventures to Quaker meetings he has continued a family ritual that stretches several generations, symbolically and spiritually bonding with his ancestors. To my knowledge this was my family’s first Quaker service and my ignorant entrance was hopefully forgiven in keeping with the Christian spirit. Despite my presumed forgiveness my noisy introduction did haunt my one hour silent service. In particular Jonathan, the Quaker elder’s mystic explanation “It’s very hard to transmit absence” kept echoing in my mind. To people as ignorant as me let me explain the structure of a Quaker service.

Quakerism is a Christian movement which stresses the religious doctrine of priesthood for all believers.  My non theist translation is that they believe we all have a personal relationship with God and have the ability to preach the Good Lord’s Word. In comparison to the other churches they deconstruct the classic hierarchal Church system for a more democratic forum called Quaker Meetings. Quakerism dates back to late 1700s and was established by the Religious Society of Friends in England but quickly spread across the rest of the world, most famously in North America, East Africa and India. Naturally the international spread of Quakerism led to fragmented forms of worship and practices. However, often worship can be split into two distinct practices, the programmed and the unprogrammed. The majority of Quakers (predominantly outside the UK) practice programmed worship. Programmed worship consists of prearranged hymns, Bible readings, guest sermons and planned silences. The minority of Quakers (predominantly from the UK) practice unprogrammed worship. Unprogrammed worship is based in silence. The silence begins when first the person sits in the meeting and ends when one person from the group (more often an elder) shakes the hand of the person to their side leading to everyone finishing the meeting with a handshake. Such a fine and proper way to bookend the worship, you can tell the movement started in England. In silence one is supposed to communally connect with God and free their mind of all other distractions. However the group mysticism is intended to be practiced within the everyday. Quakers are most famous for their pacifism, opposition to alcohol and political activism. In comparison to other Christian groups who deliberately avoid politics unless politics infringes upon their faith it is vital for a Quaker to understand God in a modern world and not just wait for the afterlife. However the Stoke Newington Quakers of St Mary’s community centre on Daniel Defoe road camouflaged their evangelism within the silence making for my most quintessentially English service so far.

From my opening brief and awkward conversation to the long shared silence that followed, a particular type of Englishness hung in the air. A type of Englishness that belongs to the middle classes, comedy sketches, afternoon tea, the south, BBC period dramas and Gardener’s World . The only other words spoken before the meeting descended into communal quiet was when Jonathan politely hushed a fellow friend (all Quaker’s refer to each other as friend) who was making tea in the nearby kitchen warning in a stage whisper “meeting comes before tea.” The mannered telling off in the calmest voice was so brilliantly formal it could only be spoken by an Englishman.

As the group gradually entered the silence I began to see the unspoken acceptance of each other within the confines of a formal setting as a national treasure. Unlike other loud and theatrical evangelical groups or the more established dogma of Catholic and Anglican churches Quakers seemed to realise that the best way for everyone to get along was to abandon the majority of ceremony and obey a few simple rules so the individual can form a personal understanding of God within the silence. Everybody was so polite and respectful of each other’s silences that no one told the woman who continued to drift in and out of consciousness to actually wake up. Some unwritten rule seemed to be unspoken within the group which allowed the woman to snore her way through the majority of the hour undisturbed. It would just not have been the done thing to wake her and who could say she was not having a spiritual moment within her slumber. After the meeting and several cups of tea and biscuits with my new best friends I felt entirely at home. The group were your typical liberal middle class Guardian reading, Radio 4 listening, east Londoners who preferred thoughtful contemplation to impassioned prayer. At the beginning of my journey this group would have filled me with self-loathing but now with only three Sundays left of the year I felt a sense of comfort in the familiarity. No longer isolated from my non theist perspective, the Quaker meeting provided me with the opportunity to digest my relationship with God in silence, I only wish I remembered what I’d thought.

Before I could communally share the voice of God or the light (common Quaker explanation for spirit) I had to shed my surroundings. I had to not only let go of the physical world of St Mary’s small and drafty hall but also mentally clear out my thoughts to find an inner period of calm in which God/light can enter. Physical clearance proved troublesome and mental clearance almost impossible. First, the physical distractions became mental as I listed the clutter in an attempt to discard them but instead my list accentuated their existence. Oddly the absence of hymns, prayers, sermons and testimonies seemed to root me in the physical world as my list built to a rhythmic pattern in my head. The absent beat went something like this

A 30 second blast of heat that is heard more than felt and 2minutes cold to keep me awake, vase of flowers on a table with bunch of books, sound of traffic in the distance and hum of mowing from outside, why is the chair next to me smaller than the rest, another woman enters no one looks her in the eye, is the tea lady asleep?

 And another 30 second blast of heat that is heard more than felt and another 2minutes cold to keep me awake, are those flowers dying or is it for show, Bible, Quaker Bible, Qu’ran, Quaker Bible, next week could I bring my own literature? Sound of traffic is even further in the distance and the mowing has stopped, maybe the small chair is for a small child, I’d hate for a child to be better behaved than me, thinking how I do, another woman enters room, remember not to look her in the eye, I think the tea lady’s now snoring so definitely asleep.

 Again a 30 second blast of heat longer than the one before which continues to be heard more than felt and now 4 long minutes of cold to keep me awake, the flowers are definitely real so why has no one watered them? Are they are a spiritual statement I am not getting? Next week Steinbeck, Tolstoy, Hughes and Auden will lay on that table, I still can hear traffic or is it in my head maybe I am struggling because the mower is back and closer than before, the chair is not for a child or a colouring in book would be on the table, the small chair must be for someone who is not here, who is not expected to appear, at least not physically, God most likely, another man enters, we have another man entering the room, it’s no longer just me, Gareth or the older guy, no this guy is the older guy, that other guy will have to be renamed the other guy, don’t meet his eye that would be double standards, this is not the place for double standards, well she is clearly snoring and no one is going to say anything, especially me.

 Maybe this 30 second blast of heat will be quicker, maybe it will make me hotter rather than hurt my ears, the cold cannot be quick, the time quadruples under such low temperature, as four minutes stretches into 8, hot and fast offset by cold and slow, the flowers need to be changed, how can you make a statement through the symbol of something dying, should I pick up the Bible? Might get my mind back on track, it’s too late now, it would just send a clear sign I am not thinking about him, as for the Qu’ran that would just be dismissed as a desperate attempt to make a loud first impression, I would read Steinbeck, can you read atheist literature at a Quaker meeting, not just traffic but the sound of parking, parking will help me chill out, with the mower finished I am bound to drift off and hear the voice of God, I am sitting next to his chair so if he does arrive I will  have the best seat in the house regardless, however we are full now, so anyone arriving late is going to have to sit down in that incredibly small chair and look like an adult with special needs kept back at primary school, but no one is entering the room, the room is definitely spiritually full yet it only contains six women and four men but anyone adding to the collective might tip me over the edge, I mean how are you meant to forget more than ten people? Everybody needs to sit still so I can forget them and concentrate on our collective, conscious prayer, I am so glad no one can hear my thoughts, I would really ruin everyone’s experience, maybe they can sense it, no I look calm and collected, might even pass for spiritual, I feel confident I am going to look them in the eye and then  when they look into my eye they are going to see nothing because my mind is elsewhere, my mind is traveling on a different spiritual plain, yes I can just leave without moving, just don’t fall asleep like the tea woman, her snoring has really held you back, it would be inconsiderate to fall asleep not that anyone would wake me, maybe I am asleep, no I can feel the cold, need  to consider consciousness, remember your absent and present at the same time, absent and present.

 So the repetition of my thoughts built a rhythm to reach a euphoric point of silence in which I don’t remember what I was thinking but I was pretty happy. The nearest epiphany I reached was pondering my silent and strange happiness. So I decided to contextualise my experience in broad terms. First, I concluded that a society which is a literature culture writes down what makes one happy in the hope that others might understand, but the limitation of words leads to dogma and misunderstanding. In our visual culture we communicate through images so our concept of happiness is more a feeling, a recording of a moment, making our idea of happiness more fleeting and less theoretically obtainable but at least less dogmatic and dangerous. So my silent happiness, happiness at the absence of everything was an isolated sense of euphoria. A happiness which cannot be recorded with words. A happiness they can’t captured from a photograph. A happiness that many call God. A happiness that I personally find impossible to explain.

Evangelical Reformed Church, Laureston Church, 30.11.11

After 47 Sunday services my agnostic faith had begun to fatigue. Not in my mind but in my body. Inflicted with a seasonal cold and cough with aspirations to degenerate into a fever I sought solace in the Evangelical Reformed Church on Laureston Road.  After weekly witnessing devout but decrepit bodies summoning the spirit to go to church I had no choice but to leave the confines of my bed for a so called better life.  Speechless in fear of the cough within me I sat to the rear of the nave hoping to go unnoticed. Luckily, the restrained and equable congregation respectfully left me to stew in my sickly sin. Unlike the singing and dancing of previous evangelical episodes, all theatrics were reserved for the Northern Irish guest Pastor Samuel Mackay Desperate for the routine ritual to remedy my poor health I was instead treated to a sermon heavy service in which Pastor Mackay provided a lesson in the power and poetry of religious language. My vulnerable state became enslaved to Pastor Mackay, who at the height of his power almost exorcized the sickly and sinful ailments that plagued my body. Physically drained I felt spiritually vulnerable, easy prey for Pastor Mackay, passion to bully me into belief.

Pastor Mackay was not a handsome man. Youth looked forever absent from his face. Pale, balding, portly, bespectacled, he had no physical reasons to be confident. The charisma, the charm and passion were clearly sent from his great Lord.  Preaching to a predominantly black congregation, Pastor Mackay’s rough Belfast accent crackled across the nave. Fire and brimstone rhetoric of the old homeland clogged up his throat and transported his followers from South Hackney to Northern Ireland. It was not just God’s Bible that had given grace to his gruff voice but the church created an environment so his words would echo across the hall with glorious gravitas.  The church’s exterior suited his small but commanding stature: the late Victorian modestly sized building reached for the heavens with small but defined architectural features.  Two extremely pointy spires stabbed the sky with spiritual importance while a large arched front window opened itself to public and potential converts. Originally built by Congregationalists in the 1800s the church has sustained a still feeling of suspense when entering the nave. It was an unknowing suspense like waiting for something intangible, ethereal or predictably something God like. The atmosphere did not transport you back in time like older churches but more created a feeling of stasis outside time which could only come from a building that has been undisturbed from renovation. Waiting filled the anteroom, the belfry, the cloisters, the nave, the surrounding gallery, the sanctuary, and any unseen room or crevice.  Amongst this wait came Pastor Mackay standing firm in the pulpit surrounded by a collection of dark varnished wooden pews, stairs, tables, chairs and Holy folly.  Pastor Mackay was a king overseeing his kingdom or somebody more prophetic, regardless of the title he was a great orator. Very few priests actually use the pulpit but Pastor Mackay had a traditional and conservative personality that was entirely comfortable with being placed on such a high pedestal. Standing only just below the large but fairly quiet antique organ his voice could not be dwarfed by anyone except God.

A great speaker can get you so lost in the language that you become so impressed you don’t really care about the speaker’s point. TV personalities, politicians and Priests are all guilty of speaking with style to disguise their lack of substance. Not that all TV personalities, politicians and Priests are great speakers, most are sound bite bores but a chosen few have an elegance of elocution that provoke great reaction by saying very little. Pastor Mackay was not only a great speaker but perpetuated the cultural legacy of the Holy Irish man.  A religious figure of Old Testament testosterone he mixed words taken from the scripture with out dated language to create a non-existent nostalgic grace. In describing early passages from the Book of Joshua he used some stereotypical but no less powerful religious phrases: “Righteous Wrath of God,” “Calvary Cross,” “The Blood That Cleansed The Blind,” and my personal favourite “The Tale The Tongue Cannot Tell.” These words wore me out and wrapped themselves around my ears that I became so enraptured at the poetry of his performance leading me to completely forget about the Book of Joshua.  Despite the overt violence of his words these strangely opaque but didactic statements are to be cherished, just maybe not worshipped. But I fully understand how such powerful imagery from one man’s mouth could inspire such worship. I would be a fully-fledged fan of Pastor Mackay’s passionate poetry if I could discover its source: The Book of Joshua, Jesus or God. Predictably Pastor Mackay’s powerful imagery did not provoke my spiritual side but instead stoked my cynicism. 

The Book of Joshua is mainly concerned with the history of the creation of Israel and documenting some pretty savage tribal politics but Pastor Mackay managed to centre on the more palatable opening verses of God’s instructions to Joshua instead of the familiar Middle Eastern conflict.  Leaving the more factually grounded history for universal spiritualism is essential for any priest yet often the priest will use the language of the Bible to create phoney authenticity to his words. The very specific struggle of the Israelites became comparable to the everyday struggle of the congregation so that the romantic rhetoric enriched the dull drudgery of modern day life. Amongst all the energy, eloquence and entertaining theatrics Pastor Mackay just wanted everyone “To let Jesus into our hearts,” without even telling us who, why or where. Preaching to the converted naturally breeds complacency but within the predictable praise my body had a violent reaction. The overpowering word play, the suspenseful atmosphere, the calm congregation, something tickled my throat and my cough erupted. Hoarse heckling from the back of my larynx bounced back off the walls of the nave and caused a non-protest to the weekly dogma. As Pastor Mackay encouraged us to get close to Jesus I was wheezing between my knees hoping my badly behaved body was caused by infection and not some unknown demon hidden within me. I tried as best I could not to distract others from Pastor Mackay’s words but charitable Christians are forever looking for a cause. Handkerchiefs, water, Bibles were passed to me but I could not stand the embarrassment and had to leave. Despite the kindness of strangers the word of God did not fill me with pride but persecution and my sickness felt like a strange pagan karma. I did not deserve such charity because I was not one of them I had not let Jesus into my heart and as result I had the flu.

Retired and rested I realised I did not need the kindness of strangers as it did not fulfil my narrative. Much as I had appreciated Pastor Mackay’s word play, the church’s subtle and suspenseful atmosphere and calming congregation that filled it, I desired the role of the outsider. Like the Pastor Mackay I use language to create my own world. However Pastor Mackay wants you to join him in his world for one giant liturgy while my world wants to create the image of an outsider looking into another world he feels he does not belong to. His language continues a tradition of colourful conformity and dramatic dogma while my language is limited in so many ways it can only come from my dyslexic brain. Opposition is where I feel most comfortable despite Pastor Mackay’s promises of eternal salvation. My problem is that I have yet to know from what I need to be saved except the common cold that plagues my body.

Stoke Newington Baptist Church, Stoke Newington High Street, 20.11.11

The economic apocalypse is nigh. Don’t fear war, pestilence, famine and death but instead run to your Bible and pray to stop the rise of cuts, inflation, unemployment and debt. Not that all cuts are bad cuts, some cuts can free communities from needless bureaucracy. Inflation is also fine as long as it remains low and stable in conjunction with the rate of employment. Unemployment would not be the end of the world if you have a good welfare state providing financial and social support. Even debts can be solved by low interest bank loans. No, the economic crisis is not comparable to The Book of Revelation as the international news media would like you to believe but this Sunday even God became victim to the global recession.

 God and money have an odd relationship, all men are created equal in the eyes of God but money is often how we attempt to measure a person’s worth outside the dogma of religion. Money is a value system formed long before science knocked religion off its creationist perch and is the longest provocateur to religion. Christianity sees money as an essential tool in spreading the Lords Word but Bible is not so kind towards money. Money appears in the Bible as the tool of the oppressor and the religious prophets are far poorer and humbler in their existence. For example: Jesus is not a rich man- it's essential that he gave everything to the poor and the needy. The majority of non-believers criticism of the church is that they take money from the poor and sell them hope through the promise of heaven.  Non-believers feel uncomfortable at the site of wealthy churches and often think would Jesus approve of such extravagance. So when I arrived at the modest stone face of the  Stoke Newington Baptist Church and entered the fairly rundown interior of the nave my heart lifted that this was a church rich in ways not so obvious to the eye.

The church was filled with understatement; a modest altar, a very low tech projector and a small stained glass window marked the sanctuary out from the collection of black chairs that filled the nave. A few religious decorations hung across the nave’s walls, leaving the colours of beige, brown and cream to blur into one nondescript glow that was strangely affecting. This corporate like conference room had been spiritually converted and despite the placidity of its design it had risen to a higher purpose. The lack of grandeur and glamour did not indicate a lack of care from the congregation but mere signs that life took precedence over material spectacle. The environment should not have been inspiring but the large mixed congregation led by Pastor John Taylor generated a community atmosphere not found in the architecture of government buildings. The service’s ramshackle beauty was typified by the church band, an odd collection of saxophonist, keyboardist, Organist and Violinist; who naturally struggled with some hymns until the late entrance of the resident drummer; a young black kid no older than 14 with low hung jeans, baseball cap and Nike raincoat and who acknowledge nobody as he waltzed up to the kit before he began to pound the drums mid hymn. The music should not have worked, technically it did not work but you could not fault the harmonious joy the audience and band shared. The humble and modest yet still joyful and triumphant congregation of Stoke Newington Baptist Church had spirit for these economically tough times but I was yet to learn the precarious practicalities of their situation.

Pastor John Taylor carried a statesman like air of importance when he spoke with a realist’s modesty. His untypical sermon was not concerned with the spiritual transformative love of Jesus Christ but the practicalities of the church’s annual budget and outlining the amount that would be apportioned for Christmas giving.   Perhaps the sermon lacked the romanticism of the Holy Scripture for the majority of the congregation but I personally found his speech enthralling as I discovered how the church spends its money. The most heart-warming aspect of the church budget was learning that alongside the money given to the Baptist Union, Christian Fellowship schemes and International aid was the name of one family household who needed help after falling victim to hard times (to one of the economic four horseman no doubt).  Charity within a community is something so rare to in fragmented London it filled me with early Christmas cheer. However after Pastor John Taylor asked the congregation to discuss with him during the break any issues some may have, he returned from the break stating no one had talked to him. I guess the community trusted their pastor as they were far more familiar about the church’s spending and would prefer to sing, dance and praise the Lord than worry about how the collection plate is spent. It’s rare that a Church would be so transparent with its budgets yet Pastor Taylor was keen to indicate that the annual micro budget was necessary to contextualise the larger economic problems facing the Baptist Union.

Just like businesses, nations and continents, churches are economically failing. This year the Baptist union ran approximately one million pounds over budget, it can sustain the same deficit next year but if the Baptist Union funds don’t improve in 2013 it realistically will see churches close down and subsequently merge.  A symbol of the economic decline is the Baptist Times (running since 1855) which will be discontinued this year as it loses the church money. Like secular forms of the print industry whose economic interest has declined due to the digitalisation of the media, the Baptist Times is not a viable source to spread the word of God. The prospective changes facing the Stoke Newington Baptist Union did not seem to worry the congregation. A large portion of the congregation were from Africa and particularly Angola, and some elder members had the sermon translated into Portuguese. The congregation were very helpful in explaining that the church had once been predominantly white but in recent years Pastor John Taylor had shared the pulpit with an Angolan minister. As time passed the Angolan minister returned to Africa but the influx of an African congregation survived and integrated. Services went from being held in English and Portuguese to just English. Arguably the unison between the elderly white church members and the new African arrivals is not simply a spiritual meeting but one that is economically formed through globalisation of the 1990s. The church in many respects has already proved its ability to adapt to a changing economic environment so why should they not believe the congregation can overcome such future struggles.

The central reason for the congregation’s resolve is that they have faith in a higher power and The Rapture is a far scarier prospect than the current global economic downturn. Secular society could easily dismiss such faith in higher powers as blissfully ignorant but maybe we should look at ourselves and our own ignorant faith we have put into the financial market. In the most simple and reductive explanation to our current economic crisis  I would state that the crisis in the US, UK and rest of Europe is born out of the ability to trade off debt through credit that is supplied by banks under the guise that the company/country/continent will make a future profit. Clearly the global economic system is not that simple but neither is The Bible which is far more publically renounced than our global financial market.

 The market and the Bible claim to be based on truth, their power comes from a faith based language in which words only have importance if you believe in them. Borrowing and lending is a part of human nature which has offered a practical solution throughout history in building trust within communities (like loving your neighbour or treating others how you wish to be treated) but when you enter the world of derivatives, futures and hedge funds you are creating a language and belief system to legitimise an impractical monopoly. I don’t believe that derivatives, futures and hedge funds are a real solution to our economy but are a fiction that has been given political currency and have been used to enslave the many by the few. Take the last sentence and replace the words, derivatives, futures and hedge funds with the words God, The Holy Ghost and Jesus Christ and you would replicate the a typical criticism the church receives within an atheist media. However God is not making me redundant, The Holy Ghost is not reclaiming my house and Jesus Christ comes for free. To be religious you have a choice but we have no such choice in belonging to our current Capitalist society, we are told this is truth and we must accept. Not even God can escape the four horseman of cuts, inflation, unemployment and debt but at least his followers can sing and dance waiting for a better life. Congregation's belief can make even a small church made from a pile of stones as rich as the kingdom heaven.

Not wanting to patronise the reader but please see below for my biased definitions of derivatives, futures and hedge funds:

A derivative is a contract for payment between two parties that is a dated transaction and has no independent value but whose price is derived from an underlying asset (commodity, stock or share). Controversially a derivative has legal exemptions (in the US) and is an attractive proposition in extending credit despite the value of derivatives fluctuating based on the market.

A Future is a future contract for payment between two parties for a specific asset of standardized quantity and quality for a set price, with delivery of the asset occurring on a future date. In the future the asset may have lost or gained profit so it will always be gamble for the buyer and the seller and never a fair trade.

A hedge fund is a private pool of capital managed by an investment advisor. A hedge fund is only open to investment from accredited or qualified investors. Hedge funds look for trends in the global financial market to trade and their activities vary but they would not be as powerful if derivatives and futures did not exist. Arguably derivatives and futures can be used to counter balance the risk of trading, hence the term “Hedging,” in which the fund has the opportunity to make money from money. 

Personally all of these financial tools have no grounding in reality and merely make money from money or makes money from the belief people have in money, like gambling without the sport. 

St John on Bethnal Green, Cambridge Heath Road, 13.11.11

A minute’s silence outside the Bethnal Green library took the length of an entire sermon. To be fair to that elongated minute it took several minutes beforehand for the parade of clergy, Territorial Army, Royal Marines and Navy, Her Majesty’s Air Force, the Metropolitan Police, St John’s Ambulance, several cadets, beavers, cubs and scouts, plus one peroxide blonde widow dressed in all black, several tearful families and the rest of the congregation to walk respectability down Cambridge Heath Road. Respectability does not rush and nor do most people on a Sunday when confronted with a memorial parade. My sympathies were with the regular congregation who with a sermonless service had to seek solace in the silence. The annual invaders had taken over the running of the church like their compatriots throughout the country, an institutionalised occupation not to be confused with the current protests that surround St Pauls. The price of the Anglican Church’s wealth is that once a year Jesus, The Holy Spirit and God himself are held hostage by the dead who had defended their names (despite most likely not believing in them). A week not for moral, theological, or metaphysical questions but instead an exercise in obedience masquerading as an act of remembrance.

A remembrance of people we had largely never met. The worship was such pure ritual and routine it could easily be mistaken for a military operation. A vast array of distinguished uniforms filled the nave which made the priest’s attire seem normal but the collection of camouflage was not an adequate distraction to my own questions. Ironically the one minute silence seemed to speak to me more than the familiar fifteen minute sermon. Within the spiritual void or the moral vacuum that was the silence I came up with my own pacifist plea for the pulpit. Following in the footsteps of my God serving Granddad who always resented remembrance Sunday here is my sermon on the silence I respectfully observed but cannot agree with.

A minute for who? And why not an hour? Who decided a minute for mourning was an adequate time to shed your tears? If we are remembering people we have never met why should I only remember those who have fought for the British forces? Is remembering something that you have never experienced a charitable lie?

But my questions feel like half formed sentences leading to their own answers. 

The minute is for the men and women of the British Armed Forces who died serving their country as well as the families and friends who have lost those close to them. It has to be a minute as an hour might allow the death toll to rise as more veterans, soldiers, cadets, scout, cubs and beavers could die. A minute is deliberately too short to shed any tears, so the minute becomes an annual symbolic medal that reaffirms British reserve when faced with such ritualistic tragedy.  It’s expected that we only remember our own but I cannot forget the pictures of the non-partisan burnt, dissembled, and dead bodies of Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan.  My problem is that as a charitable lie our Remembrance Sunday is limited by locality and not generous enough to pay tribute to the dead enemies who are born from outside our shores. 

Clearly I am a lost liberal caught in a cloud of jingoistic nationalism that has grown to a more epidemic fever in recent years. Conduits to this rise of military nostalgia is the Sun newspaper’s Help for Heroes campaign, the influx of reality TV and documentaries on our Armed Forces and the PR  mourn machine that was Wootton Basset.  A new season is upon us and this year the poppy has grown beyond its natural environment into the world of marketing. Forget the token paper flower or even the metal badge, we are pollinating the internet with our poppy idents, branching out into poppy car bumpers and branding any public services with poppy insignias.   Grief is ubiquitous in our consumption and it threatens our sense of reality by becoming a token of the everyday. The silence and the signs assume our support for human sacrifice but such tragedy does not need to be tolerated. The entire media campaign finds the pacifist within me can only feel numb with anger. Anger reserved for the accusers who claim that I am being deliberately difficult, disrespectful and different in my choice not to wear a poppy on my jacket.  Who see my belief as apocryphal, arrogant, and antagonistic and are not willing to believe that it’s a thoughtful, considered and genuine response. Peace is only a pose in these people’s eyes and hypocrisy is natural. Who would want to see the popular poppy as a direct support to the unpopular wars in which our troops die? The Royal British Legion does great charitable work in helping the lives of troops and their families but it is still guilt money to the larger evil of war itself. If I am going to wear a symbol to commemorate those who have died in unnecessary violent conflicts then my symbol should unite all divisions because only in death are we all equal. 

I am all for freedom and ridding the world of tyranny but before we choose to save others we must emancipate ourselves from nationalism and we can start with the poppy. The Poppy has become a prisoner of war it does not belong to us or those who died on the battle fields of Bazra, Belfast or even Flanders. Long before mechanized warfare between nation states the poppy was a symbol of sleep, death and remembrance bound to no particular country, continent or history. Now the poppy seems to have been appropriated by the British and to a lesser extent its old colonies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand.  Alternatively we have the Peace Poppy, the white paper poppy that I spent two hours searching central London for to no avail.  The peace poppy is the pacifist’s attempt to fit into Remembrance Sunday it’s the sort of politically correct trite that appears clumsy but is well meaning and far more Christian in spirit. Why are Peace Poppies unpopular? Because peace is unpopular, unpopular because it does not make money and sadly wars do. Wars make a lot of money and and they also make lot of pretty paper red poppies. For some, war is to be supported but for others it is merely to be observed and there is no better way to observe the cost of war but in a silence that is shared with those not willing to be quiet.

Searching in the silence for some meaning I looked outside my obedient group, past the berets, caps and helmets I spotted a young quiet Muslim girl dressed in black from head to toe with only her enquiring face exposed. She was respectful and interested as her eyes inspected the parade on display. Observing a military Christian rite you would expect her to feel isolated but in the silence her presence became an acceptance or blank canvas for me to draw on. It would be wrong to presume all the thoughts that remain unsaid and to place my anger within her mouth. Anger at wars I had not fought in, anger at people I had not met and anger at myself for not succumbing to a sense of national pride: an anger that was only relieved by the remembrance of the dead being disturbed by the sound of the living. A silence unravelled by the sound of Sunday shopping, broken by the sound of congested traffic and then decimated by the earth shattering sound of sirens. Even in that minute of silence an ambulance sped down Cambridge Heath Road, followed by two police cars and one motorbike and it finally dawned on me that tragedy takes no time so we best make the most of the minutes that we have. 

Christ Church, Spitalfields, Commercial Street, 06.11.11.

This Sunday is my birthday or last Sunday was my birthday (if we go by the post date) and I gave myself a little present by going to my favourite church in the East End, Christ Church Spitalfields. An unoriginal choice, the church has rightly been heralded as one of the most beautiful religious buildings in Europe. The building is a symbol of the changing face of London’s East End. The church was originally built from 1714 to 1729 based on the designs of Nicholas Hawksmoor. Hawksmoor was under the government incentive to assert an Anglican dominance over the migrant sections just outside the city (particularly French Protestant Hugenots). However the church’s restoration from 1976 to 2004 mirrors the gentrification of the area from East End slums predominantly inhabited by low income migrants to commercial buildings that currently house one of the most powerful financial sectors in the world. Anglican dominance seems to have survived in the form of commercial gentrification, not that the Anglican church appear to be very pleased with the banking world if the current St Pauls Occupation is anything to go by. A church with such history is hard to comprehend and that is not even considering its stunning architecture or the actual church service.

The congregation seem very proud of the building’s history but they don’t let that distract them from God. Self-consciously the church rector Andy Rider and curate Johnny Douglas mentioned the church’s fame as a tourist site and the need to remind outsiders that the building was still a practicing church. One of the gentleman mentioned this directly after I had informed a lady from  the congregation of my agnostic pilgrimage, and that is was my birthday and how I had decided to reward myself by visiting the most architecturally beautiful church in London. As soon as my materialism had been mentioned within the service my weekly dose of guilt ran riot through my head. What was the true way to experience Christ Church? Not finding answers within the service like most believers, I took to the atheist’s bible, the Google search engine. My online discovery was that Christ Church has its very own Holy Trinity of websites, three very professional sites that explore three very different aspects of the building. They are listed below in order of importance (according to Google)

1.       The Father: The Friends of Christ Church, A website dedicated to the restoration of Christ Church of Spitalfields. http://www.christchurchspitalfields.org/v2/home/home.shtml

2.       The Son: Christ Church Spitalfields Venue, A website that markets all the venue potential for renting the church for private events. http://www.spitalfieldsvenue.org/node/1/

3.       The Holy Spirit: The actual Anglican Church website dedicated to promoting the Word of God (Google clearly has no religious bias). http://www.ccspitalfields.org/

All of these websites are very impressive and are highly informative within their own fields. So impressive that it made my weekly blog entry even more irrelevant. It would be wrong to compare them and grade them but I was hard pushed to find a better way of illustrating the many dimensions to this geometrically astounding church. 

In the beginning there was The Father (God) but in the history of Spitalfields the oldest building of Christian worship still practicing is Christ Church. The restoration that has returned the Church to its original form was led by “The Friends of Christ Church.” The group are affiliated with the church but are also separate body and did campaign with the Hawksmoor Committee in the 1970s to stop a wholesale demolition of the empty building—proposed by the then Bishop of Stepney, Trevor Huddleston. True to form the Anglican Church later saw the opportunity “The Friends of Christ Church” presented and they began to work together. “The Friends of Christ Church” of Spitalfields started in 1976 and has raised and spent £10 million on an award winning restoration. The restoration was a long and patient process that was hugely praised for its attention to detail in recapturing Hawksmoor’s original design. The whole building restoration spanned from 1976 to 2004 and “The Friends of Christ Church” continue to raise money with the hope of restoring the 1735 organ. The website is great in exploring the history of the building and providing a context to the wonders that surround me. Anyone who has visited the church and was inspired by its beauty should visit the site but it does not speak for the building today and its modern use as a Church but also as a venue.

Like Our Father who gave us his Son, Christ Church’s restoration has born a new generation in the church’s life. The church has always been a house of God but now like Jesus it’s taken god’s house out to the heathens. Unlike Jesus, Christ Church Venue management are less interested in selfless acts of charity but instead motivated by commercial profit. “Christ Church Spitalfield Venue” is an architecturally pornographic website gratuitously selling the beautiful building for multiple functions, “where every event becomes a unique experience,” (to quote the website). You can choose your venue location. The nave is presented as the essential luxury, described as an “oak panelled hall, with Purbeck stone and a ceiling of flowers, each one unique.” You can expand your event to the gallery that has a capacity of 125 and has an Entertainment licence or you could decide just to rent the old Vestry room located in the tower with  “ spectacular views down Brushfield street to the city,” ideal for those intimate corporate meetings. The site suggests renting the church for an event, corporate meetings, public events, music concerts or theatre or even the traditional wedding and baptism. Don’t worry about all the other amenities as the site offers various different catering and choice of lighting production for your event. Christ Church is the modern Anglican building like a rundown school that’s become a specialist Sports Academy who rent their equipment for commercial gain outside the building’s day job.  Despite being extremely accurate and calculated in its descriptions of Christ Church’s “unique” architectural worth the website does predictably lack a soul. A soul I hoped to find through visiting the congregation.

The Holy Spirit comes from the people within the church and it’s the job of the believer to keep it alive, so it would be a disservice (excuse the pun) to review the Church’s website in drawing conclusions about the congregation. People may provide the spirit of the Lord but a certain place will attract a certain congregation. The congregation appeared to be from richer, more educated and from more middle class stock than churches that are housed further from the city. It was not money that made an impression on me (despite sitting in a £10 million restored Hawksmoor nave) but creativity. The modern Christian hymns had an evangelical vibe, live bands putting Bible stories to the melodies of Snow Patrol, Cold Play or some other mediocre, inoffensive rock band. The atmosphere was impressive in comparison to the more rigid sung Eucharist practiced at more high Anglican churches across the East End and Communion was replaced by a community lunch. The congregation felt like a modern Christian community and was led by the rector Andy Rider, who carried the air of a man auditioning for Songs of Praise as he welcomed people to “join him in exploring the character of Jesus and partaking on a journey to see God in the everyday.” Andy’s casual but considerate English demeanour was countered by a passionate, in your face, Irish curate, Johnny Douglas. Johnny had the demeanour of a stand up, so articulate he verged on the poetic, his sermon creatively digressed until it felt like one man’s theological monologue written for the stage. Impassioned personalities are highly seductive and ultimately disappointing when you realise that for all Douglas’s dramatic and complex word play he was simply praising his love for Jesus. I was impressed by the service but like the websites it fell short of describing my love for Christ Church.

My love for Christ Church is ethereal, over the last year if I have learned anything from going to church is that love for a Christian is a belief that is only explained as a feeling despite the Bible’s attempts to articulate its meaning. So a part of me knows I will spectacularly fail to explain my love for Christ Church in this remaining paragraph and it will remain an elusive and private pleasure. To experience any building one should visit but hearing other perspectives can still enrich ones impression. So here is my web testimony, I would not call it a poem, musings sounds too high brow, I think pretentious drivel is more an accurate description but what do you expect when a man with an insufficient vocabulary is faced with a building of such magnificence.

GODS HOUSE

The door drags you into its depths

While the spire stretches for the sky

It appears to looms over you yet leans away

Heaven should not be this hypnotic

Such seduction feels almost satanic

A Contorted Christian

The building simultaneously rises as it falls

The higher my head goes up the lower it sinks

Eyes caught between cocoons of time

God’s country knows no borders

As a Greek pediment perches on a collection of Tuscan Columns

This bricolage bastard is from Venice, Paris and Athens

An architectural migrant from the many motherlands

It marks where old countries end

And new ones are born

Born from the bones of the old

They have call it “British Baroque,”

Sounds so stupid it must make sense

Not a sense that can be explained in a sentence

Or the sense that helps you see, hear, smell, taste or touch

But the sense that helps form the sensual

The sense taken from sensational

A sense caught between senseless nonsense

Like Christ in a Church.

Shiloh Pentecostal Church, Ashwin Street, Dalston, 30.10.11

Ok here is something a bit different. I have been getting a bit bored of the sound of my own writing (but I still love an oxymoron). So I have decided to write a piece of fiction inspired by my visit to Shiloh Pentecostal Church on Ashwin Street . None of these names in my post are real people and some information has been altered to avoid upsetting certain people. Most of what is written is a white middle class agnostic boy’s fantasy about an elderly working class West Indian Christian woman. Hope it’s not as portentously offensive as I first feared. Pray for me.

Sister Seymour don’t smile! So say the children. The pearls of her mouth stay hidden when the children use such poor grammar. A steely stern face with a square jaw and beady eyes are set in a forever frown, unforgettable in her expression and inquisitive of others. An aged beauty queen, she wears her maturity proudly but stiffly, her captivating appearance demands attention but her temperament will turn to anger at those who stare. Once pretty but now glamorous, she is an icon mistaken for a relic by those outside the church walls. Casting a stretching shadow from such a small stature, her presence is as far reaching and powerful as her frame is thin and frail. The children don’t know why they are scared but they are, maybe it’s because Sister Seymour asks so many questions without speaking a word.  What reasons can be read from those wrinkles? Who got the goat of the God fearing Gran? And why should the children share her scorn?

So much time has passed Sister Seymour that she is destined to be late. Feet, ankles, calves, knees, thighs are all set to slower clock hands than life itself. Luckily Shiloh Pentecostal Church’s sole purpose is to elevate oneself outside time and bask in God’s loving grace. Shiloh’s pure spiritual worship is not restricted by the routine rituals of other churches. God is never late the congregation are always early and Sister Seymour follows the Lord so devoutly that she perpetuates his poor time keeping. Straddled between the wooden stair bannister and her elderly companion Dorothy for support, Sister Seymour makes her entrance an hour into the choir’s rhythmic heavy hymn harmonies. Leaving the stairs Dorothy takes all her weight only alleviated by handshakes and hugs that shepherd Sister Seymour to her seat. Everyone knows that without Dorothy such an entrance might not have been possible, everyone knows except Sister Seymour.

Dorothy don’t complain, Christians can’t or shouldn’t. Dorothy knows it will be her time soon, to be the weight that all good Christians must carry. Sister Seymour is not grateful because it is Gods will, Dorothy, Kima, Sister Clarence are all part of God’s chosen few. No hindrance it should be an honour. The Lord is repaying her for 70 years of dedication to spreading his good word but also the millions of escorts she facilitated that saw the elderly West Indian Christian female community of east London be transported from their humble houses to his glorious home. Not that Sister Seymour dislikes Dorothy she finds her company comforting, it’s just that Dorothy is twenty years younger in age and thirty in spirit. Dorothy dresses like a good Christian woman, wearing a bright blue patterned headscarf and matching dress that covers her knees and shoulders offset by a regulatory plain beige raincoat. The blue is a bit too strong on the eyes for Sister Seymour who prefers conventional black and white dresses and wears a large brown cloth hat instead of a head scarf. No Dorothy is definitely the image of Pentecostal purity but she has a tendency to hurry and hassle and sometimes fuss and fight with others, always with opinions that need to be heard to be validated. Sister Seymour reasons that this is due to her spiritually searching; that Dorothy is slightly unrested and insecure in her soul; She will come of age, Sister Seymour knows this to be true and like her she will be more spiritually at peace. Eventually Dorothy will abandon her dynamo dancing for a slower and more constant form of spirituality but for now she must enjoy her senior youth. Sister Seymour does not need to search for God she knows he is here in her and she won’t let him leave.

A Christian circus of celebration or “a carnival to life,” as one past pastor once described Sunday worship. It still entertains, fascinates and touches Sister Seymour but now she knows how to appreciate God in his many images and not just through her own connection. God is most gratuitously on show in the feverish dancing that fills the nave, arms waving, bums waggling; such infectious celebration makes the congregation conduits to the Holy Spirit. For a time she thought God needed her groove and her spirit would be lacking if she constrained her celebrations but she has become wiser to his ways. Cathartic cries from the congregation in response to the choir chimes are essential to church but they no longer hold the key to Sister Seymour’s faith. She can sing him in silence and knows he will hear. Not that the sight of such ceremony does not stoke her heart and give hope for God’s future when she is gone. Raised as a good Methodist girl she remembers coming to this country and it taking years for others to let her celebrate God’s loving grace as she had back home. Joining the Shiloh Pentecostal church in 1978 she recalls the long road to acceptance that led to the regular Sunday serenade of God’s good work in a chapel that the congregation could call their own. Moving into a new building filled with discarded wooden pews from other churches the congregation believed they could never have been richer but now they have a full band, large choir, live PA system, overhead projector and further plans to add a lift to tackle the outside stairs, as well as HD plasma screens for hymns, readings and sermons and even plans ea new vestry. The church has learned that God’s loving grace knows no financial limit.  Time has taught Sister Seymour that such material wealth should not cocoon the church and all new found riches bestowed on the Sunday service should be balanced with preaching the good lord’s word in the pouring wet cold outside Dalston Kingsland’s Shopping Centre on a Saturday.

Others have been and gone but their faces live on in the families that still go to Shiloh. The cycle of Christian learning is passed down through generations. Many would not remember the conceiving of Kayla, the sweet and attentive usherette whose father was the scandalous Derek but Sister Seymour knows all. She was pleased to know, that such a sweet natured girl could come from the neglectful nurture of an often absent father. Age had given her a better perspective of God’s work so she had grown silently tolerant to people’s inadequacies especially the well intentioned. Recent young pastors pleased her but no longer seduced her like the preachers from her past. The young faced, fine dressed and some called handsome preacher from Antigua was such a man that might once have had her swooning in the aisles but he is but a boy to her old eyes. Like the others he too was learning. Last week’s sermon was far too long, the reading could have been paraphrased, the jokes at his wife’s expense were not suitable for a Sunday and the young pastor was yet to learn how to climax a religious rant into an uplifting halleluiah. All these points can be improved once given the time but time cannot save “the broken,” and time has not yet begun for “the reborn.” “The broken, and “the reborn,” are Christian infants and the church’s essential charity cause.

Bessie Walcott calls them “the broken,” but Sister Seymour has learned how cruel and unchristian such gossip and name calling can be. True they are on the fringes of the church community but they are God’s children and Sister Seymour in her later years has found more hope from “the broken,” than from the self-declared saved. Positioned at the back of the nave behind the sound desk “the broken,” are not united by one disability but have been victim to the devil’s many afflictions. Some medical, others mental, but none spiritually disadvantaged. Joy cannot be broken it can only fix one’s soul, so when watching the collection of life’s casualties find such pleasure Sister Seymour almost has reasons to smile but she saves that for the yet to be “reborn.”

The children are clustered in the church corner to the right of the sound desk just in front of “the broken.” More often silent than singing, any non-Christian sound would rightly be scolded by a stare from Sister Seymour. As a self-declared grand high matriarch, her role to rule with an iron fist that is never raised makes her a passive dictator. Only through obedience and discipline can children be reborn to a Christian life, like the disadvantaged their struggle is far more honest to Sister Seymour’s eyes. Not that all the children listen, a broken window in the church nave indicates that few delinquents venture into the church except through chucking stones. The ones who are willing to be taught the trials of life through the cold face of Sister Seymour will gain her approval but it will not be recognised till she feels it’s deserved. The longer the wait the better has always been her reasoning; a few times she let her expression succumb to a smile which caused the children to shout with joy at her amazing pearls on display. A smile is free but does not need to be cheap.  Her own wait has been long and she feels better for it, she is ready herself to see the smile of God and she can feel his mouth creasing at the prospect of welcoming her to heaven. Church quickly taught her that the joy of God is a loud and wondrous thing but only through life has she gradually learned that it is also contemplative and silent. Some spiritualism is so hard to describe it can only exist though an absence, like a face without a smile.

St Annes, Underwood Road, Tower Hamlets, 23.10.11

We are all starving African children in need of spiritual nourishment according to the Reverend of St Anne’s Roman Catholic Church. Inspired by the latest Oxfam poster campaign with its images of impoverished children our Reverend drew an unintentionally offensive and grossly insensitive comparison to the real famines within the developing world and the plague of atheism in our own. I like a creative metaphor or an exaggerated analogy but the Reverend’s use of Oxfam’s startling images of poverty to sell his God instead of raising funds was beyond opportunistic and verging on the exploitative. Should I expect better from the Catholic Church? They did manage to colonise half the world in the name of charity. I think my shock came when it was declared that this Sunday was Mission Sunday but the service lacked any clear charitable aspirations. The only form of social outreach advocated by the Reverend was that members of the congregation should invite a stranger to church. The Catholic church seemed to think that as long as everyone repents we will not need to raise money to fight the famines, floods and plagues of Armageddon because we will all be safe in heaven. Christianity is so entwined with charity it can be hard to distinguish the churches who really want to help and those who actually need help (i.e more recruits).

Christians want to save people but also many outreach programmes are not interested with ramming God down ones throat instead are wisely more concerned with force feeding the needy with something more essential, like hot food. Fine examples of Christian outreaches in East London that do more practicing than preaching are: The Whitechapel Mission Church established in 1876 as a soup kitchen for destitute lads but has developed into a Methodist outreach programme that provides domestic facilities for the homeless; showers, clothes, counselling, postal address, legal advice, everything but a home.  Similarly Acorn House is a rehab centre run in the grounds of and by the parishioners of St Leonards of Shoreditch. Also St John at Hackney turns the church’s the grand oval nave into a winter night shelter from October to April. I have been less impressed by the Alpha Course or Street Pastor programmes which are not geared to a specific local community or church but alternatively run on a more corporate level with cost charges for their volunteers. The larger corporate outreach programmes seem to focus on the needs of the volunteers over the needs of the client and therefore appear tokenistic not fulfilling a Jesus Christ level of masochism. It’s essential that Christians give back to society but it seems a never-ending debate on what is the most appropriate form of charity. Catholics have obviously decided that the only thing we need to give is the word of God and here lies the accusations of corruption, greed, and hypocrisy.

A Catholic service is an exercise in obedience but also a charitable act. When the congregation pray for forgiveness and receive the Holy Sacrament the congregation are playing a well-rehearsed role of guilty sinner seeking mercy and love from The Almighty. The ritual cannot be changed as it determines the relationship of power. Unlike the more celebratory evangelical services that raise the Holy Spirit, the Eucharist’s set formula creates a clear separation between God and his followers. Catholics hold the most rigid of church services and clearly see the body of Christ as all the food you need to eat on this Earth which would be admirable if the Roman Catholic Church was not the richest in the world. Not that you need to travel to the Vatican to see the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church even in the low, run down areas of London’s East End, you can see wealth peppered around the antique like architectural beauty of St Anne’s of Bethnal Green.  

I counted 38 stone statue angels in varying sizes within the nave, 24 rogue heads overlooking the arched windows, approximately 12 Marys carved from the finest stones, 44 candle sticks, 36 golden and 8 iron, a blinding number of lights, 14 potted plants, a marble gothic altar of saints and angels and a hoard of adornments so luxurious I could not imagine their names. All of these treasures were contained in a 1850s chapel made out of Kentish rag stone with a large rose window over the rustic wooden front door. Every brick and piece of stone inside and out you wanted to smash to see if it was filled with gold. The buildings collection of timeless religious paraphernalia made it feel outside clear modern economic distinctions. Call it age, maturity, history, the church’s opulence felt priceless or is it? A listed building with various antique decorations gave the impression of something greater than grandeur, a place of divine spiritual significance however that’s what the Catholic want you to believe when in reality the church and its many treasures could be used to raise funds for more worthwhile causes.

The Reverend seemed to forget that Jesus did not require followers by preaching that he was the son of God but by performing acts of charity that provided for others and did not benefit him. Arguably the wealth of a church depends on the faith of its followers and despite the grandeur and glamour of Catholicism its money is non-transferable to charity, yet there is no larger or more powerful religious institution in the world. I find it sad that in the poorest areas of the world many will swallow the word of God because they are hungry for food but in the richer society we eat the poor as if they are food in the hope it will bring us closer to God. We eat them as news stories for our papers and TV programmes, as charitable causes for our outreach programmes, and as illustrative victims for our own agenda. We never eat them for who they are but for who we want them to be.