Daily prayer in Lent 2025: 18, Saturday 22 March 2025

Minarets and church domes on the skyline in Rethymnon in Crete … the Parable of the Prodigal Son is an important aid in the Christian-Muslim dialogue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Lent began over two weeks ago on Ash Wednesday (5 March 2025), and tomorrow is the Third Sunday in Lent (Lent III).

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son depicted in a panel in the East Window in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32 (NRSVA):

1 Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’

3 So he told them this parable:

11 … ‘There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.” So he divided his property between them. 13 A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and travelled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. 14 When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16 He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 17 But when he came to himself he said, “How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.’” 20 So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” 22 But the father said to his slaves, “Quickly, bring out a robe – the best one – and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” And they began to celebrate.

25 ‘Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27 He replied, “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.” 28 Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29 But he answered his father, “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!” 31 Then the father said to him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found”.’

The Church of the Annunciation in Kaş in southern Turkey was converted into the Yeni Cami or New Mosque in 1963 … how does the Parable of the Prodigal Son assist Christian-Muslim dialogue? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

Today’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist in the Lectionary (Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32) is the Parable of the Prodigal Son, one of the best-known parables, even among people who seldom go to church, and it is one of the parables that are unique to Saint Luke’s Gospel.

We are going to hear this parable again in the Gospel reading (Luke 15: 1–3, 11b–32) tomorrow week, on Lent IV or Mothering Sunday (30 March 2025). I shall reflect on this parable again that morning (see HERE). But this morning I am reminded how the Parable of the Prodigal Son was used in a course on Muslim-Christian dialogue I did 30 years ago, back in 1995.

At the time, I was the newly-appointed Foreign Desk Editor of The Irish Times, and I was writing a number of features on Islam and on Muslim-Christian dialogue. I realised I needed to ‘upskill’ myself in these areas, building on my theological education, and the editor, Conor Brady suggested I identify some short courses that could equip me in these fields.

I took two courses, one year after another. The first was a short residential course at CME level in the then Church of Ireland Theological College in Dublin in 1995, organised by the Revd Declan Smith of the Church Mission Society (CMS).

That course was delivered by the Revd Dr Colin Chapman, a British missiologist who specialises in Islamic studies. He worked in the Middle East for 18 years for CMS and the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES). He taught in Cairo, Bethlehem and Beirut, where he was a lecturer in Islamic studies at the Near East School of Theology (1999-2003). He also taught at Trinity College, Bristol, and was the principal of Crowther Hall, the CMS college in Selly Oak, Birmingham.

Colin Chapman’s publications include Cross and Crescent: Responding to the Challenges of Islam (1988, 2007), Islam and the West (1998), Whose Promised Land?: the continuing conflict over Israel and Palestine (1983, 1992, 2002, 2015), Whose Holy City? Jerusalem and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2004) and ‘Islamic Terrorism’: Is There a Christian Response?’ (2005).

His Cross and Crescent was submitted in conjunction with his thesis ‘Teaching Christians about Islam: a Study In Methodology’ at the Centre for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Selly Oak, at the Department of Theology in the University of Birmingham in September 1993, a year before I took his course in Dublin.

He was strongly influenced by the work of the American theologian Professor Kenneth Bailey (1930-2016), who also taught at the Near East School of Theology in Beirut (1962-1985) and at the Ecumenical Institute for Theological Research in Jerusalem.

On that course in Dublin, as throughout his work, Colin Chapman drew heavily on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, which he finds unique in the context of Christian-Muslim dialogue. He finds it especially valuable as a story told by Jesus himself, because it presents the message of Jesus and as a story that can be told, elaborated, dramatised and discussed in ways that are culturally familiar within Middle East contexts.

Kenneth Bailey, in his study of the parables of Jesus, believes that the basic message of Jesus can be summed up as the costly demonstration of unexpected love, God’s yes to all people. Not only does he proclaim his love, but he actually defines and declares his love in action. As Colin Chapman interprets Kenneth Bailey’s writing, this demonstration of God’s unexpected love is costly for him, since in a sense he suffers in the process of forgiving.

Colin says the Parable of the Prodigal Son expresses all these points with special force. The father loves his sons – both the rebellious son who wants to leave home, and the older son who has such a cold and formal relationship with him. He goes on loving them, even when we might expect him to want to punish us and reject us. He demonstrates his love to both of them in ways that would have been considered surprising, if not shocking, in Middle East societies. And in demonstrating his love to them, the father suffers in the process.

Colin has summarised Bailey’s understanding of the significance of the Prodigal Son’s homecoming: ‘On his return, the prodigal is overwhelmed by an expected visible demonstration of love in humiliation. He is shattered by the offer of grace, confesses unworthiness, and accepts restoration to sonship in genuine humility. Sin is now a broken relationship which he cannot restore. Repentance is now understood as acceptance of grace and confession of unworthiness. The community rejoices together. The visible demonstration of love in humiliation is seen to have dear overtones of the atoning work of Christ.’

This parable comes from a culture that is similar to the culture of the Islamic world, Colin argues. The strong emphasis in Islam on the unity of the family and family loyalties and the fact that most of the Muslim world is in Africa and the Middle East should make it easy for Muslims to understand what is happening in the story, he suggests.

But the parable also raises question for Muslims, he points out. What Muslim could imagine a younger son asking for his share of the inheritance while his father is still alive? Should a father not punish his sons when they dishonour the name of the family? Has the elder brother got to swallow his pride and welcome home his younger brother who has disgraced himself?

The second course was a year later, in 1996, in the College of the Ascension in Selly Oak, Birmingham. It was led by the Principal, the Revd Canon Dr Andrew Wingate, in association with USPG.

I was reminded earlier this week how that course in 1996 included Saint Patrick’s Day, and Andrew surprised me by asking me to preach at the Eucharist in his college chapel that Sunday.

CMS moved some of its training to Cowley, Oxford, in 2005 and closed Crowther Hall. The United College of the Ascension closed in 2006. Some of its work, and that of the Department of Mission, continues in the Selly Oak Centre for Mission Studies, based in the Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham, an ecumenical theological foundation close to Birmingham University.

Later, Andrew Wingate was the founding director of Saint Philip’s Centre for Study and Engagement, Leicester, where I was involved in yet another a course in 2012. He is now a consultant and teacher in Inter-Faith Relations, and we meet occasionally at USPG conferences and events.

I drew heavily on Colin Chapman’s work when I produced resources on Christian-Muslim dialogue for CMS and when I was a lecturer in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. He is now enjoying semi-retirement in Milton, Cambridge, where he sometimes assist at All Saints’ Church. We have met occasionally at Saint Bene’t’s Church, Cambridge, when I have been studying at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies and staying ay Sidney Sussex College.

I have been a lifelong supporter of USPG, and I sometimes wondered whether some people in USPG saw me as a ‘Prodigal Son’ when I was worked for CMS for four years (2002-2006), or did CMS see me as a ‘Prodigal Son’ when I subsequently joined the boards of USPG in Ireland and became a trustee of USPG?

The former College of the Ascension in Selly Oak, Birmingham, where I studied Christian-Muslim dialogue in 1996 (click on image for full-screen viewing)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 22 March 2025):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been ‘Truth: The Path to Reconciliation’. This theme was introduced last Sunday with a programme update by Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 22 March) invites us to pray:

Lord, bless the Anglican Church of Southern Africa as a beacon of hope and reconciliation, empowering them to advocate for justice and embody Christ’s love.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
you show to those who are in error the light of your truth,
that they may return to the way of righteousness:
grant to all those who are admitted
into the fellowship of Christ’s religion,
that they may reject those things
that are contrary to their profession,
and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same;
through our Lord Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Almighty God,
you see that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves:
keep us both outwardly in our bodies,
and inwardly in our souls;
that we may be defended from all aersities
which may happen to the body,
and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Almighty God,
by the prayer and discipline of Lent
may we enter into the mystery of Christ’s sufferings,
and by following in his Way
come to share in his glory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Collect on the Eve of Lent III:

Almighty God,
whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain,
and entered not into glory before he was crucified:
mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross,
may find it none other than the way of life and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

A church in a provincial town in Egypt … can the Parable of the Prodigal Son assist Christian-Muslim dialogue? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Two Saint Johns in Hampstead: 200 years of controversies at Saint John’s, Downshire Hill

Saint John’s Downshire Hill, Hampstead … a proprietary chapel that is not a parish church in the Diocese of London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

There are two Church of England churches in Hampstead that are named Saint John: Saint John-at-Hampstead which is dedicated to Saint John the Evangelist, and Saint John’s Downshire Hill.

Saint John-at-Hampstead is the ancient parish church on Church Row, and I was writing about yesterday. Saint John’s Downshire Hill is not actually a parish church but a proprietary chapel.

The two Saint John’s in Hampstead have very different histories, styles of worship and values. To add to the confusion, but there is also a debate about the patronage of Saint John-at-Hampstead: was the saint in question Saint John the Baptist or Saint John the Evangelist?

I decided to visit both churches – or the church and the chapel – when I was in Hampstead last week.

>Saint John’s Downshire Hill, Hampstead … facing what should be the liturgical east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Saint John’s Downshire Hill, Hampstead, is a proprietary chapel rather than a parish church in the Diocese of London. It is in the Parish of Saint Stephen with All Hallows, and, although most people refer to it as Saint John’s Church, it is legally and formally a chapel. Nor should it be confused with Saint John-at-Hampstead, on Church Row.

As much of the area was being developed in the early 19th century, a new church was considered an essential for the new houses and their residents. Downshire Hill was laid out at the beginning of the 19th century and the street was probably named after Wills Hill (1718-1793), 1st Marquess of Downshire. He was Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1768-1772, the period leading up to the American War of Independence, and his Irish estates included Hillsborough Castle, Co Down, now the official government residence in Northern Ireland, and Blessington House, Co Wicklow, which was burned down in 1798.

Later residents of Downshire Hill included the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the actress Peggy Ashcroft and the Irish-born scientist John Desmond Bernal.

A site on Downshire Hill was bought from the Manor of Belsize in 1812 by a group who handed the site on in 1817 to a three people: the Revd James Curry, who financed the project; Edward Carlisle, a lawyer; and William Woods, a speculative builder who was involved in developments in Hampstead and other parts of London.

Curry offered to pay the cost of the building if he was appointed the minister. The new chapel was dedicated to Saint John, indicating, perhaps, that it was originally planned as a chapel of ease for the parish church of Saint John-at-Hampstead.

The building was completed in 1823, but Curry had fallen ill by the time the first service held on 26 October 1823. Instead, the first minister was the Revd William Harness (1790-1869), a classical scholar and a friend from school days of the poet Lord Byron.

Curry died soon after the opening, Woods gave up his interest in the building in January 1824, and Harness left in 1825 when his popularity as a preacher brought him an invitation to become the incumbent of Saint Peter’s Church, Regent Square (1826-1844). The four ministers who succeeded Harness each remained for only a short period.

The property was bought in 1832 by the Revd John Wilcox (1780-1835), who admired George Whitefield, a key figure in the revival in Britain and America in the 18th century. Wilcox saw Downshire Hill as the ideal place to carry on Whitefield’s evangelical legacy and put the evangelical tradition associated with the chapel on a firm footing.

Saint John’s Downshire Hill, Hampstead … facing what should be the liturgical west end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Wilcox immediately met strong opposition from the Revd Samuel White, who had been the Vicar of Saint John-at-Hampstead since 1807 and who disagreed strongly with the Calvinist teachings of Wilcox. White’s permission was needed to hold services and to preach sermons in the parish, and Downshire Hill was in his parish.

White accused Wilcox of neglecting the two churches where he already ministered and charged him with illegally officiating in a private chapel without the consent of the local incumbent. Wilcox threatened that without White’s approval he would preach as a dissenter. But, when Wilcox ignored White’s demands, White began formal proceedings against him.

The consistory court ruled in favour of White, but local feeling was on the side of Wilcox. The poet John Keats, who was living nearby in what is now Keats House, referred to White as ‘the Person of Hampstead quarrelling with all the world.’ A petition was signed by influential local people including the then Lord of the Manor of Belsize, Lord Galloway, and the writer Sara Coleridge, a daughter of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The court ruling stood, and the chapel stayed closed until 1835. The chapel remained controversial in church circles in the years that followed, and Wilcox remained in the area, teaching local children at Saint John’s Church School, which he founded on Downshire Hill at his own expense.

The Bevington organ in the west gallery was built in 1873 and installed in 1880 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

When Wilcox died in December 1835, the trustees of Saint John’s Downshire Hill were able to appoint an alternative minister who had White’s approval. The Revd John Ayre was the minister for 20 years there, from 1835 and 1855, and was the longest-standing minister there for many years after. In 1851, 1,370 people attended a service at which the Archbishop of Canterbury preached.

Meanwhile, Samuel White had died in 1841, the area was growing rapidly, and there was a need for a new parish church. Saint John’s was proposed as the new parish church in 1863, but this was rejected on the grounds that the church was too small and the site too small to build a larger church.

Instead, a new parish church, Saint Stephen’s Church, was built nearby at Rosslyn Hill and the Revd Joshua Kirkman of Saint John’s Downshire Hill became the first Vicar of Saint Stephen’s.

Canon Henry Wright (1833-1880), was secretary of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) was the minister of Saint John’s from 1872 until he drowned in Coniston Lake. The Revd Robert Baker Girdlestone (1836-1922), the first Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford (1877-1889), was at Downshire Hill in 1889-1903.

Saint John’s faced financial difficulties during World War I, and in 1916 the freehold was bought by Henry Wright’s son, Albert Leslie Wright, who then leased the church to the congregation at a nominal rent. When he died in 1938, he appointed the Church Pastoral Aid Society (CPAS) as trustees to ensure the church continued to maintain an evangelical traditions.

Later ministers included: the Revd Jakób Jocz (1947-1956), who was born in Tsarist Lithuania, became President of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance and then was Professor of Systematic Theology at Wycliffe College, Toronto; Canon Douglas Butcher (1957-1960), a canon of Cairo Cathedral; the Revd Douglas Paterson (1962-1965), who later joined the Rwanda Mission; and Bishop Kenneth Howell (1972-1979), a former Bishop of Chile, Bolivia and Peru.

Typical of its time … the distinctive black and gold clock below the bellcote was made by John Moore of Clerkenwell in 1823 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Grade I listed building, with its Regency stuccoed and cream painted façade, looks more like a church typical of its period in New England. It has a Doric porch, portico and cupola. The distinctive black and gold clock below the bellcote was made by John Moore of Clerkenwell in 1823, its simple bold design typical of that period.

Inside, the vestibule has a double staircase. The main part of the church has a five-bay nave with galleries on three sides and no chancel. During restoration work in the 1960s, a frieze of biblical texts that had been obliterated in 1923 was rediscovered decorating the gallery and reredos and repainted in the original gold lettering.

The original wooden box pews have been moved to the sides of the church, below the galleries, or to the church hall. The Bevington organ in the west gallery was built in 1873 and installed in 1880.

The East Window (1882) depicts the eagle of Saint John the Evangelist (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The East Window, dating from 1882, depicts the eagle of Saint John the Evangelist. Under it, the reredos frames the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed, although these are obscured by a large drop-down screen. When I visited last week, there was no communion table and no pulpit. Perhaps they were moved during renovations in 2003-2004, and instead there is a raised stage with a small, fold-away table and two comfortable chairs.

During the 19th century, there were up to 50 proprietary chapels in London. Today, Saint John’s Downshire Hill is the only proprietary chapel remaining in the Diocese of London, one of only a handful in the whole of England. The running costs are met entirely by the congregation. It is financially separate from the Church of England, and does not contribute to or receive from funds in the Diocese of London.

The chapel is in the conservative evangelical tradition, and has passed resolutions rejecting both the leadership and the the ordination of women. Alongside Saint Luke’s Church, Hampstead, and churches such as All Souls’ Church, Langham Place, it looks for alternative episcopal oversight to the Bishop of Ebbsfleet, Rob Munro.

Looking out into the world? … a window below one of the galleries (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The church website refers to the church as the people ‘who have received forgiveness and new life through the death and resurrection of Jesus’ and says the building is ‘a place for God’s people to meet to pray, sing, encourage each other and hear teaching from His word, the Bible.’

Article 19 of the 39 Articles, ‘Of the Church’, says: ‘The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ's ordinance …’

It is difficult to see how this chapel fits in with this understanding of the Church, to see or find out where ‘the Sacraments be duly ministered’ or to see where the ‘Word of God is preached’ in a way that distinguishes a sermon from a television interview or a cosy fireside chat on a stage that gives priority to space for a performance with modern musical instruments.

Apart from a fold-away table and two comfortable chairs, there is no sign of a pulpit or altar, of word and sacrament in Saint John’s Downshire Hill, Hampstead (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Revd Tom Watts has been the senior minister of Saint John’s since 2018. The ‘Church Staff’ include David Rue, Associate Minister for Families, Corinne Brixton, Associate Minister for Women, and Aaron Ku, Assistant Minister. But there is nothing on the noticeboards or the website to indicate whether they are ordained or lay ministers.

The congregation has owned the building since 2003, when it bought it from the Wright family trustees who had owned it and leased it since World War I. The present trustees, who have legal oversight of the governance of Saint John’s Downshire Hill, are Daniel Barlow, Gareth Burns, Abi Naidu and Christopher Onaka.

The website refers to meetings, and says members of the congregation ‘meet together twice on Sundays’, at 10:30 and 6 pm, with both ‘meetings’ involving ‘music, prayer and the reading and teaching of the Bible’ and with the ‘focus on learning more about the God of the Bible, His Son Jesus Christ and what His word has to say about Him and our lives in relation to Him.’

But I could not find out anywhere when the Holy Communion or the Eucharist is celebrated at Saint John’s Downshire Hill, Hampstead. I wondered whether it is a mere conincidence that the only was rediscovered decorating the gallery and reredos that have been partly obscured are those relating to the need to celebrate the Eucharist or the Holy Communion.

Stairway to heaven? … the vestibule in Saint John’s Downshire Hill has a double staircase (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Daily prayers in Ordinary Time with USPG: (18) 15 June 2023

Holy Trinity Cathedral, Shanghai … designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott and reopened last December (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The First Sunday after Trinity was celebrated on Sunday (11 June 2023). The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Evelyn Underhill (1941), Spiritual Writer, 1941.

Before this day begins, I am taking some time this morning for prayer, reading and reflection.

Over these weeks after Trinity Sunday, I am reflecting each morning in these ways:

1, Looking at relevant images or stained glass window in a church, chapel or cathedral I know;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Worshippers at the reopening of Holy Trinity Cathedral, Shanghai, on 12 December 2022 (Photograph: China Christian Daily)
Holy Trinity Cathedral, Shanghai:

Holy Trinity Church, Shanghai is the former Anglican church in the Huangpu District of Shanghai, and the oldest such cathedral in China. It was designed in the Gothic Revival style by the architect Sir George Gilbert Scott and was consecrated in 1869.

A Scottish merchant in Shanghai, Thomas Chaye Beale of Dent & Co bought and donated the current site as a gift to the church. The first church on the site was of poor quality, and the roof collapsed after intense rainfall, on 24 June 1850.

Holy Trinity Cathedral was designed in the Gothic revival style by Sir George Gilbert Scott. The foundation stone was laid on 24 May 1866 and the church opened on 1 August 1869.

Holy Trinity Cathedral is known to local people as ‘the red church’ and is built in red brick with neo-Gothic detailing. Scott was commissioned to draw plans for the church as a replacement for the older timber-built church and to serve the growing Christian community in Shanghai.

Scott’s resulting design is spectacular and one of Scott’s masterpieces. At the time, the church had a nave, two transepts, two aisles and a chancel, each element fashioned in the Gothic style.

Holy Trinity is oriented liturgically towards Jerusalem to the west. The colonnades are carved from stone and the red exterior brickwork is perfectly laid out. Red brickwork is a primary theme throughout the building, with even the architraves on the façade being made from red brick.

Because of budgetary constraints, the original design was modified by William Kidner (1841-1900), one of Scott’s junior architects, who scaled down the extravagance of the original plans but planning to accommodate a growing congregation.

A spire was added to the original tower in 1901. The organ by JW Walker & Sons of London was installed in 1914, and was then the largest organ in Asia.

Bishop William Armstrong Russell (1821-1879) became the first Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of North China in 1872, and Holy Trinity became his cathedral. William Russell was a son of Marcus Carew Russell of Ballydavid House, Littleton, Co Tipperary. He was educated at Midleton College, Co Cork, and Trinity College, Dublin. He was ordained in 1847 and went to China as a missionary that year.

Russell was appointed the first missionary bishop of North China in November 1872, and was consecrated in Westminster Abbey on 15 December. He died at Shanghai on 5 October 1879.

The Diocese of North China was based in Holy Trinity Cathedral from 1875 and in 1912 it became part of the Anglican Church in China, known as Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui (CHSKH, or the Holy Catholic Church in China).

The boys’ school attached to the cathedral was built in 1928. The pupils included the author JG Ballard, and it features in his novel Empire of the Sun.

Like Russell, the last two missionary bishops based in Shanghai were Irish-born. Herbert James Molony (1865-1939) was born in Dublin, and educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He became the Bishop of Chekiang in 1907. A year later, the name and boundaries of his diocese were changed and he became Bishop of Zhejiang (Chekiang). The diocese included Hangzhou (Hangchow) and Ningbo (Ningpo), and Holy Trinity Cathedral, Shanghai, became the cathedral of the Diocese of Zhejiang. He retired to England in 1937, and died in 1939.

John Curtis (1880-1962) was born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He was a curate at Christ Church, Leeson Park, Dublin and then an army chaplain in Thessaloniki. He was Bishop of Zhejiang in 1929-1949. He retired to England in 1957 and died in 1962.

The last Bishop of Zhejiang was KH Ting, Ting Kuang-hsun or Ding Guangxun (1915-2012), from 1955. He was the last surviving Anglican bishop in China, and when he died he was chairperson emeritus of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and president emeritus of the China Christian Council.

The Anglican Church in China was forcibly amalgamated in 1958 with other churches in the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and the China Christian Council (CCC).

The cathedral spire was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, the church was confiscated by the Huangpu District authorities and it was converted into a cinema. A stage was installed in the chancel, a second floor and sloping floor were introduced and the brickwork was covered by plaster and painted. The cathedral was later used as police offices and the exit visa bureau in Shanghai.

The church fell into disrepair over time, but the church complex was handed over to the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the China Christian Council as its headquarters in 2004. When I visited Shanghai, the former cinema seats were still in place. I visited the offices too, and I bought a full set of stoles in liturgical colours in the Amity shop.

The cathedral was restored by Zhang Ming Architectural Design Firm, carved teak pews were provided by a furniture factory in Zhejiang province.

Holy Trinity Cathedral Shanghai received a ‘Religious Venue Registration Certificate’ on 6 January 2022, and reopened to the public on 12 December 2022 after renovations. After being closed for 56 years, it is open once again, serving as a church.

The Protestant ‘National Lianghui’ office in Shanghai (Photograph: Flsxx/Wikipedia)

Matthew 5: 20-26 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 20 ‘For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

21 ‘You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.” 22 But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire. 23 So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. 26 Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.’

Holy Trinity Cathedral in Shanghai during reconstruction and redecoration (Photograph: Grafiti - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, wikimedia)

Today’s Prayer:

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) is ‘Opening the World for Children through Learning.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (15 June 2023) invites us to pray:

Let us pray for the Church of Ceylon and for the long and cherished relationship that USPG hold with them. May it continue to flourish in the future.

Holy Trinity Cathedral, Shanghai, is one of Sir George Gilbert Scott’s masterpieces (Photograph: GilbertScott.org / ‘The Scott Dynasty’)

Collect:

O God,
the strength of all those who put their trust in you,
mercifully accept our prayers
and, because through the weakness of our mortal nature
we can do no good thing without you,
grant us the help of your grace,
that in the keeping of your commandments
we may please you both in will and deed;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion:

Eternal Father,
we thank you for nourishing us
with these heavenly gifts:
may our communion strengthen us in faith,
build us up in hope,
and make us grow in love;
for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

A stole bought in the Amity shop at Holy Trinity Cathedral, Shanghai (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Praying in Ordinary Time with USPG: Saturday 29 October 2022

Saint Clare Street, off Minories, London, stands on the site of the former Abbey of the Minoresses of Saint Mary of the Order of Saint Clare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Patrick Comerford

In the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship, today recalls James Hannington, Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa, Martyr in Uganda, 1885 (29 October), with a Lesser Festival.

Before today gets busy, I am taking some time this morning for reading, prayer and reflection.

Since Monday, I have been reflecting in these ways in the morning:

1, One of the readings for the morning;

2, A reflection based on six churches or church sites I visited in London last week;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary, ‘Pray with the World Church.’

St Clare House, Minories … a reminder of the Poor Clares’ presence near the Tower of London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

James Hannington was born in 1847 into a Congregationalist family and became an Anglican before going up to Oxford. He was ordained and, after serving a curacy for five years, went with the Church Missionary Society (CMS) to Uganda. He was consecrated bishop for that part of Africa in 1884 and a year later began a safari inland from Mombasa, together with other European and indigenous Christians. The ruler of the Buganda, Mwanga, who despised Christians because they refused to condone his moral turpitude, seized the whole party, tortured them for several days and then had them butchered to death on this day in 1885.

Luke 14: 1, 7-11 (NRSVA):

1 On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.

7 When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honour, he told them a parable. 8 ‘When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honour, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; 9 and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, “Give this person your place”, and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. 10 But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, “Friend, move up higher”; then you will be honoured in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 11 For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’

St Clare Coffee and Bar, Minories … a reminder of the Poor Clares’ presence in this part of London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

The Abbey of the Minories and Holy Trinity Church:

Minories is one of the more peculiar street names in London. Minories takes its name from an Abbey that once stood at the north end of the street, called the Abbey of the Minoresses of Saint Mary of the Order of Saint Clare.

The Minoresses, in turn, took their name from the Latin Sorores Minores, meaning Sisters of the Minor Order of Saint Francis, the women’s section of the Franciscan order founded by Saint Clara of Assisi.

The Abbey in Minories was established by Edmund ‘Crouchback’, Earl of Lancaster and brother of Edward I, some time before 1291, perhaps as early as 1281, to house nuns brought from Spain to England by his second wife Blanche of Artois, the widowed Queen of Navarre. She was a niece of King Louis IX of France and his sister Isabella, who founded the Poor Clares’ Abbey of Longchamp.

The Abbey of the Minoresses of Saint Clare without Aldgate was known variously as the Abbey of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Aldgate, the House of Minoresses of the Order of Saint Clare of the Grace of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Minoresses without Aldgate, Saint Clare outside Aldgate, or the Minories, London. It was in the parish of Saint Botolph, outside the mediaeval walls of the City of London at Aldgate.

The Poor Clares of Aldgate had a mitigated form of their Rule that allowed them to own property. They lived an enclosed life on a site often said to be of five acres, although it may have been as little as half that size.

An early benefactor, Sir Henry le Galeys, Mayor of London, endowed a chantry in the chapel of Saint Mary in the nuns’ church, where he was buried. Substantial endowments came later from figures such as Queen Isabella, widow of Edward II, Margaret, Countess of Norfolk, and John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.

These royal connections gave a certain cachet to the house, attracting women of noble birth and the daughters of wealthy merchants. After the death of her husband, Thomas de Beauchamp, 12th Earl of Warwick, in 1401, Margaret Beauchamp (née Ferrers), went to live in the Abbey with three matrons. Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, placed his young daughter Isabel in the Abbey, but had a house right next to the conventual church and had access to the abbey through a private entrance.

The Abbess sent a gift of distilled water of roses to the Tower of London for Elizabeth of York, the wife of Henry VII, in April 1502. The Queen gave a gift of money to three nuns and a servant of the Abbess.

The Minories … a public house takes its name from the nuns and their former abbey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

The Abbey suffered more than once from the plague and other epidemics, and it is said 27 nuns of the abbey died of the plague in 1515. Soon after, the convent buildings were destroyed by fire. It was rebuilt by 1520, with contributions from Henry VIII, Cardinal Wolsey, the mayor and aldermen of London and private individuals.

One of the last abbesses was Dame Dorothy Comberford (1524-1531). At the Tudor dissolution of the monastic houses, the abbey was surrendered in 1539. The last abbess was Dame Elizabeth Salvage.

By the time the Minoresses surrendered their Abbey to Henry VIII in 1539, they had grown wealthy through renting their lands, exemption from taxation, and the plentiful bequests they had received in the Medieval period.

Following the Dissolution, the Abbey landholdings passed first to John Clerk, Bishop of Bath and Wells, Henry VIII’s ambassador to the Duke of Cleves, but the king seized the bishop’s own London residence in compensation. It also came to house officers of the Tower of London.

Later, Edward VI gave the lands to Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk and father of Lady Jane Grey, in 1552. In 1554 it reverted to government use, housing the Ordnance Office and its stores, transferred there from the Tower of London.

By 1598, the abbey precinct was used as armouries and coach-houses. In 1686, the area became part of the Liberties of the Tower of London.

Meanwhile, around 1563, the nuns’ chapel became a parish church, the Church of the Holy Trinity, Minories, and this was the last religious building on the site. All the ancient monuments were removed, a gallery, a new pulpit and pews were installed, and a steeple was built.

The church became a Puritan stronghold, where both John Field and Thomas Wilcox preached. The church survived the Great Fire of London in 1666, and was rebuilt in 1706, retaining the north wall of the mediaeval abbey church. Until 1730, the church claimed the rights of a royal peculiar, outside the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, and the right to perform marriages without licence. Some of the surviving abbey buildings were destroyed by fire in 1797.

A mummified head found in the church vaults in 1849 was said to be the head of Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, who was executed in 1554. The head was displayed in a glass case in the vestry, but later went to Saint Botolph’s without Aldgate, where it was interred in a vault and eventually buried in the churchyard in 1990.

Holy Trinity Church closed in 1899, and the pulpit was moved to All Saints’ Church, East Meon, Hampshire. The building survived as a parish hall until World War II, when it suffered severe bomb damage. A wall remained until final clearance of the area in the late 1950s.

The coffin of Anne de Mowbray, 8th Countess of Norfolk, who died aged eight, was unearthed at the abbey site in 1964, and was reburied in Westminster Abbey.

No evidence of the abbey church or any other parts of the Abbey remains today. St Clare, a coffee shop on Minories, St Clare Street, running east off Minories, Saint Clare House and the Minories public house are all are reminders of the abbey and its name. The end of St Clare Street marks the site of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Minories.

A drawing published in 1907 of the west front of the Church of Holy Trinity, Minories (Edward Murray Tomlinson, A history of the Minories, London, London: by London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1907)

Today’s Prayer (Saturday 29 October 2022):

The Collect:

Most merciful God,
who strengthened your Church by the steadfast courage
of your martyr James Hannington:
grant that we also,
thankfully remembering his victory of faith,
may overcome what is evil
and glorify your holy name;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

God our redeemer,
whose Church was strengthened by the blood of your martyr James Hannington:
so bind us, in life and death, to Christ’s sacrifice
that our lives, broken and offered with his,
may carry his death and proclaim his resurrection in the world;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The theme in the USPG Prayer Diary this week has been ‘Theology in Korea.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.

The USPG Prayer Diary invites us to pray today in these words:

We pray for everyone seeking to put their faith into practice. May we be inspired by Scripture and work to serve our communities.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Minories seen from the door of Saint Botolph Without Aldgate (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Minories stands on the site of the former abbey estate (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

George Selwyn: his life as a missionary and bishop is recalled in Lichfield Cathedral

The effigy of Bishop George Augustus Selwyn (1809-1878) in the Lady Chapel of Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Patrick Comerford

Each day, at the mid-day Eucharist and Evening Prayer in the Lady Chapel in Lichfield Cathedral, I have found myself sitting beside the monument to Bishop George Augustus Selwyn (1809-1878).

Selwyn was the first Anglican Bishop of New Zealand and the first Metropolitan or Primate of New Zealand (1858-1868), before becoming the 91st Bishop of Lichfield (1868-1878).

George Augustus Selwyn was born on 5 April 1809 at Church Row, Hampstead, the second son of William Selwyn (1775–1855) and of Laetitia Frances Kynaston. At the age of seven, he went to Great Ealing School, where the future Cardinal John Henry Newman and his brother Francis were at school at the same time. He then went to Eton, where he was a contemporary of William Ewart Gladstone.

He went on to Saint John’s College, Cambridge, and was a member of the Cambridge crew in the first Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race at Henley on Thames in 1829. He graduated BA (1831), proceeded MA (1834) and DD (1842), and became a fellow of Saint John’s (1833-1840).

Selwyn was ordained deacon (1833) and priest (1834), and he became an assistant master at Eton, and a curate in Windsor. In 1839, he married Sarah Harriet Richardson, and they were of Canon William Selwyn of Hereford Cathedral and Bishop John Richardson Selwyn of Melanesia, who later became the second Master of Selwyn College, Cambridge.

The mosaics in the Selwyn memorial in the Lady Chapel, Lichfield Cathedral, illustrate his life (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

When a meeting of bishops at Lambeth in 1841 recommended the appointment of a bishop for New Zealand, Charles James Blomfield, Bishop of London, offered the post to Selwyn. He was consecrated at Lambeth on 17 October 1841, and immediately after Christmas set sail from Plymouth for his new missionary diocese with William Charles Cotton as his chaplain. On the outward voyage, he studied the Māori language and was able to preach in Māori immediately on arrival in Auckland on 30 May 1842.

Selwyn clashed with Archdeacon Henry Williams, the leader of the CMS party in New Zealand, when he supported Governor George Grey’s accusations of improper land purchases by Williams. Grey twice failed to recover the land in the Supreme Court, and when Williams refused to give up the land unless the charges were retracted, he was dismissed from the CMS in November 1849.

Williams was reinstated by CMS in 1854, but there was often a wide gap between the CMS missionaries with their evangelical views and the bishops and other high church clergy, with many clashes on liturgical uses and practices. Yet Selwyn often appointed CMS missionaries to senior positions in New Zealand, including appointing William Williams as the first Bishop of Waiapu.

Selwyn was criticised by CMS missionaries in New Zealand such as Thomas Grace, and by CMS in London, including Henry Venn, for being ineffective in training and ordaining New Zealand teachers, deacons and priests. CMS had funded half of his role on the condition that he ordain as many people as possible, but Selwyn slowed this down by insisting those in training learn Greek and Latin first.

The mosaics in the Selwyn memorial in the Lady Chapel, Lichfield Cathedral, depict events in his life (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

The first Māori deacon, Rota Waitoa, was ordained by Selwyn at Saint Paul’s Church, Auckland, but it was two decades before he ordained a Māori priest. Selwyn was blamed for undermining the work of CMS and damaging the enthusiasm Māori had for Christianity.

But Selwyn was an advocate of Māori rights and a critic of unjust and reckless land acquisition practices that led to the New Zealand Wars. However, his support of the Invasion of the Waikato, where, as chaplain, he was frequently seen riding on horseback on the frontlines with the British and colonial forces, and his involvement in the burning of women and children at Rangiaowhia in 1864, damaged his and the church’s relationship with Māori, which is still felt today.

Selwyn was rigorous in travelling throughout New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, including Melanesia, and in 1861 John Coleridge Patteson became the first Bishop of Melanesia.

Selwyn’s pioneering organisation of his diocese set many important precedents. He worked to provide self-governance for the Anglican Church in New Zealand, and he visited England in 1854 to secure the creation of new dioceses and approval for a general synod of bishops, priests, and laity. On his return to New Zealand, four new bishops were consecrated, two for the North Island and two to the South Island.

With Selwyn as the new metropolitan bishop in New Zealand, the first general synod met in 1859, and he drafted the constitution of the Anglican Church of New Zealand, with his role as metropolitan titled ‘the Primate.’

Selwyn returned England to take part in the first Lambeth Conference in 1867. While he was at the conference, he was offered the See of Lichfield, and, with much reluctance, accepted the offer.

He was enthroned as the 91st Bishop of Lichfield in Lichfield Cathedral on 9 January 1868. He organised a diocesan synod for Lichfield, and his general synod in New Zealand and diocesan synod in Lichfield influenced the drafting of the Constitution of the Church of Ireland after disestablishment in 1869.

In 1878, Swelwyn ordained a group of deacons in Lichfield who included John Roberts, honoured as a saint in the Episcopal Church for his missionary work in the Bahamas and Wyoming.

Selwyn died on 11 April 1878 at the age of 69 at the Bishop's Palace, Lichfield, and was buried in Lichfield Cathedral. He is remembered in the Church of England on 11 April.

Selwyn College, Cambridge, was founded to honour his contributions to the life of the church, to missions and to theology. The college coat of arms incorporates the arms of the Diocese of Lichfield impaled with the arms of the Selwyn family.

When Bishop George Augustus Selwyn died on 11 April 1878 at the Bishop’s Palace, he was buried in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

The Selwyn family owned a large tract of land in Kew, Surrey, and the road from Kew Gardens station to Kew Gardens is named Lichfield Road after Bishop Selwyn.

Selwyn House in the Cathedral Close in Lichfield was built on the side of the mediaeval moat and it closes the view at the east end of the close. Selwyn House is often known as ‘Spite House’ because of a popular Lichfield legend that the first house on the site was built by one of three sisters in the Aston family in the 1750s to block her sisters’ view of the cathedral.

As Annette Rubery says in her book Lichfield Then & Now in colour, ‘Even though the facts have since been since been disproved, the tale still lives on.’

The truth is Selwyn House was built ca 1777-1780 for Canon James Falconer (1735-1821), Rector of Thorpe Constantine and later Archdeacon of Derby. He was a canon of Lichfield Cathedral but was not assigned one of the houses for canons in the Close. So, Falconer may have built the house immediately after his appointment as a Canon of Lichfield Cathedral.

The house was enlarged in the early 19th century, when an iron balcony was added on the north side. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was home to Harriet Selwyn, the widow of Bishop Selwyn.

After Harriet Selwyn died in 1907, the house became a hostel for students at the Lichfield Theological College, and it was named Selwyn House in honour of the couple. For a brief period during World War I, Bishop Kempthorne lived in the house, but it became a hostel for theological students once again in 1918.

The students moved out of Selwyn House in 1922 and into the Bishop’s Palace, and Selwyn House was the bishop’s residence until 1931, when the students moved back in. The theological college closed in 1972 and Selwyn House was divided into apartments. But the legends about a Spite House persisted.

Selwyn House at the east end of the Cathedral Close in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Edward Woods of Lichfield, the sculptor Jacob Epstein, the Pope and a milk float

Sir Jacob Epstein’s sculpture in bronze of Edward Sydney Woods, Bishop of Lichfield, in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Lichfield is now known as the City of Sculpture, thanks to the sculptor Peter Walker. The City of Sculpture is a physical and new media trail of artworks that has engaged community projects run by The Sculpture and Art Foundation CIC.

The guide produced by Lichfield City Council provides a walking trail that is divided into six sections:

1, Lichfield Cathedral

2, Beacon Park and the Museum Gardens

3, Bird Street, including the War Memorial and the Samuel Johnson Mosaic by John Myatt (1976)

4, Saint John Street and the Friary, including Simon Manby’s ‘Noah and the Dove’ in the courtyard of Saint John’s Hospital, and ‘The Reading Girl’ by Giovanni Mario Benzoni, now in Saint Mary’s.

5, The Market Square (Johnson and Boswell)

6, Tamworth Street

The works in Lichfield Cathedral listed on this guide include the statues on the West Front; the Lichfield Angel; the ‘Sleeping Children’ by Sir Francis Chantry; Bishop Edward Sydney Woods, a sculpture in bronze by Jacob Epstein in 1958; artefacts from the Staffordshire Hoard; the High Altar by Sir George Gilbert Scott; and the Herkenrode Glass.

Sir Jacob Epstein was a pioneer of modern sculpture, and his bronze statues of Saint Michael and the Devil is on the wall of Coventry Cathedral leaves a lasting impression. When Basil Spence commissioned Jacob Epstein, some members of the rebuilding committee objected. They said some of his earlier works were controversial. Although Coventry was at the centre of post-war reconciliation, some even objected, saying Epstein was a Jew. To this, Spence retorted: ‘So was Jesus Christ.’

Other cathedrals with works by Jacob Epstein include Llandaff Cathedral with his ‘Christ in Majesty.’

For a long time, Lichfield Cathedral has displayed Sir Jacob Epstein’s sculpture of Edward Sydney Woods, Bishop of Lichfield (1937-1953), which was completed in 1958, five years after the bishop’s death.

Edward Sydney Woods (1877-1953) was the 94th Bishop of Lichfield. He was born on 1 November 1877, the son of the Revd Frank Woods, and his mother, Alice Fry, was a granddaughter of the Quaker prison reformer Elizabeth Fry.

Edward Woods was a tall man, over 6 ft high, with an engaging and easy-going manner. He was educated at Marlborough College and Trinity College, Cambridge, and was ordained priest in 1902.

High Leigh, once the home of the family of Clemence Barclay, who married Edward Wood, future Bishop of Lichfield, in 1903 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A year after his ordination, he married Clemence Barclay in 1903. Her father, Robert Barclay, lived at High Leigh, Hoddesdon, now a well-known conference centre in Hertfordshire and regularly the venue for the annual conference of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). She was a descendant of the abolitionist and social reformer Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton.

Robert Barclay was descended from a well-known Quaker banking family. He bought High Leigh in 1871, and to this day the walls of High Leigh are lined with Victorian photographs of the Barclay family and their staff; a stained-glass window in the original parts of the house shows the impaled Barclay and Buxton coats-of-arms with a bishop’s mitre as one of the two crests.

Clemence Woods’s brother, Joseph Gurney Barclay, was a missionary in Japan with the Church Mission Society (CMS) when his wife Gillian died in Kobe in 1909. Their son, Sir Roderick Barclay (1909-1996), was born in Kobe and was later the British Ambassador to Denmark (1956-1960) and Belgium (1963-1969).

Edward Woods was the chaplain, a lecturer and then Vice Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge, until World War I, which he spent at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. After World War I, he as the Vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge. At Cambridge, he formed a life-long friendship with Harold Abrahams, the Olympic athlete who features in the movie Chariots of Fire.

Woods moved from Cambridge to Croydon, where he was vicar, rural dean, archdeacon and then the second suffragan Bishop of Croydon.

He was appointed the Bishop of Lichfield in 1937, and it is said that while he was Bishop of Lichfield every member of the royal family at the time visited the Cathedral Close as his guest.

The story is told that Bishop Woods had the distinction of being one of two survivors of a German air raid by hiding under a dining table with Ann Charteris, the future wife of Ian Fleming.

But another, more important story, from an ecumenical perspective, is told by Jono Oates in his A—Z of Lichfield, Places, People, History (Amberley, 2019). Bishop Woods was visiting British troops in war-time Italy in 1944. While he was in Rome, he visited the Vatican and had an audience with Pope Pius XII. This was long before meetings between Popes and the Archbishops of Canterbury became a regular fixture, and it is believed to be the first private meeting between a Pope and an Anglican bishop.

The impaled Barclay and Buxton coats-of-arms with an episcopal mitre at High Leigh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Woods was a prolific author and a fine orator, and during the 1940s he was a regular contributor to the BBC’s religious programmes. After World War II, as Bishop of Lichfield, he was also the Lord High Almoner from 1946 to 1953.

In his book, Jono Oates also tells the amusing story of how Bishop Woods arrived on a milk float to open an art exhibition in Stafford. The intention was that a driver would drop him and return afterwards to take him back to Lichfield. However, Woods told the driver to drop him at the Art School before realising he had got the wrong location. To avoid being late, the bishop thumbed a lift from the first vehicle that stopped and arrived on a milk float in his mitre and cope, carrying his crozier.

Bishop Woods died on 11 January 1953. His children included Frank Woods (1907-1992), Archbishop of Melbourne, who was born in Davos, Switzerland; Samuel Woods (1910-2001), Archdeacon of Rangiora in New Zealand; Robin Woods (1914-1997), Dean of Windsor and Bishop of Worcester, who was born in Lausanne, Switzerland; the photographer Janet Stone (1912-1998); and Josephine Priscilla, who married the Revd John d’Ewes Evelyn Firth in Lichfield Cathedral in 1939.

His sculpture by Jacob Epstein was unveiled by the Queen Mother in Lichfield Cathedral in 1989.

Sir Jacob Epstein’s ‘Christ in Majesty’ in Llandaff Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This evening: Thomas Wood, Dean and and Bishop of Lichfield, who was ‘mean and avaricious’

High Leigh: a house with connections with a missionary family

High Leigh, once the home of the Barclay family, could easily be a setting for any TV period drama (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

The High Leigh Conference Centre on the edges of Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire, where the USPG conference took place this week, is a beautiful Victorian country house, set in extensive parkland and landscaped gardens.

The garden at High Leigh is set with 40 acres of some of Hertfordshire’s most beautiful countryside, and the parkland is dotted with formal areas, woodland, lawns and ponds. Some of these features were created by the Pulham family of landscape gardeners in Broxbourne, just over a mile from High Leigh. The house could easily be a setting for any TV period drama.

The house was built in 1853 by Charles Webb, a gold lace manufacturer, and was bought in 1871 by Robert Barclay, a member of a well-known banking dynasty and a committed Christian, who renamed it High Leigh.

For generations, members of the Barclay and the Pulham families had been leading Quakers, and they may have attended the same Friends’ Meeting House on Lord Street, leading from Hoddesdon out to High Leigh. Although the Barclay family were once one of the leading Quaker families on these islands, by the time they came to live at High Leigh they were committed Anglicans, and their family story also has interesting links with Anglican mission work in the Far East over a century ago, and with the Diocese of Lichfield.

The impaled Barclay coat-of-arms with an episcopal mitre at High Leigh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

On the stairs to the room where I was staying in High Leigh this week, the walls are lined with Victorian photographs of the Barclay family and their staff, and a stained-glass window in the original parts of the house shows an impaled Barclay coat-of-arms that has a bishop’s mitre as one of the two crests.

Robert Barclay was born on 13 December 1843, in Walthamstow, Essex, the son of Joseph Gurney Barclay and Mary Walker Barclay. Over the generations, his ancestors had married into many other prominent banking families, and he was responsible for merging 20 banks into Barclay and Company Ltd.

Robert was an Anglican, and his immediate family played key roles in the life of the Church of England. He married Elizabeth Ellen Buxton (1848-1911), a granddaughter of the 19th century reformer and campaigner against slaver, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, and they had a large family that included CMS missionaries.

One son, Joseph Gurney Barclay (1879-1976), was born at High Leigh on 9 February 1879 and was baptised in Stanstead Abbots, Hertfordshire. He was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, and married Gillian Mary Birkbeck (1882-1909) in 1905.

Joseph entered the family banking empires. But he left Barclay’s Bank to be become am Anglican missionary. Joseph and Gillian were in Japan with the Church Mission Society (CMS) when Gillian died in Kobe in 1909.

Joseph remarried and returned to England in 1926. He was working on the staff of CMS in London while he lived in Rose Hill, close to High Leigh. When he died on 15 April 1976 at Troutstream Hall in Chorleywood, Rickmansworth, he was buried in Saint Augustine’s Churchyard, Broxbourne. His obituary in The Times was written by his nephew, Bishop Robin Woods of Worcester.

Joseph Gurney Barclay’s son, Sir Roderick Barclay (1909-1996), was born in Kobe, Japan and educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. A career diplomat, he was the British Ambassador to Denmark (1956-1960) and Belgium (1963-1969).

The house at High Leigh faces onto open, rolling Hertfordshire countryside (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Another son of Robert Barclay, the Revd Gilbert Arthur Barclay (1882-1970), was born in High Leigh, baptised in Stanstead Abbots, and educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a vicar in Cumbria (1912 -1915), and during World War I he became an army chaplain in Flanders (1915-1916) and a hospital chaplain in London and Leicester (1916-1919).

Later he was a vicar in Leicestershire and a rector in Essex. His wife Dorothy Catherine Topsy Studd, who was born in Chin Shih Fang, Luanfu, Shanxi, was the daughter of pioneering missionaries in China, Charles Thomas Studd (1860-1931) and Priscilla Livingstone Stewart (1864-1929), who was born in Belfast.

A daughter of Robert Barclay, Rachel Elizabeth Barclay (1885-1932), who was born in High Leigh, worked as a CMS missionary in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). She is buried at Saint Augustine’s Church in Broxbourne.

Sir Jacob Epstein’s sculpture of Edward Sydney Woods, Bishop of Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Rachel Barclay was a sister of Clemence Rachel Barclay (1874-1952) married the Right Revd Edward Sydney Woods (1877-1953) in Hoddesdon in 1903. He was a son of the Revd Frank Woods, but also had a long line of Quaker ancestors through his mother, Alice Octavia Fry, a granddaughter of the prison reformed Elizabeth Fry.

Edward Woods was the Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge and Suffragan Bishop of Croydon, before becoming the 94th Bishop of Lichfield (1937-1952). Their daughter, Josephine Priscilla, married the Revd John d’Ewes Evelyn Firth in Lichfield Cathedral in 1939.

The war-time story is told of how Bishop Woods survived a German air raid by hiding under a dining room table with Ann Charteris, the future wife of Ian Fleming.

Clemence and Edward Wood were the parents of an archbishop, a bishop and an archdeacon.

The Most Revd Frank Woods (1907-1992), who was born in Davos, Switzerland, became the Archbishop of Melbourne (1957-1977) and Primate of Australia (1971-1977). He died in Melbourne in 1992.

The Ven Samuel Edward Woods (1910-2001) was the Archdeacon of Christchurch, New Zealand. His son, Canon Christopher Samuel Woods (1943-2007), was a Canon of Liverpool Cathedral.

The Right Revd Robert ‘Robin’ Wilmer Woods (1914-1997) was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. He was the Archdeacon of Sheffield, Dean of Windsor and Bishop of Worcester.

Robert Barclay continued to live at High Leigh until he died in 1921. His family then sold the property on favourable terms to First Conference Estate, a company he had been a director of, so that the house could become a Christian conference centre. The generosity of the Barclay family is celebrated in a plaque in the Oak Room, where I was taking part in two workshops on Tuesday afternoon.

A plaque in the Oak Room recalls the Barclay family’s connection with High Leigh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)