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Ship of Fools: St Paul’s Bow Common, Tower Hamlets, London

The Mystery WorshipperThe Mystery Worshipper Shipmate
edited February 2022 in The Mystery Worshipper

imageShip of Fools: St Paul’s Bow Common, Tower Hamlets, London

A warm welcome, with tambourines and rattles

Read the full Mystery Worshipper report here


Comments

  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited February 2022
    How delightful to hear of this wonderful church still flourishing! The chap who was Vicar from 1951 until 1994 - [name redacted - GDPR] - would be pleased to see his work continuing amongst what must be a very different demographic from that of the 50s and 60s of last century...

    He was quite a character:
    [Wikipedia link redacted - GDPR]

    I wonder if the pandemic has had a similar effect on St Paul's as it has in other churches? Older folk are still staying away, so the visible congregation consists mostly of young families, and there's a reduction in the amount of ritual and ceremonial? Much the same as at Our Place, though we do have one server/thurifer each week, with a couple of young lads who help out on High Days and Holydays (their family can't come every Sunday).

    It is to be hoped that the mosaics get nicely restored - they depict the angelic host, and are a real work of art.

    [mitre donned]

    @Bishops Finger -- you know better than to name people by name in MW comments. Don't do it again.

    @Amanda B Reckondwyth
    Lead Editor, Mystery Worship

    [mitre handed to MC]
  • angloidangloid Shipmate
    To quote the late architectural critic Ian Nairn: 'One worth-while new church in a city-region of ten millions... truly original, like All Saints Margaret Street , a century before.' I made an architectural pilgrimage there a few years ago, not expecting to find it open, but there was a jumble sale in full swing (perhaps explaining the clutter the MW refers to) and a sense that this was a centre of community in more ways than one. A lady (maybe churchwarden?) looked sternly at me when she saw my camera, but softened after a minute's chat and I was able to take some stunning photographs. I think the mosaics were being restored even then. The liturgy appears to be in the homely catholic style that is so welcome when the alternatives often appear to be po-faced formality or rictus-grins-and-come-to-Jesus.
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    angloid wrote: »
    To quote the late architectural critic Ian Nairn: 'One worth-while new church in a city-region of ten millions... truly original, like All Saints Margaret Street , a century before.' I made an architectural pilgrimage there a few years ago, not expecting to find it open, but there was a jumble sale in full swing (perhaps explaining the clutter the MW refers to) and a sense that this was a centre of community in more ways than one. A lady (maybe churchwarden?) looked sternly at me when she saw my camera, but softened after a minute's chat and I was able to take some stunning photographs. I think the mosaics were being restored even then. The liturgy appears to be in the homely catholic style that is so welcome when the alternatives often appear to be po-faced formality or rictus-grins-and-come-to-Jesus.

    I certainly got the impression from the Report that I would feel at home in this church, and would be only too happy to help with the music (if CDs ripped onto a lap-top are required) or even with the thurible!

    *Homely catholic style* describes it well, and St Paul's shows the C of E at its best - set firmly in its community and parish, and serving the local people all around.
  • Box PewBox Pew Shipmate
    edited February 2022
    It seems a tad mean to delete the name of Revd **** **** since he went to his Maker one and a half decades ago, at an advanced age. So there is no risk of his puffing his own church—which was I understood the very sensible reason for avoiding the names of living persons in MW reports. At this church, the Revd Old Boy was at least as important as his carefully chosen architects in developing the radical planning of St Pauls Bow Common. He travelled across Europe to research centrally planned churches, from those of early byzantine greek cross plan to those of the 1930s born of the liturgical movement: a well-informed client who took buildings as seriously as he did liturgy. Even though the client in the legal sense was, presumably, the Diocese it is very much 'his church'.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    edited February 2022
    Miss Amanda, I'm in no way questioning your rulings above (or on other threads recently), especially as they accord with what you've said so clearly in the past. A question though - were I to review a well-know A-C church in Sydney, would it be permissible to refer to by name the rector some 60 years ago, a man very well known at the time in the wider community for his charitable works as well as churchmanship (which went much more deeply than the outward show)? BTW, I have no intention of doing a review as I don't have the necessary detachment from the church or its present rector.
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    @Amanda B Reckondwyth - sorry, but I didn't realise that the ruling re names applied to people long since dead and gone.

    However, your admonition is duly noted, and it won't happen again.
  • Amanda B ReckondwythAmanda B Reckondwyth Shipmate
    edited February 2022
    Box Pew wrote: »
    There is no risk of his puffing his own church—which was I understood the very sensible reason for avoiding the names of living persons in MW reports.

    The principal reason that we don't mention people by name in MW reports is because GDPR tightly restricts the publication of personal data about a person. I would not contest the notion that deceased persons are exempt from these strictures, but I would prefer to err on the side of caution rather than on the side of the litigation bar.
  • Kannas an AweylKannas an Aweyl Shipmate Posts: 40
    I used to live about a hundred yards away from St Paul's, in a manse of another denomination, and would join in their Easter vigil every year, always receiving a great welcome. I believe it was the first church to be built and planned according to the Liturgical Movement, it's predecessor was destroyed in the blitz.
  • Alan29Alan29 Shipmate
    Kannas an Aweyl wrote: »
    I used to live about a hundred yards away from St Paul's, in a manse of another denomination, and would join in their Easter vigil every year, always receiving a great welcome. I believe it was the first church to be built and planned according to the Liturgical Movement, it's predecessor was destroyed in the blitz.

    Do you mean the first CofE church built according to the Liturgical Movement? I doubt it was the first one ever.
  • angloidangloid Shipmate
    It probably wasn't the first C of E one either. But it was definitely a pioneer and one of the best examples of the genre.
  • Box PewBox Pew Shipmate
    edited February 2022
    The Royal Foundation of St. Katherine, half a mile down the road from St Pauls, pre-dated it by several years, with a central altar (now moved to a conservative position) and an iron corona with cloth drapes cum banners in liturgical season colours (now destroyed). The lettering on the altar was by Ralph Beyer who did the inscription at St Paul's.
  • Amanda B ReckondwythAmanda B Reckondwyth Shipmate
    [mitre on]

    Please quash any temptation to use this thread to romp through Liturgical Movement churches.

    @Amanda B Reckondwyth
    Lead Editor, Mystery Worship

    [mitre off]
  • Terry TeeTerry Tee Shipmate Posts: 16
    edited March 2022
    I have hesitated and thought long and hard about saying this, but I knew the church slightly during the long incumbency mentioned above, when it was led by a vicar who I shall refer to as [redacted]. He was revered by many for his Christian Socialism, but the truth is that over the years the parish ran down and down. I attended one Sunday Mass there near the end when I was one of a congregation of three. Even the organist was actually another priest, a worker priest in fact, so the congregation was probably 2. I thought it a sad fate for such a beautifully designed church in a part of the East End with many possible areas of Christian involvement. These days a vicar would not be left to moulder like that, but even in the 60s and 70s the system largely regarded the man as a law unto himself.

    [summoning the Inquisition]

    This borders dangerously close to gossip. Should this continue, the thread will be closed.

    @Amanda B Reckondwyth
    Lead Editor, Mystery Worship

    [Inquisition dissolved]
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