Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

Glynn Young

When Fiction Seems to Predict Fact

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The Dancing Priest novels seem to be back in the fiction-becomes-fact business.

Last week, after saying he would not resign, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby did, in fact, resign. This followed the release of the Makin Report, which documented the failings of the Church of England (COE) in a cover-up of an abuse scandal. The scandal went back to the 1980s when a barrister named John Smyth abused young teens at COE church camps, slipped out of England when it appeared the law was onto him, and went on to victimize more boys in Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Welby’s sin: he learned about the abuse in 2013 but failed to report it to authorities. Smyth could have been brought to justice at that time; he died in 2018.

One as-of-yet-unanswered question is if Welby was the only COE official to know. It’s unlikely that others, including people high in the hierarchy, also didn’t know. The scandal may not be over. And lest we think this type of scandal only happens to the big established denominations like the Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church, there are lessons here for all of us. A church I’ve attended had a member of the staff get involved in an inappropriate and illegal relationship; the difference was that the head pastor, as soon as he was told, called the police. That’s how it’s supposed to work, no matter how damaging it might be to an organization’s reputation. Righteousness trumps reputation, as Bernard Howard wrote for the Gospel Coalition.

In Dancing Prophet (2018), the fourth of the Dancing Priest novels, Michael Kent-Hughes has an abuse scandal thrust upon him. He’s a former COE priest and now the king, and he’s simultaneously dealing with a developing church scandal and a collapse of the government of Great London. His church nemesis is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sebastian Rowland, who has spent considerable time covering up an abuse scandal that threatens to blow the church apart.

During the research for the book, I learned that the Archbishop of Canterbury, along with the rest of the hierarchy and the church itself, is subject to the monarch. That’s how Henry VIII set it up in the 1530s during the English Reformation. And the archbishop functions at the pleasure of the monarch. That the current prime minister, Keir Starmer, refused to back Justin Welby publicly was of less importance than the silence that was coming from King Charles. Welby’s announcement noted that King Charles has graciously accepted his resignation. That’s how it works. The Catholic pope tells God and the church; the Archbishop of Canterbury tells the king (or the king asks for it).

In Dancing Prophet, Michael tells Sebastian Rowland he must resign. Rowland at first refuses, until Michael, in the presence of the police, explains the evidence against the archbishop, all of which will be made public. It’s worth noting, too, that Michael went to the police as soon as he became aware of the activities of one priest, which would soon explode into a global crime. And Michael, when he speaks to the British people, will tell them that the Church of England may not survive. Righteousness trumps reputation.

Dancing Prophet was written long before the John Smyth scandal was known publicly. What I did know concerned a COE abuse scandal involving some priests; it had first surfaced in the news in 2012. For the novel, I adapted the abuse scandal that has rocked (and continues to rock) the Roman Catholic Church to the COE.

I’m not a prophet; I can’t and don’t predict the future. But I’ve learned that, when you’re doing research for a book like any of the Dancing Priest novels (“future history,” one reader called them), you pick up on issues, concerns, trends, and ideas that are being discussed. You read about past events and troubles. You learn how people, especially people in authority, respond to what they see as threats. And you know what humans naturally tend to do: wish it would all go away, ignore it, make it worse, try to contain it, or cover it up. It might work for a time, but it usually doesn’t work forever.

We forget that lesson: righteousness trumps reputation.

Related:

Can Fiction Predict the Future?

Did Dancing Prophet Become Prophetic?

Top photograph by Ruth Gledhill via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Sweet Agony of Waiting

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A publisher asks to see your full manuscript. You read it three more times, trying to eradicate all typos, missing words, unclear passages, and confusing lines. You attach it to a politely professional email, which you hope disguises what you’re experiencing in equal measure: hope, fear, and anxiety.

You hit send.

And then you wait.

Waiting may be as much or more exhausting than the writing itself, but it is a fact of life in book publishing.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW Blog. 

Photograph by David Taffett via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Ushers” by Joe Hill

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Martin Lorensen is a young man who’s been extremely lucky, or he’s extremely guilty. Twice he’s narrowly escaped death – a train wreck and a school shooting. Both times, his escape was a last-minute thing – a panic attack kept him from boarding the train and an upset stomach stopped him from entering school and returning home. In the train wreck case, he warned a mother and daughter not to board.

The FBI is interested. Very interested. To the two agents interviewing Martin, it seems like there’s a strong possibility that Martin knows what’s going to happen before it does. And perhaps he’s not the lucky bystander. Perhaps he’s the cause.

Joe Hill

Ushers is a short story by best-selling writer Joe Hill, and it’s one creepy story. You’re sucked into what may or may not be a tale of a serial killer. The story is structured in two parts – an “informal” interview of Lorensen by the agents and then a meeting in a bar between the suspect and one of the agents, where all is made clear.

Hill is the author of The Fireman, Heart-Shaped Box, and Strange Weather, among many others. Several of his stories have been adapted for movies; his Locke & Key stories became a popular series on Netflix. He’s also written several graphic novels, and he has a not terribly active blog at Hill’s House (the title possibly being a nod to Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House).

Ushers begins as a police procedural type of story and ends as something entirely different. And Hill nicely builds the tension right to the breaking point.

The Journalists’ Prayer

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St. Bride’s Church in London’s Fleet Steet is known as the “Journalists’ Church.” The church and the area around it have a long history with writers, publishing, printing, and newspapers. But it’s history – the newspapers that once occupied the buildings of Fleet Street are long gone, absorbed into other newspaper or moved to other locations.

British journalism grew up here for a simple reason: the first printing press with moveable type was brought to the area in 1500, and the printing (and later the newspaper business) grew up around it. But a church had occupied the site since about 500 A.D.; the current St. Bride’s was completely rebuilt in the late 1950s to restore what had been destroyed during the German Blitz of December 1940.

A nearby building which once housed the Sunday Telegraph.

The church has seen its fair share of famous purposes. Samuel Johnson lived across Fleet Street; John Milton at one time lived in the churchyard; Samuel Pepys was baptized here; the 18th century novelist Samuel Richardson was buried here; and Charles Dickens lived for a time in the parish (we forget that Dickens started his writing career as a reporter). 

On a recent visit to London, we visited St. Bride’s and its crypt during one of the two London Open House weekends. When it was restored, it was rebuilt with all its former Christopher Wren elegance. The church’s interior is simply beautiful. 

The crypts below the church are another story altogether. Over the centuries, they had been forgotten and buried; they were rediscovered after the German bombing. You can see part of a Roman building foundation, a small medieval chapel; and the area where hundreds of people were buried (the nameplate for Samuel Richardson’s coffin is on display). 

Placed around the church proper are various plaques, listing the names of journalists killed in World War I, World II, Iraq, and other conflicts. And many of the seats have nameplates in memory of journalists; I sat in the one bearing the name of Malcolm Muggeridge, a journalist well worth knowing about and reading.

What struck me most profoundly was a polished stone sheet bearing “The Journalists’ Prayer.” The words are attributed to St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), the patron saint of Catholic writers and journalists. While St. Bride’s directs them to journalists, the words could apply to writers in general, and more generally to anyone who works. But I read those words, and I felt the gap between them and me. The prayer is something that writers, and especially Christian writers, can aspire to.

The Journalists’ Prayer

Almighty God,
strengthen and direct, we pray,
the will of all whose work it is to write what many read,
and to speak where many listen.
May we be bold in confronting evil and injustice,
and compassionate in our understanding of human weakness,
rejecting alike the half-truth that deceives, and the slanted word that corrupts.
May the power that is ours, for good or ill,
always be used with respect and integrity;
so that when all here has been written, said, and done,
we may, unashamed, meet Thee face to face,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Related: 

Footsteps at St. Bride’s. 

Top photo: The Journalists’ Prayer inscribed stone in St. Bride’s Church, Fleet Street. Below, the church’s famous tiered steeple of St. Bride’s, the inspiration for wedding cakes everywhere.

Footsteps at St. Bride’s

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During a recent trip to England, we took advantage of our trip coinciding with London Open House, two successive weekends where citizens and tourists alike can view many buildings usually closed to the public, or take walking tours, or get behind the scenes views of many places that are open to the public. 

One of the places we visited was St. Bride’s Church on Fleet Street, known as “the journalists’ church.” Fleet Street as the home to Britain’s big newspapers is a memory; the newspapers and the journalists moved to other parts of the city decades ago. But St. Bride’s remains, and it’s still known as the place where journalists worshipped. 

A church has stood on this spot since the late Roman / early Briton period. It gets its name from St. Bride, or Bridget, a nun who lived in the late fifth century but who may never have visited London or England.  Several church buildings have been erected on the site. The old medieval church was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 and then rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren. It was destroyed again, on December 29, 1940, during an incendiary raid by German bombers. But it was rebuilt as close to the Wren building as possible and reopened in the late 1950s.

It’s a beautiful church. We were able to descend through 2,000 years of history to see the crypt, with its old Roman wall, the nameplates found on old coffins, and two chapels, including a small medieval chapel whitewashed and made into an intimate worship space. 

I had some to time to sit in that chapel, and I did. And it was there that I thought I could hear footsteps above and around me. 

Footsteps at St. Bride’s

I hear footsteps here, overhead
and around, echoes of Celts.
and around. echoes of Celts
and Romans, Britons and
Saxons, Vikings intent on loot
and pillage. And the builders
and architects, bricklayers
and monks, whispering of
the Irish saint inspiring it
all. Footsteps become
louder, years passing,
building and tearing down,
rebuilding and reconstructing,
and footsteps running,
accompanied by screams
and the roar of fire. And more
rebuilding, with the Architect
himself stacking the spire
like tiers of wedding cake,
standing in splendor over
the newspapers of growth
and empire so pervasive they
defined generations. I hear
more footsteps, first those
running from the bombs and
then those running to fight
the fire, but above me is ruins.
Yet new architects and
new builders return, workmen,
intent on recreating what
was once there. Newspapers
move on, but the footsteps
remain. They never go away.

A Language Lesson

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I have a short story in the fall edition of Cultivating Oaks Press. The edition focuses on the theme of “fortitude,” and my story is entitled “A Language Lesson.” This is how it begins:

As the train arrived at Heidelberg Station, Sam McClure smiled to remember the first time he’d arrived here. In 1906, he’d just turned 16 and was preparing to spend his high school junior year with a family in Germany. He’d traveled by himself across the Atlantic on the H.M.S. Heimat for Hamburg, sent a telegram to Heidelberg to alert them of his arrival, and taken the train to his sponsoring family. His textbook-fluent German had been more than useful from the time he boarded the German liner in New York Harbor.

The Mittelstein family had been waiting: Dr. Aaron Mittelstein, chemistry professor at the university; his wife Ada; and their three children, Wolfgang, 18, Paul, 16, and Annaliese, 13. Wolfie was preparing to leave for university in Berlin. Paul, known as Mitti for being the middle child, was almost exactly Sam’s age and would share the same classes in Gymnasium, the German school he would attend. Annaliese would be attending Gymnasium with them.

Sam hadn’t known then what the Mittelsteins thought, but for him it had been love at first sight. That love, and what would become his deep friendship with Mitti, sustained him through a huge bout of homesickness and a steep cultural learning curve. He’d come to love this family so deeply that he returned four years later and stayed with them for a year abroad at the university.

To continue reading, please see my post at Cultivating Oaks Press. You can read all of the contributions here.