Church of England

Did “Dancing Prophet” Become Prophetic?

October 13, 2020 By Glynn Young 5 Comments

In 2012, I had a conversation with my publisher about the future novels planned in the Dancing Priest series. Dancing Priest had been published in late 2011, and the publication of A Light Shining was imminent. I walked him through what I saw as the main subjects and themes of several additional books (another six, if I remember correctly, which eventually became another three).

The fourth book was to focus on the conflict between Michael Kent-Hughes and the Church of England hierarchy, which would eventually lead to a reformation. The catalyst would be a child sexual abuse scandal, happening over decades and facilitated (as in, covered up) by the church. The inspiration for this was the scandal in the Roman Catholic Church; what I did was to transfer the Catholic scandal to the Church of England. Or so I thought.

Two weeks after that conversation, my publisher sent me an article that had just been published in Britain. It looked like the Church of England had its own, homegrown child abuse scandal, and didn’t need any fictional help from the Catholic church.

Dancing Prophet, the fourth novel in the Dancing Priest series, was published in 2018. That year, more revelations were unfolding about the Church of England. In 2019, an independent inquiry was established to look at what had happened and why. Last week, the inquiry panel released its study.

It sounded like the story line in Dancing Prophet. My wife says I need to stop writing about things that become true.

It gives me no particular joy that real events seem to follow several of the key events in the Dancing Priest stories. (Sometimes, the correlations aren’t horrific, like the DNA study made of Vikings that sounded a lot like what happens in Dancing Prince.) But it does seem uncanny at times. I don’t have the gift of prophecy, but I’ve asked myself, how do real events happen that mirror the stories I wrote in my five novels?

I don’t have a solid answer. I have an idea of what happens, and it has to do with the research I do for the stories and the work experience I’ve had.

The Dancing Priest novels are not historical novels in the strict sense. They’re not about the past. They are more futurehistorical novels, because they’re set in the soon-to-happen future. (One reviewer has called them alternative historical novels.) But they are based on considerable reading and research and first-hand experiences on visits to London and England.

The streets Sarah’s car has to take from Buckingham Palace to the Tate Britain (Dancing Prophet)? I’ve walked them. The visit Michael makes with the two boys to the Imperial War Museum and the Guards Museum Shop (Dancing Prince)? I’ve done both. Taking a train from King’s Cross Station (Dancing Prince)? Been there, done that. A tube ride from South Kensington to the Tower of London (Dancing King)? Yep. And the books I’ve read have ranged from Peter Ackroyd’s multi-volume History of England and a history of coronations to a domestic history of the British royal household and a history of the Church of England.

My work experience has also served as a resource. Working for two Fortune 500 companies, a Fortune 1000 company, a public institution, a newspaper, and my own business has taught me a lot about how organizations respond to crises. Almost by default, the initial response is self-protection. The ongoing response tends to be self-protection. And that response can put public relations people in very difficult positions. The fact that the Church of England responded to its child sex abuse crisis almost exactly like the Roman Catholic Church did is no surprise.

You don’t have to be a prophet when basic human nature never changes.

Top photograph by Cajeo Zhang via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Authority, Responsibility, and Dancing Prophet

October 31, 2018 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

Dancing Prophet Taking Responsibility

More than one reader has pointed out to me that Dancing Prophet, the fourth novel in the Dancing Priest series, seems to be talking about the Catholic Church, even though the church is never mentioned in the book. And did I unfairly transfer the Catholic Church’s abuse scandal to the Church of England, even done for a fictional story?

And my answer has been yes, you’re right, but only partially.

I’ve noted before that the original impetus for the story that eventually became Dancing Prophet was the 2008 arrest and conviction Michael Devlin, a pizza shop manager who kidnapped and abused two boys, one of them for years. Devlin lived in my St. Louis suburb of Kirkwood; his apartment was on my route biking from my home to the beginning of Grant’s Trail. I cycled past the apartments hundreds of times. I likely saw one of the boys on his bike.

I was horrified. The only way to deal with it was to write a story, about 25,000 words, inspired by but unrelated to what happened in Kirkwood.

Devlin had nothing to do with the Catholic Church scandal involving priests sexually abusing children, but his actions were equivalent to the child sexual abuse scandal that had engulfed the Catholic Church several years before, and which ultimately led to numerous legal actions and settlements across the United States. He was a predator, like the abusing priests. And yet the situation with the Catholic Church seemed worse – men in positions of trust, responsibility, and spiritual leadership had preyed upon children, and done so for decades, often being protected by their dioceses, bishops, and cardinals.

Dancing Prophet Dancing Priest The scandal was addressed in the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People – the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, commonly called “the Dallas Report” for the location of the meeting where the statement was developed. That report was published in 2002, and while many likely hoped it put an end to a sorry chapter in Catholic Church history, it did not, as it turned out. Just this year, the scandal flamed again, with the dismissal of a cardinal, broad accusations of abuse of seminary students, and even Pope Francis himself accused not only of participating in a cover-up but promoting of a guilty cardinal into a position of enormous influence.

There have been other scandals involving other churches and denominations, but not as broad and lasting as long as that of the Catholic Church. The root cause, like the root cause is so many institutional scandals, often seems to be what a hierarchy will do to protect itself. Circumstances, specific acts, and outcomes may be different, but similar kinds of stories can be found in government, business, non-profits, and other institutions. Hierarchies and bureaucracies can make bad situations far worse when their first thoughts and actions are to protect themselves.

As I was finishing the manuscript for Dancing Prophet, a second wave of scandal unfolded – the Pennsylvania grand jury report on the abuse by church officials and the coverup. Because it involved reports over an extended period of time, this one reached well into the bishop and cardinal ranks in the U.S. And then Archbishop Vigano’s letter went public, citing the abuse of seminary students by Cardinal Ted McCarrick and including the claim that Pope Francis was told of this some five years ago.

It’s still be sorted out. The media have tended to portray this as a conservative versus progressive theology debate within the Catholic Church, largely missing that the scandal is about the hierarchy and the steps it takes to protect one of its own and itself.

I didn’t precisely transfer the scandal to the Church of England in Dancing Prophet, although there were certainly influences. The C of E is enduring its own pedophile scandal, which appears (at this time) to be smaller in scope but is no less serious. Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has taken responsibility to a greater degree than Pope Francis, but investigations are continuing. Prince Charles has been asked to provide a statement regarding what he knew (or didn’t know) about an offending bishop.

Dancing Prophet asks the question: what does it look like when a church leader takes responsibility for a scandal like this, and acts decisively to deal with it?

Top photograph by Michael Beckwith via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Dancing King Stories: Southwark, the Human-Scale Cathedral

April 2, 2018 By Glynn Young 3 Comments

When you visit London, especially for the first time or two, two great churches are on the must-see list – St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. And with good reason. Both churches are known for their soaring architecture, structural beauty, and the fact they are filled with English and British history. Right down Victoria Street form Westminster Abbey is another monumental church – the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral. London is a big city with big cathedral churches.

Southwark Cathedral is another church, smaller than its more famous London relatives. But of all the churches and cathedrals I’ve seen in London and England, it may be my favorite. Size has something to do with it – it’s smaller, more human-scale, still impressive, but the human eye can take it in without being completely overwhelmed.

It’s not as well known for tourists. It’s partially location – on the South Bank near London Bridge tube and train station, it’s about a half-mile walk to the Globe Theatre and Tate Modern art museum. It’s only about two blocks from the London Bridge Experience, whose replicated blood and gore I’ve so far managed to miss. The cathedral is also adjacent (about as adjacent as you can get) to the Borough Market, full of produce, stands, food shops, and restaurants and also the site of a terrorist attack in June of 2017 (not to be confused with the Westminster Bridge attack in March of 2017).

Southwark’s official name is “the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St. Saviour and St. Mary Overie,” the “overie” meaning “over the river.” A church has existed on the site since the 7^th century; archaeologists have identified the foundations of an Anglo-Saxon church there. It’s believed to have first been connected to a community of nuns, and later a community of priests. The first written reference to it is in the Domesday Book of 1086, William the Conqueror’s detailed assessment of land and resources.

In 1106, the church was reestablished as a priory and followed the Rule of St. Augustine. It was then that the church was dedicated to St. Mary Over the River. A hospital was established as well, and it would eventually grow and be transferred to what is now St. Thomas Hospital near Westminster Bridge and across the Thames from Parliament. (Incorporated into St. Thomas Hospital was the old Guys Hospital near Southwark Cathedral, where the poet John Keats studied to be a doctor.)

Southwark was the staging area for pilgrimages to Canterbury, and it was in this area that Geoffrey Chaucer launched the pilgrimage made famous in The Canterbury Tales.

The order at Southwark was dissolved along with orders across England by Henry VIII in 1539, part of the English Reformation and likely inspired by Henry’s desire to get his hands on the churches’ and orders’ prodigious wealth. The building was rented to the congregation and called St. Saviour’s; in 1611, the congregation purchased the church from James I. One of the notables buried in the church is William Shakespeare’s younger brother Edmond (1607).

The church officially became “Southwark Cathedral” in 1905. Today, the Diocese of Southwark encompasses a rather large area (and includes Lambeth Palace, the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury). It covers 2.5 million people and more than 300 church parishes.

Southwark Cathedral nave — This would be Michael Kent-Hughes’ view as he speaks from the pulpit

In Dancing King, Southwark Cathedral is the place where Michael Kent-Hughes begins his series of sermons at London churches, two days before Christmas Eve. The photograph here of the nave is the view Michael would have as he’s speaking to a packed church. And it is here, the next night, where almost 1,200 people will show up for a Bible study, filling the church past overflowing, beginning what will become a religious revival in the Church of England. But it will be a revival matched by intense opposition from the senior church hierarchy.

If you visit the cathedral (and it’s well worth a visit), the entry fee is a pound (a bargain compared to the big churches). You pay your fee in the gift shop, where in return you’re given a cathedral guide. You also usually warned to make sure your guide is visible when you enter the church; one of the church wardens will politely ask to see it or send you to the shop to buy one if you don’t have it. The fee doesn’t apply during church services.

Top photograph: a view of Southwark Cathedral, with one of London’s tallest office buildings, known as “The Shard,” in the background.

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