Community of the Resurrection

The Community of the Resurrection (CR) is a child of the Oxford Movement, the Catholic Revival in the Church of England in the 19th century. After several years of preparation 25 July 1892, St James Day, six priests founded a religious community in Pusey House, Oxford, where Charles Gore resided as the first principal of the house. Pusey House, however, was not suited for a religious community and the problem was solved when, the following year, Gore became the vicar of Radley, a few miles south of Oxford. The six brethren moved into the vicarage and "started to learn how to ride a bicycle", as Gore expressed it. The founders of CR wanted the community to develop its own charism based on pastoral involvement. They were all Christian Socialists challenged by the poverty of the working classes and their strong sense of vocation to this group of people made them look for a new home in heavily industrialised Northern England.[2]

House of the Resurrection, Mirfield

A large house in the middle of the Diocese of Wakefield, West Yorkshire seemed to fit the purpose. In 1898 the community moved to Mirfield, and this became the centre of the community’s activities. Charles Gore had become a canon of Westminster Abbey in 1894, and though he was officially in charge as superior until 1902, it was under his successor Walter Howard Frere, CR developed its character as a religious community. The brethren regarded their ministry as closely connected to the Church of England, and as an extension of their parish ministry, one of their first tasks was to found a theological training college for men without means. The College of the Resurrection opened in 1902 and has trained ordinands for the priesthood until today. Because part of the teaching was done at University of Leeds, a hostel was built and run in Leeds from 1904 to 1976. Developing a large library of theological literature was a natural thing for a community like CR, but the college made it even more necessary.[3]

Another development was a fraternity for priests and lay people associated with CR and its rule of life. The Fraternity of Companions was established in 1903 and the C.R. Quarterly became the link between them and the community. An order of oblates was formed in 1931 for celibate men who wanted to share the discipline of the religious life with the brethren in a ministry outside the community.

Retreats became an important element of the monastic work. Brethren did retreats in many parts of the country, and, as a part of the continuous extension of the site in Mirfield, a retreat house was built in 1914 and extended to its present size in 1926.[4]

As Anglican Catholics, the brethren laid great store by the beauty of the liturgy, and Walter Frere, a fine musician, was particularly interested in developing the liturgy. He was from an early stage, involved in scholarly work on the chant and the daily offices. To realise this purpose the community needed a proper church and on St Mary Magdalen’s Day, 22 July 1911, the foundation stone of a great church was laid. Though the huge scale of the original plan was not followed, it remains an impressive and unusual building. The western half, completed in 1938, follows a simplified design by the architect's son, Michael Tapper.[5]

The celebrations were not limited to indoors. A quarry next to the house was turned into an open-air theatre shortly after the brethren had arrived at the house and used for sermons, Bible classes, plays and political meetings. The grounds were used for big day events of which the yearly Commemoration Day, celebrating the founding of the college, was the greatest.

Though the community left Oxford, southern England was not forgotten. After his ministry in Westminster, Charles Gore became, successively, Bishop of Worcester, Bishop of Birmingham and Bishop of Oxford and continued his strong focus on mission among the workers. London seemed to be an obvious place to establish a mission as brothers had lived with Gore in Westminster. The community was offered a house in South Kensington in 1914 and the brethren became involved in ministries for the soldiers of the First World War there. After the war a bigger house was found near Holland Park in the same area. The London priory remained there until 1968. Retreats, missions and teaching were the main purposes of the house. The London ministry came under royal protection when it moved to the Royal Foundation of St Katharine in Stepney. Here the priory shared a city ministry with the Community of St. Andrew and the Sisters of the Church until 1993, when the time had come for CR to form its own priory again. CR moved to an abandoned clergy house in Covent Garden and ran a city ministry in the middle of London until 2003.[6]

The community established a retreat house in the south as well, first in St Leonards, Sussex (1931–1948) and later in Hemingford Grey, Cambridgeshire (1950–2010).

CR’s ministry in Africa, which became a strong mark of the community in the 20th century, began early. In 1902 one of the aspirants of the early days in Oxford, William Carter, by now the Bishop of Pretoria, invited the brethren to help rebuild his diocese after the devastation of the Boer War. In response three brethren went to Johannesburg and founded a house to work with African miners and do theological training for local Africans. The community undertook the responsibility of St. John’s College in the same city four years later. When the brethren handed the college back to the diocese in 1934 it had become a flourishing education centre. In that year the community was asked to run the parish of Christ the King in the black suburb Sophiatown.

In 1911 a new priory and theological training college (St Peter's Theological College) was opened in the suburb of Rosettenville, which grew steadily with schools for black children and teenagers added in 1922. This college had a great influence on the Church of Southern Africa in the second half of the 20th century.

As in South Africa, the Bishop of Southern Rhodesia, Frederic Hicks Beaven invited the community to run a mission in Penhalonga from 1914. This became the centre of the brethren’s activities in Zimbabwe until it was handed over to local authorities in 1983 shortly after the civil war had ended. The work in Zimbabwe concentrated on running the school for children in Penhalonga and pastoral and educational work in the area, the so-called "treck jobs". There have remained friendly and caring connections to the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe until this day, in the last years especially through the "Tariro" orphanage project led by Nicholas Stebbing CR.

Trevor Huddleston as Bishop of Masasi

The number of brethren in the community and the extent of its activities reached a peak around 1960 with over 90 brothers engaged in 12 houses spread over three continents.

A new part of the world was explored when the community accepted an invitation to run Codrington Theological College in Barbados in the West Indies from 1955 to 1969. Having a stable religious community on the site, where students came from a far distance, was a great help for this widespread diocese.[7]

A similar invitation was given from the Church in Wales, where the bishops wanted the charism of CR to be spread among university students. The hostel of St Teilo in Cardiff was made into a priory from 1945 to 1968 with a focus on retreats and student work.[8]

The greatest engagement, however, was in South Africa. A new priory was established in the Northern Transvaal/Sekukuniland in South Africa from 1945 to 1962. The engagement in the struggle against Apartheid became a very visible part of the mission, which made the community famous outside the church with Trevor Huddleston as the most well known of the brethren. The political support to the black population had consequences. The South African government forced the college to move from Rosettenville and the priory in Sophiatown was closed down in 1962. CR continued to do pastoral work in Johannesburg and were able to continue the theological training when the Anglican bishops of Southern Africa asked the community to be a part of a new ecumenical college in Alice, Eastern Cape. The first brethren arrived in 1963 and here the brethren became a part of the fight against Apartheid. After some turbulent years when the theological college was forced to move twice, the community decided to hand the education over to South Africans in 1977. The priory in Rosettenville closed in 1986. A house was run in Stellenbosch from 1968 to 1976, where brothers were involved in running the parish and taking care of the Anglican students. The century of work in South Africa ended in Turffontein, where the community gathered its mission in a priory from 1986 to 2006. The brethren were involved in typical CR work: pastoral care, retreats and conferences connected to Anglican life.

The radical changes of society and church life in the United Kingdom from the 1960s and onwards was a great challenge for CR as well as all other religious communities. The attitude in the new generations towards religious commitment changed. Within the communities fundamental questions of relevance, order of life and ministry were asked and discussed. Several left the communities and fewer people came to explore vocation to the religious life. Though CR was one of the strongest and most committed communities, it did not avoid the struggle and it came to a serious crisis when the superior, with short notice, left the community in 1974.[9]

A new vision and vocation for northern England became active in the 1970s. The loss of spiritual understanding and knowledge of prayer in the great cities was a great concern for the church and contribution from religious communities in this vacuum was obvious. CR supported the vocation of Augustine Hoey CR to make a flat in Hulme, a poor part of Manchester, into a home of prayer in 1973. The project was moved to a redundant vicarage in Sunderland in 1977 and named "Emmaus".[10] Hoey was joined by other brethren and the project lasted until 1993.

College of the Resurrection

When the mission closed down in South Africa in 2006, the House of the Resurrection in Mirfield was the only house of CR. This had not been the case since the community moved to Yorkshire in 1898. This was an opportunity to rethink the charism and mission of CR into a new century.

The College of the Resurrection has been going for more than a century and is still an important ministry in Mirfield. In 2004 the community created a new governing body drawing in a wide range of expertise from outside, but the Community retains a strong involvement in governance, and at present provides a brother as College Principal. It is still the aim to provide students with a formation that draws on the living monastic tradition, while equipping them for ministry in the 21st century. As pastoral formation developed in the northern dioceses the college made a partnership with the Northern Ordination Course, later to become the Yorkshire Ministry Course (from 1996).[11] The community decided to open an educational centre, the Mirfield Centre, in 1998, with its own Director, and a mission to contribute to the Christian formation of the laity in particular. In 2007 the Wakefield School of Ministry made this the centre of its work.[12]

2011 saw the foundation of the Mirfield Liturgical Institute, which promotes scholarly study of the liturgy, with a long-term aim of lay education as well.

There is a long tradition of ecumenical contacts and relations in the community. As a part of his monastic studies Walter Frere had visited Roman Catholic clergy and monasteries in France before he joined the community. In 1928 he became the first Anglican president of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius after a visit to Russia in 1909. Strong links to Roman Catholics and Orthodox have remained in CR and has become even stronger in the age of globalism. On the initiative of the Roman Catholic Benedictine abbey of Trier in Germany, an official friendship, which grew from several visits, was made in 1983, and several brethren have built up links with the Orthodox Church in Romania in a mutual spiritual exchange. There are also links to European Lutherans through the international ecumenical networks of monastics.

The much-needed refurbishment and reordering of the church in 2011 has resulted in a space that is widely acclaimed. The next phase, once the new monastery is built, is for the old house to be converted into urgently-needed facilities for the many people who come.