“This is my parish”, said the Reverend Father, his beer half drunk, his cigarette pointing to the bar.”
The title under one of the photos says, “THE CHURCH MUST COME TO THE PEOPLE.” IN A SOHO PUBLIC-HOUSE, THE REV. TONY REID TAKES A BEER AND TALKS ABOUT CHRISTIANITY”. The article, which Jonny Baker and I found on display this week at the new photographers gallery in London, is from Picture Post, 1955. I sneaked a photo or two and these will enlarge if you click on them.
Rev. Tony Reid was given freedom for his missional work in the pubs by Father Patrick McLaughlin, the Rector of St Annes in Soho who founded The Society of St Annes in the clergy house that was bombed out during the war.
According to Wikipedia, “The Society was begun late in 1942, when McLaughlin and Shaw asked the Bishop of London (Geoffrey Fisher, later Archbishop of Canterbury) for permission to use the St Anne’s clergy house as a kind of mission centre for thinking pagans”. The Society drew a lot of key thinkers including CS Lewis. Sounds like it was good soil for the mission action that came during the 50’s. Always good to see talk lead to action.
Best quote for me from that Picture Post article is toward the end:
“It was in Brussels in the 1930's that he [Patrick McLaughlin] saw the church in social action. He spent some weeks studying the process of going out to the people, of taking your empty church as a fact, but your parish as the real and living church.”
My questions for the mission geeks out there:
1. What Catholic mission(s) did he see in Brussels in the 1930s that so inspired him?
2. What ever happened to Rev. Tony Reid?
Technorati Tags: missional, patrick mclaughlin, soho, st annes
Technorati Tags: missional, patrick mclaughlin, soho, st annes
i tried searching for rev. tony reid on facebook but couldn’t find him. good luck. ; )
love this – thanks for finding and sharing
Great Find!
Andrew,
Did you get the name of the paper and the date of the article?
Peace.
Dan
yes – its on the second image.
Hilde Marchant, A Mission in Soho, October 22, 1955, Picture Post, page 37 – 39
Info on this blog:
Picture Post Newspaper – first issue was in 1938; last issue in 1957
Hilde Marchant – female British journalist; seems to have been well known for her work on women’s issues in the UK during WWII
Frank Pocklington – worked as camera operator for various tv series; last work was on “Mysterious Universe”
Reverend Tony Reid – not a whole lot; I emailed the parish of St. Anne’s in Soho and am awaiting a reply
Andrew,
If you’re really really interested in this, you may do better to email the history department at Oxford or Cambridge for information regarding Reverend Tony Reid. That or hope you have some readers who are history buffs who love to research quite obscure persons.
Peace.
Dan
Dan, you are such a GEEK!!! thanks
thanks
it’s encouraging to me to know that someone else has sat in pubs in the past in their dog collar and thinking of it as their parish!
Now that was really special……. and comforting in a lot of ways… just the “fleshing” out aspect of it… xoK8
my old man was a priest around london at that time, so i’ll ask him for you
I’d love to know if you find him – would love to see if it was possible to share stories
dad has more memories of paddy mclaughlin and didn’t remember anything about tony reid – sorry
Why don’t you people just use Google? Picture Post was the foremost weekly picture magazine in Britain. It’s journalists and two of its’ photographers went into television journalism and transformed it in Britain. Frank Pocklington photographed at least 70 of Alan Whicker’s best known award-winning programmes. He retired in 1989 after winning an International Emmy for photographing ‘Six Days in My Lai’