Church Commissioners sell church to SSG for £100

According to this Gateshead Lib Dem blog the Church Commissioners sold a church to the St Stephen The Great Charitable Trust in November for £100:

The landmark St Cuthberts Church on Bensham Bank has been sold by the Church Commissioners to the American based St Stephen The Great Charitable Trust. The historic landmark has been sold for £100, reflecting the state of the building which is suffering from structural problems and vandalism. The building needs considerable investment to bring it back into use.

The nineteenth century church was designed by the famous Victorian North East architect John Dobson.

The Church Commissioners were keen to see the building continue to be used as a church. Work on restoring the building is expected to take a year.

The sale of the church has been welcomed by local Liberal Democrat campaigners Susan Craig and Peter Andras.

Does this sound familiar? An Anglican institution is desperate to hand over their asset(s) to someone. Things don't go smoothly with the first possible recipient, but then SSG are there in the right place at the right time and get given it for free.
The £100 price tag is not really the issue. Such an amount might be entirely appropriate given the hundreds of thousands that will need to be spent on the church. What really surprises me is that the Church Commissioners have decided SSG are suitable recipients at all given:

1. The ongoing legal cases between SPCK and SSG as well as between SSG and some former employees. SPCK gave away millions of pounds-worth of assets to SSG and got their fingers badly burnt and yet the Church Commissioners appear to be doing exactly the same thing. [If you are unfamiliar with the SSG / SPCK bookshops story see all the posts in the Save the SPCK category on this blog.]
2. The dubious aims of the Saint Stephen the Great Trust. SSG have said they are aiming to restore 47 redundant churches, one for each of the 47 battles St Stephen the great fought against the Muslims (statement now removed from their website, though I have the text recorded here). In their video SSG make it fairly clear that they see acquiring churches in Muslim areas as one of their aims. I just can't see how giving a church to such an organisation can fit within the requirements for new uses for redundant churches, namely that they should be 'sensitive to the setting and history of each building'.

It could of course be the case that the Church Commissioners are unaware of the whole SPCK/SSG situation, but this seems unlikely. It is true that this sale took place before the release of the St Stephen the Great video and the Radio 4 Sunday programme, but a lot of information about SSG was available online before that time. Surely you'd do a quick Google search before giving a church building to someone.

Here's some background reading:
• This April 2007 video by the same Lib Dem councillor shows the church before it was sold (Warning - contains local ploughing and footbridge news and also some in-depth photocopying footage)
• Extremist Sect Sets Up Church - No, not SSG. This is a report relating to a previous controversy, when the The Society of St Pius X were due to take on the church.
• BBC NEWS | England | Tyne | Historic church's future secured - A BBC report on St Cuthberts from 2005.
• Listed Church For Sale - The Gateshead Council site listing the church as being for sale again in February this year

The page about St Cuthberts (now deleted) on the Church of England site said:

This is a rare opportunity to acquire a landmark building, in a commanding position overlooking the River Tyne. The property is being sold with the benefit of a development brief produced by Gateshead Council supporting the conversion of this Grade II Listed Church to a range of commercial and residential uses. All parties are keen to see the property sold and sensitively converted to secure the future of this landmark building. Built in 1845 to the designs of John Dobson and extended by the addition of an aisle in 1874, the church stands in a large churchyard that has been used for burials. It comprises tower, nave, chancel, vestries, aisle and west gallery. The building has suffered from subsidence due to former mining works in the area and is in need of substantial stabilisation and other restoration costs. Guidance on these likely costs is available from the agents. Offers are invited by 28 July 2007, with detailed evidence of feasibility within three months of submission of offer.

SPCK/SSG bookshops on the Radio 4 Sunday programme

[Welcome to anyone who has found this blog from the Radio 4 programme. The posts on the SPCK / SSG story can be found in the 'Save the SPCK' category]

You can now listen to the programme again here: Radio 4: Sunday programme. The SPCK item is 25 minutes and 15 seconds in.

In summary, the programme contained the following:

• Introduction to the bookshops and the crisis
• Me talking about my surprise at statements found on the original SSG website
• Sections of text from the SSG video
• Gregory Hallam talking about Orthodoxy and Islam
• Mark Brewer
• Aude Pasquier, speaking form a publishers perspective
• Mike Ford vistits the Chester shop and comments on what is and isn't on display
• Richard Greatrex, former Bristol manager
• Christina, another former manager
• Jane Mcgarry (?) USDAW
• Interview with Phil Brewer

Some of text from the programme transcribed via hefty use of the pause button (see 'Editor's note' below):

Presenter: A little over a year ago a small charity called St Stephen the Great took over the running of Britain's most famous religious bookshop chain, SPCK. The chain was said to be on the verge of financial ruin and the staff were worried about their jobs. At the time of the takeover SPCK's 23 bookshops employed a staff of 200, but since then the staff have left in droves complaining about the style of the new management, as well as changes to their contracts and working conditions. Publishers say new books aren't appearing on the shelves. St Stephen the Great (SSG) now a limited company is run by the Brewer family in Texas who describe themselves as lay Orthodox Christians whose aim is to spread the Orthodox message by acquiring redundant Anglican churches. Mike Ford has this special report.

Mike Ford: Set in the normally genteel world of religious bookselling the saga might well have come straight from the pages of a novel by Barbara Pym. SPCK was traditionally one of the most respected chains in the business. Some of its shops had been trading since the early 1800s stocking a broad selection of theological books and supplying churches with communion wine wafers and candles. But in more recent times the chain had faced desperate financial problems and had difficulty securing a buyer. So when the Brewer brothers from Texas agreed to take over it seemed like manna from heaven.

Dave Walker: I think when SPCK wanted to get rid of the shops they wanted a solution that would involve as few redundancies as possible and I think they saw St Stephen the Great as being the best option in the circumstances.

Mike Ford: Dave Walker is a cartoonist for the Church Times who has been following the story on his blog.

Dave Walker: I was very surprised when I went onto the SSG website that some of the statements that were on the site at the time didn't strike me as being particularly compatable with the more open minded stance of the SPCK shops.

Audio from SSG video: I'm Mark Brewer, chairman of the St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust. Who was St Stephen the Great? He was a man who lived in the fifteenth century who fought some 47 battles against the Muslim Turks who were invading Eastern Europe at that time.

Mike Ford: Mark Brewer and his brother Philip describe themselves as lay orthodox Christians. They named their charity after a Saint who built a church after each of his 47 battles against the Muslims. The brothers want to follow in that spirit by acquiring 47 redundant churches from the church of England and turning them over to Orthodox use. Posters in their shops use the slogan 'Buy a book - Save a church'.

Audio from SSG video: The second major project of the Trust is a lovely old Victorian church in the city of Bradford. Known as Saint Mary Magdalene, the abandoned building would most likely have become an Islamic centre as it is only two blocks from what is already the second largest mosque in Europe. Now, thanks to (fades)

Mike Ford: Many Orthodox Christians have been alarmed by this video. Father Gregory Hallam, an Orthodox priest in Manchester thinks it could suggest that the Orthodox church has a confrontational attitude towards Islam.

Father Gregory Hallam: I belong to a church in the Middle East that has lived alongside Islam for over 1400 years, and some of Mr Brewers statements about Islam strike us as being very un-Orthodox in the sense of not being consistent really with our whole approach to interfaith relations. We in the Orthodox church regard all religions as being an indication of God's graciousness to mankind.

Mike Ford: The staff at SPCK became increasingly unhappy about the changes the Brewers were making. They related to the range of stock, the way it was ordered and the working conditions. The new management style didn't go down well either. The staff voted with their feet. More than two thirds of managers have left along with scores of others. In Exeter the entire team walked out. But the chairman of SSG, Mark Brewer, said the new measures had to be taken.

Mark Brewer: We came into the bookshops a year and a month ago facing mounting losses on the trading operations and set about the very difficult and sometimes unpopular task of trying to make the shops profitable enough to at least pay their own way while continuing to spread the word of God through the printed material as well as of course church requisites and some religious articles of one kind and another.

Mike Ford: It was understood from the start that the shops would continue to sell a range of materials, but according to staff in some shops the stock is narrower and they aren't receiving supplies. Aude Pasquier, sales and marketing director for a London publishing house says the changes are posing serious challenges to religious publishers.

Aude Pasquier: Basically I think the range of books is not being carried any longer. Potential customers can't find the range of books that they used to be able to find in the SPCK bookshops. Writers have been coming to us asking why - how come I cannot find my books on the shelves of the SPCK bookshops. For publishers it means that we have lost 23 shops in 23 different locations where we had clearly a good customer base and we have to be able to reach those customers by some other means from now on.

In summary: I felt it gave a good summary of the situation. The nature of such programmes is that each person's contribution is reduced to one or two sentences, but I think a good number of points were made nevertheless. I'd have liked what was said on to have gone further - for example the various Anglican dioceses who have said nothing about the fate of their local SPCK shop escaped without mention - it wasn't for a lack of talking about it on my part. Phil Brewer's responses in the final interview will, I'm sure, be the topic of some debate. As Richard
has said in the comments below he misrepresented the reason that many of the staff left, avoided the Islamophobia issue and his comments about 'broadening the stock' are just not born out by reality.

Thanks to the BBC for running this story and for the producers for ensuring that such a wide variety of voices was heard. If you have comments on the programme then do of course post them below, but you can also comment on the Sunday programme website.

Other comments on the programme:
• Neil: Radio 4 again
• The Need to Maintain Critical Dialogue Between Religions: SPCK / SSG Bookshops | The Wardman Wire
• Madame Arcati: St Stephen's bookshops fight the Muslim heathen!
• Posters on the Ship of Fools bulletin board give their reactions
• Room515 | SPCK: The fight club continues

Other links not directly about the programme:
• A pro-SSG Anglican priest - de cura animarum: St. Stephen's Trust: Restoring Britain's Christian Heritage
[Editor's note (Sunday pm): I need to get on with work, so the transcript of the programme is incomplete. If anyone else wanted to do any more transcribing (from 31 minutes) that really would be marvellous - I know that you can listen to the programme but it would be good to have a written record.]

Update: a comment by Richard Greatrex has been added to the Sunday programme site:
Re: The takeover of the SPCK Bookshops by St Stephen the Great.Many of the points made by Phil Brewer need challenging. Go into your local SPCK/SSG Bookshop and look for any of the new titles published since August by the major Christian publishing houses in the UK - SPCK, DLT, Church House, Kevin Mayhew, etc. I doubt whether you will find more than 5%. The range has radically diminished and not got broader, as Phil Brewer said. In some cases even the range of Orthodox material is less than before the takeover. Phil Brewer states that many of the staff left because they couldn't cope with attempts to modernise business practice. But most of us welcomed this with opened arms, we were willing to work hard to remodel the shops in a more businesslike way. We left because we and our colleagues were treated in most unbusiness-like and unchristian ways.

St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust

My SPCK cartoon appears in this month's Christian Marketplace magazine, which is nice.

I've been keeping an eye on the St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust / SPCK story as it intrigues me and I am interested to see what happens. It did not
surprise me to read that the Trust have instructed their shops not to stock the Koran, as they are not overly enthusiastic about the Muslim faith. It remains to be seen whether Christian denominations they also are not terribly enthusiastic about will be less represented or removed from the SPCK shelves.

The controversial 'St Stephen Foundation' website which talks about these dubious denominations in quite strong terms has now been deleted from the internet, although you can still see it via archive.org.

One of the aims of the St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust which I hadn't quite noticed until now is to take over at least 47 redundant Church of England Churches, one for each of the 47 churches and monasteries St Stephen the Great built to celebrate his battle victories against the Muslims:

Perhaps of equal or greater significance to this great saint's life is that he built many churches and monasteries, one after each of his 47 successful battles against the Moslems, including many of the most beautiful monuments to Orthodoxy in the entire world.

This struggle for the Faith is being waged primarily by the acquisition of the "redundant" church buildings of the Church of England. In this, its second year, the trust has succeeded in acquiring fee title to its second magnificent church building (both are listed buildings). In the years to come, it aspires to acquire at least 45 more. I find this a fairly unsavoury symbolic gesture I have to say.

I find it all a bit sad as I remain a great fan of the SPCK bookshops themselves.

Update: Joe asked in the comments whether we should stop supporting the SPCK bookshops. My answer is no. I think we should continue to support SPCK shops for the following reasons:

• I think the good the shops and the books sold through them do outweighs the strange and dubious objectives of the owners.
• I want to support the staff, some of whom I know.
• I suspect that once this chain is gone it really is gone and I can't see anything similar replacing it. At least if we continue to support SPCK there remains the chance that it will be taken over by someone we are able to support more wholeheartedly.

The SPCK takeover (continued)

Two good points in the comments from yesterday's post:

Are the shops safeguarded?
Well, yes and no. As Neil pointed out, the SPCK shops are only 'safeguarded' if people keep buying things from them, a point that I should have made.

Who are the people who now run SPCK anyway?
Joe did a bit more digging around than I did yesterday and came up with some interesting snippets of information on the St Stephen Foundation website, which seems to be linked with the St Stephen Trust, the people who have taken over the SPCK shops. Interesting beliefs listed on their 'Why Orthodoxy' page include:
• The Orthodox Church is the only true church:
• Since the time of Saint Peter, the Orthodox Church has remained unaltered with seamless continuity. Established in A.D. 33 at the time of Pentecost, it is the only church true to the Word of God, and therefore, the only one that offers true salvation and eternal life.
• Certain Christians, the precise identity of whom is uncertain (but they could be evangelicals or perhaps protestants generally), are going to hell:
• In the United States of America, people are flocking back to what they believe is Christianity but, in reality, they are being misled by false prophets - a blind man. They are persuaded to join "Feel-Good" churches where they are told they will be saved by making a donation and saying a few simple words. Unfortunately, many of these are "feel good" churches are established just to make the management rich, or where the minister actually believes his own message, they are leading poor misguided souls into eternal damnation - both will fall into the pit.
• The Roman Catholic church is not 'the true church of Christ':
• One hundred and fifty thousand souls convert or revert back to the Roman Catholic faith each year in the USA. In their misguided belief, they assume that this is the true Church of Christ.

As Joe says, how are they going to feel about stocking Protestant or Roman Catholic literature?

The Orthodox take on SPCK

Orthodox charity St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust are to take over the SPCK bookshop chain, which you might remember from my campaign earlier in the year.

This is splendid news as it means the future of the shops has been safeguarded.

Thanks to Neil for passing on the news.