England's Worker-Priests

"I want to be with ordinary people, share their lives and be one of them," says tough, square-jawed John Strong, 43. For years he has lived in slums, worked in factories. To most Church of England clerics he is an odd fellow, "honest but peculiar." Reason: Worker Strong is also a fulltime minister.

In his tiny Bedfordshire village of Harlington (pop. 750) last week, Anglican Strong met four other ministers who also work fulltime in factories, issued a formal statement ("No movement or organization has been created. We do not want to become rigid"). But in the view of all five, such a movement is the Church of England's best hope for rekindling religious spirit (only one-tenth of England's 27 million Anglicans attended services last Easter Sunday, the day of top turnout). British workers, explains Strong, see the church as "a financial racket. Churches are empty now, but the Church still has income from investments. If empty churches meant hard times for vicars, then they would soon do something about it."

Middlesex-born Vicar Strong first took up his double life during World War II, when he served a village near Dover as vicar and simultaneously worked as a coalfield pitman. Hampered by unenthusiastic superiors and sheer exhaustion. Strong had to quit for a while, but in 1955 he took a job as an oil-meter checker in a factory, was appointed curate in Harlington, and won the backing of his bishop.

Refusing the $2,100 stipend allotted him by the church, John Strong supports his wife and two children on his $28 weekly factory pay (plus overtime). He usually officiates in his overalls at Communion before scurrying to catch a 6:50 train to work, spends lunchtime visiting the sick or talking to fellow workers, rushes home at 5:30 for parish work and sermon-writing. To the four other worker-priests, such a schedule is too rough; they only help out as assistant vicars when needed.

Possibly remembering the Roman Catholic Church's ill-fated worker-priest movement in France, the Church of England is still wary of the idea. "This is a waste of skilled manpower," says Dr. Leslie Hunter, Bishop of Sheffield. Strong's retort: "Many people regard the Church as something apart. In my own way I am trying to dispel that attitude." One proof of his success: Strong was elected by his fellow workers to be shop steward of the Amalgamated Engineering Union.

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