If there were a prize for the most unpredictable parish magazine editor in the country, a foremost candidate would surely be John Pearce. He edits the parish magazine at Holy Saviour’s parish church, Tynemouth. The workmanlike cover of the 28-page magazine gives no hint of the explosive content. He upsets the apple-cart and disturbs sacred cows.
The September issue carries a number of contributions from readers on one contentious issue after another. Several pages are taken up with arguments for and against removing pews. They provide a resting-place for all the booklets and pieces of paper a worshipper collects, says one. Another says that chairs make a scraping noise when they are moved. There are, of course, arguments of a weightier kind. But where should we be if we never had our tongues in our cheeks?
All in all, the magazine edited by John Pearce is a good riposte to anybody who looks on parish magazines as I believe Dick Sheppard did. He tore up every parish magazine he came across before it did any more harm. For the benefit of those readers who cannot remember the General Strike of 1926 and the Munich crisis of 1938 Dick Sheppard was a Dean of Canterbury, a foremost pacifist and a notable spokesman for Christianity (but not the institutional Church) in the early days of the BBC. Like Marcus Morris, who edited ‘The Eagle’, a children’s weekly, two or three decades later, he gained a popular hearing.
Marcus Morris deserves to be the hero of every parish magazine editor. He started his journalistic career as editor of ‘Anvil’, a parish magazine in Birkdale, where he was vicar, and collected household names as contributors. Against all the odds he went on to gain a huge circulation for ‘Eagle’, with Dan Dare and cutaway illustrations as starring features. Just as it is possible to meet pensioners nowadays who fondly remember Richmal Crompton’s William, so it is possible to meet those who preserve treasured issues of the ‘Eagle’ they grew up with.
Marcus Morris’s old parish in Birkdale, St James’s, nowadays has a magazine it shares with St Peter’s parish. Editor is Judith Rimmer. It runs to 40 pages and has wide-ranging interests, not quite as wide-ranging, perhaps, as its illustrious predecessor, but a genius (if that’s not too strong a word) like Marcus Morris does not come along all that often. Go for it, Judith.
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