The week beginning Sunday 22nd February was always going to be interesting. For starters, it contained both our birthdays, Sybille’s on the 24th & mine on the 26th. It was also the week we were booked to commence our Czech language classes.
Because our birthdays are only two days (but numerous years!) apart, we normally try to have a little celebration on the intervening day, the 25th. However, the liturgical calendar this year decided to play it’s tricks upon us by 25th February being Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Hardly a day for birthday celebrations but instead, an important Holy Day in the Christian Year. So instead of a party, I celebrated an Ash Wednesday Eucharist with the imposition of ashes for those who wished for it. Most encouragingly, it was well supported, both by regular members of the congregation, and by others. These included two members of our host Church, the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, who don’t themselves hold an Ash Wednesday service.
Back in January, we had booked ourselves onto a Czech language beginner’s course running on Mondays & Wednesdays & commencing on Monday 23rd February at the Vítezné námestí branch of the Caledonian Language School, just three tram stops from where we live. Unfortunately, four days before we were due to start the course, we received an email to say that they didn’t have enough takers for our planned course so it wouldn’t run. Instead, we had to transfer to a course being held at their Národní branch in the centre of Prague running on Tuesdays & Thursdays.
So how did we mark both our birthdays? By attending our first two one & a half hour lessons in Czech!!! And I mean in Czech!!! It is the full immersion method with all the instructions being given in Czech. By our second lesson, on my birthday, I was sinking fast and rapidly believing that being in ones late fifties is not the right age to try to start learning a completely new language! Our course book is entitled, ‘Czech Express’. At the moment, as far as I am concerned, that title is exceedingly optimistic! If you want to do real penance this Lent, try three hours of Czech language lessons each week!
On Tuesday 17th, I returned to the flat from our Breakfast Study Group & visiting a family who had enquired about the baptism of their child, to a request that I return a phone call from a retired Pastor of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren.
The Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren are a united Lutheran/Reformed Church and are by far the largest Protestant denomination in the Czech Republic. Once I got through, the retired Pastor asked me what I knew about the Anglican Church building in Mariánské lázne and about a person who claimed to be the Anglican Bishop of the Czech Republic and was conducting services there.
Mariánské lázne is a spa town in the far west of the Czech Republic, near to the German border. Better known in the past, by its German name of Marienbad, it was very popular with the upper classes of various European countries in the second half of the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth centuries. King Edward VII, son of Queen Victoria, was one of many Britons who visited to ‘take the waters’. An Anglican Church was built there and opened in 1879. It remained in use for Anglican worship until sometime in the 1920/30s and following the communist takeover in 1948, was confiscated by the state. After the fall of communism in 1989, some limited financial compensation was agreed and paid into the accounts of the Prague Anglican Episcopal Congregation. These funds partly helped pay the deposit on the flat that Sybille & I live in. The Church building now belongs to the local council in Mariánské lázne who has restored it to good order and use it as a small concert venue & gallery.
All this I told the retired Pastor and he agreed that this was his understanding too. However, one of his colleagues in Mariánské lázne, had been in touch with him regarding someone calling himself the Anglican Bishop of the Czech Republic, who since the summer of 2008 had been holding services in Mariánské lázne, using the former Anglican Church building. What did I know about him?
This information immediately rang bells. Back in October 2008, we had a similar report from a member of an Anglican congregation in Switzerland. Unfortunately at that time, we were given a partially incorrect name and could not discover anything more. But now I had his full name, The Rt. Rev’d Dr. Edwin Wagner. And aided by that helpful friend called Google, a clearer picture emerged, even allowing for the fact that quite a bit of the material was in Czech.
Edwin Wagner is Episcopi vagantes –this Wikipedia article will explain. He belongs to an exceedingly small group who style themselves ‘Traditional Church of England’. Typical of such groups, they have four ‘bishops’ and only five other ‘clergy’. The expression ‘too many Chiefs and not enough Indians’ comes to mind. According to their website, they seek to ‘continue the best Anglican traditions and values’. Yet a few lines later they state that this includes the use of the Roman Catholic English Missal!!!!
In Mariánské lázne, Edwin Wagner has taken full advantage of the fact that a historic restored building is still known as ‘The Anglican Church,’ even though it hasn’t been used for Anglican worship for over seventy years. It was only when his delusions of grandeur got the better of him and he claimed that, what is a publicly owned concert hall and gallery, had now been upgraded to the status of a Pro-Cathedral, that the local clergy began to smell a rat, eventually leading to the phone enquiry of ten days ago.
Last Saturday, we drove the 100 miles/160 km out to Mariánské lázne to investigate for ourselves. The small town is beautifully situated in a wooded valley and had recently experienced a quite heavy snowfall. And after the years of communist neglect, many of the wonderful late nineteenth and early twentieth century buildings have been restored to their former glory. Walking the streets, we heard more German being spoken than Czech with many day or weekend visitors from across the nearby border.
We found the ‘Anglican Church’ but were disappointed to read a notice on the door stating ‘Im Winter geschlossen’ and similarly in Czech. Likewise, there were no notices about Church services conducted by Edwin Wagner. This rather confirmed the information we had been given that he had not been seen around the town by the other Christian ministers since just before Christmas.
A few days ago, I decided to bite the bullet and rang the mobile phone number given for Edwin Wagner on the ‘Traditional Church of England’ website. He answered in person and I asked whether he was still holding Church services in Mariánské lázne. He told me that they were to resume in a couple of weeks time in the same building. I challenged him about calling his services ‘Church of England’ or ‘Anglican’, and he claimed in reply that he makes it clear that he is “not in communion with the see of Canterbury”. But if you look at this website, the German description ‘Die Anglikanische Kirche’ is used. My wife, who is a native German speaker, says that any German speaker reading that would inevitably understand that as being the Church of England. Likewise, I have sufficient Czech to know that any Czech person reading ‘Anglikánská cirkev’ would also understand that as meaning the Church of England. All he has done is put the letters ‘TCE’ on his publicity, with no explanation whatsoever as to what they stand for.
Now the Christian ministers and the Town Council in Mariánské lázne know that Edwin Wagner isn’t an Anglican Bishop in the sense of being a bishop in the mainstream Church of England, I think he might find it more difficult to resume his activities. But the whole affair has left me feeling very sad that an individual has been practising what is effectively a form of deception in the name of the Christian Church. I also felt that the response I received from the retired Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren Pastor was very pertinent. He thanked me for my detective work for which he was most grateful. But he concluded, “This is one of the troublesome realities of our time, that in spite of large secularisation and the small number of Christians in contemporary Europe, they still split and form further and further denominations. This is a reality even in the Czech speaking community”.
Update – 18th October 2010
Early in 2010, I discovered that Edwin Wagner was no longer in Mariánské lázne but was now living in Desborough, Northamptonshire, England. I believe he moved there in August/September 2009. According to the ‘Traditional Church of England’ website, he is leading a TCE congregation there. I have found no way to verify whether this is the case or not.
Then in June 2010, I received an angry letter from Dr. Wagner, claiming that I had ‘written and posted a libellous article on the internet’ about him. He gave no indication as to where on the internet this article was to be found and the internet is rather a large place! The letter threatened me with legal action through the English courts if I didn’t ‘make a public retraction and publicly apologise’.
It seemed fairly clear to me that Dr. Wagner had not actually read my blog post, (which I presumed he was referring to), but had only heard about it second-hand. His letter accused me of saying a number of things which are not in the text above. On 23rd June 2010, I wrote him a long reply, addressing all the issues he raised. In the meantime, I temporarily took down the post with a view to making one or two minor amendments to it. When I then received a phone call from him saying he would be coming to Prague in August & would like to arrange to meet me, I decided to refrain from re-posting until we had finally met.
In August, I received an email from Dr. Wagner saying that, because of family circumstances, his Prague visit would now be in September. I replied saying I would still be very happy to meet him in September as long as he avoided the dates of the Eastern Archdeaconry Synod when I would be in Vienna. I have heard nothing further from him since.
Therefore, I am re-posting the original article in a slightly amended form, together with this update. The small number of changes I have incorporated are simply to give greater clarity to what I originally wrote.
Last Friday, Sybille and I went to eat at our favourite local Italian restaurant. Grosseto is on Jugoslávských partyzánû, (Yugoslav Partisan Street!), about 15 minutes walk from our flat. On the table next to us were a young couple, clearly in love. His left hand was holding and squeezing her right hand, across the table!
Then I noticed that they were speaking to each other in English. But in both cases, it was English spoken with a distinct foreign accent. Clearly, neither spoke the other’s native tongue. They were each using their second language – English, to communicate with each other.
It soon became apparent that she was Czech. She placed their order with the waiter, without using English. But where was he from? It was a bit of a mystery. The answer only came after she had said to the waiter, “úcet prosím”, (‘the bill please’ – literally ‘bill please’ as there is no definite article in Czech). Looking into his eyes she asked, “And how do you say, ‘the bill please’ in your language?” “L’addition, s’il vous plait” came the reply. He was French!
French males believe that they are the world’s best lovers, though Italians might disagree! And certainly they believe that French is ‘la langue d’amour’ – ‘the language of love’. But for this young Frenchman, in order to woo his Czech young lady, English had to be his ‘langue d’amour’.
Once a month, a number of English-speaking priests/ministers/pastors based in Prague meet on a Tuesday morning to share news, pray for one another and end by having lunch together. We are generously hosted by the Roman Catholic Augustinian Community alongside St Tomáš Church in Mala Strana. We use their refectory which the American Pastor who organises our meetings always calls the ‘refractory’ in his emails!
The denominational spread is wide ranging from Father William, RC priest from New York, via me, to Gareth, Welsh Pastor to the International Baptist Church, through to several ex-pat Americans who lead various independent free evangelical churches/fellowships.
Last Tuesday we were joined by Tomáš, the Chief Economic Strategist for one of the leading Czech banks and a friend of one of the American Pastors. He has been asked by the Czech Prime Minister to participate on a task force to deal with the current financial crisis and he wanted us to pray for him and the task force.
He spoke to us first for ten minutes, explaining the origins and seriousness of the crisis with great clarity. I gained more understanding from his short talk than I had from the scores of articles and news items I had previously read. And as someone with a deep personal faith, he also spoke about these economic and financial matters in spiritual terms, saying that hard-nosed bankers and the like, were now saying sorry, even talking of repentance from past mistakes!! Whilst expressing the seriousness of the crisis, he could also see it as a spiritual opportunity.
He used a helpful Old Testament analogy with the story of Joseph to explain some of the reasons why we had reached the current crisis. The seven years 2001-2008 had been good economically. But instead of putting money aside to help deal with a future economic downturn, just as Joseph stored wheat during the seven years of plenty, instead governments, banks and the like had still spent more than was coming in. To illustrate his point he cited the United States national debt which, instead of decreasing during those good economic times as it should have done, actually increased from 60% of GDP to 70% of GDP in that same period.
Tomáš saw two possible scenarios regarding the future. One was governments working together with stronger economies supporting weaker ones. He could see a risk of whole countries going bankrupt such as some of the Baltic States, Ireland or Greece. It would need action at an EU level to ensure this did not happen. He was encouraged by what he had seen so far with governments working together to try and prevent the collapse of banks by part nationalising them.
But the alternative was to move towards protectionism, trying to defend one’s own country’s position with little thought for others less fortunate. The comments by President Sarkozy, that Renault should close down their factories in Eastern Europe, rather than making French workers in France redundant, is a good example of such thinking. Of course, he did not like the suggested corollary of Toyota, whose biggest European car manufacturing plant happens to be in France, closing down that factory rather than shedding jobs in Japan!!
Tomáš expressed the view that trying to get the world economy going again by encouraging people to spend money they do not have, was not the way forward. He also felt that there was limit to the products that people actually needed to buy. He cited the creation of personal computers as something that had helped keep the world economy going but such inventions don’t occur each year!
Having listened and prayed with Tomáš, I came away with a clearer understanding of the gravity of the current economic crisis and a confirmation of my own conviction of the need to challenge Christians to have distinctive values. That greed, (which is what lies behind much of the present crisis) is not a Christian virtue. To remind them that true security is not found in wealth or material possessions. A biblical verse that has come to have great significance for me these past few years is Luke 12 v15, where Jesus says, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions”. Will this most serious economic crisis actually make people realise that deep truth?
We commence Czech language classes in two weeks time. So at present, we only have a few words of Czech. But going about daily life in Prague, it is noticeable how many English words have entered the Czech language but usually with the addition of the letter ‘y’ on the end. For example, in the supermarket there are signs for ‘snacky’ and for ‘chipsy’. When I commented upon this to a Czech speaking friend, he explained that adding the letter ‘y’ is what makes the word plural. But it does produce some rather humorous results.
A bookshop will have sections that are devoted to ‘Thrillery’ and ‘Detektivey’, whilst nearby you can purchase ‘notebooky’! At the Lekarna (Pharmacy), it is possible to purchase for feminine hygiene purposes, a box of ‘tampony’ whilst I have seen several machines in gentlemen’s toilet and washroom facilities, which will provide you with ‘condomy’. However, the best one I have seen so far was a tabloid newspaper of a similar ilk to the British ‘Sun’ newspaper. It featured a picture of two young ladies showing plenty of cleavage with the headline ‘Sex Bomby’!!!!
These are just a few that I can particularly remember. I’ll report on more in due course.
Update – Sunday February 15th, 2009
I’ve now seen more than one Sports Shop selling ‘snowboardy’ and ‘skateboardy’!!
Last Friday, Sybille and I went to eat at our favourite local Italian restaurant. 
Once a month, a number of English-speaking priests/ministers/pastors based in Prague meet on a Tuesday morning to share news, pray for one another and end by having lunch together. We are generously hosted by the Roman Catholic Augustinian Community alongside St Tomáš Church in Mala Strana. We use their refectory which the American Pastor who organises our meetings always calls the ‘refractory’ in his emails!