|
Site Map
Contact Fr. Gregory
© Copyright - material in this site may not be
reproduced in any media without the express permission of
the Web Master.
Care has been taken by this site to ensure that
all necessary copyright permissions have been obtained. If this is not the case in any
instance, this is an inadvertent error. Please contact the Web Master and this will be
rectified.
Disclaimer & Credits
|
PROFILE
OF FR GREGORY
Photograph by Fr. Simon Marsh, an old time friend
of Fr. Gregory from his Anglican days.
Visit his photo site
here.
Fr Gregory Hallam, (d.o.b. 19/06/53), is a married priest of the Orthodox Church. His wife, Khouria
Helen works as an Insurance Clerk and they have a grown up daughter, Jenny,
(Genevieve).
Fr Gregory teaches Religious Education and Mathematics
in local State Schools to
augment his income.
Fr Gregory serves an English language parish in
Manchester, UK, dedicated to St. Aidan, an Orthodox Saint of the Celtic
Church before the West went into Schism.
This is his story from the first indications of
faith as a boy to the present day.
Early Years
My family were not church going ... my mother having a strange
attraction-repulsion toward Anglicanism and my father belonging to a long
line of lapsed Methodists. For some strange reason though my parents put a
little sentimental Margaret Tarrant picture of a little boy at prayer in my
bedroom. When I was really young this made a profound impression on me
without really understanding what it was all about.
I went to a Church of England Primary School but we never saw the Vicar and
I can't remember ever praying in assembly either. The only experience I had
of the Christian church before 11 was an annual trip with my school to a
local Anglican Church for a service for Ascension Day (I remember nothing)
after which we went home early.
I must have read the word "God" somewhere along the line because I remember
asking my mother when about 9 how she knew (I assumed she must know) that
God existed. She simply said:- "He just does." This was terribly
unsatisfactory to a logical, scientifically inclined young boy so I promptly
put the question out of mind.
When I was about 10 I had developed an abiding interest in astronomy which
has stayed with me until the present day. I was brought up in the Peak
District in Derbyshire and in those days before the increase in light
pollution you could still see an astounding amount of stars on a good clear
night. From about 12 I had concluded that none of this immensity could have
existed without a creator God but this belief was not in any way a personal
faith. Jesus Christ certainly didn't come into the picture at all.
Also at this time, being of a scientific
inclination, I decided to conduct an experiment. If God existed, He should
be contactable unless he had no interest in communication, in which case He
would strike me as being a rather inferior sort of god; indeed no-God at
all. So, I decided to say a prayer that night and see what might happen. I
can neither remember the prayer now, nor what happened, but something
wonderful, if fleeting, certainly did happen. I suppose that kept me
searching.
I remember next thinking when I was a little older that you could either be
beastly or nice toward people and on the whole I thought the latter to be
better than the former. I decided, therefore, that I would try and be nice
to people.
Years past and my time was taken up with schoolwork of a most arduous and
intensive kind. I think I became stunted because of this, emotionally,
psychologically, spiritually. I became a sort of intellectual nerd and
rebellious adolescent. I left home as soon as I could.
My Life in Christ - Anglican Days
This all happened in one month in 1975. My employer moved me to a new town.
The only thing is I moved out as a newly converted Christian. Rewind the
tape 3 weeks. At the end of August 1975 (the end of August always has been a
propitious time for me) I spent some time at a YMCA house in Manchester (I
won't bore you with why). I met there a group of Anglican (mainly)
Christians who lived a sort of common life of mutual support and witness. I
was captivated by their love, their ability to pray from the heart, their
practical concern for each other and for me. Only one person ever said
anything to me directly, namely that Jesus had died for me.
Some weeks later I was in a new town, no friends, on my own. I hooked up to
the local Anglican church there and spent precisely one year growing in the
faith and being confirmed before moving back north where I stayed in
lodgings for a further 3 years and a new Anglican parish. Although my
introduction to Christ had been in an evangelical milieu this church was of
a more Anglo-Catholic persuasion and I gradually drew more from this
tradition but also from charismatic renewal which was then active in that
community.
It was from here that I was called for training to the Anglican priesthood
in Salisbury where I spent 3 happy years gradually becoming better
acquainted with the Anglo-Catholic tradition. It was here though that I
started to get a little disturbed by the scepticism that had engendered the
"Myth of God Incarnate" movement and the growing ascendancy of liberal
theology within the Church of England. I started to look beyond Anglicanism,
mainly through patristics to the East from my spiritual nourishment, still
determined though to be an Anglican priest on the grounds that I could
become an Orthodox Anglican Catholic by staying put within the inclusive
nature of Anglicanism. How wrong I was but I had to learn the hard way. It
was at Salisbury in January 1981 (I think) that I first attended an Orthodox
Liturgy at the Greek Church in Southampton, unusually for that time a
Liturgy in English! I was blown away by the transcendent beauty and human
warmth of that service but it didn't really cause me to question my vocation
as an Anglican priest.
I was ordained in 1982 reasonably confident that Anglicanism could remain
true to her roots and mature into a "Western Orthodox" position thereby
fulfilling her historic calling. Looking back now, this strikes me now as a
laudable but merely pious hope. In the light of what was happening in the
Church of England at the time I should have known that the chances of such a
western Orthodoxy coming to fruition were remote.
Disenchantment and New Beginnings
In the 1980's the Church of England began to retreat further and further
away from the orthodox catholic legacy of the Caroline divines, the
non-Jurors and the Tractarians of the Oxford Movement and orthodox
evangelical tradition. I began to see that even this legacy was compromised
and I looked increasingly to Orthodoxy as representing and fulfilling what I
had always believed, (albeit incompletely), as a Christian. A high point of
the 80's though was my marriage and then the birth of our daughter. At least
my life in that dimension came to a happy fulfilment even if it seemed that
other things were falling about around my ears!
By the late 1980's my theological position had
consolidated around certain aspects that eventually pushed me into Orthodoxy
as being the only place where these truths were holistically believed and
practiced. The most important of these were:-
(1) The centrality of the bodily
resurrection of Christ for all Christian doctrine and experience.
(2) The anthropology of divine image and likeness as the
infrastructure for the Incarnation and the theosis (deification) of the
redeemed.
(3) The impossibility of the 'filioque' clause in the amended western
form of the creed in the context of a full appreciation of the person and
work of the Holy Spirit.
(4) The Cappadocian fathers teaching concerning the Trinity.
(5) The seven Ecumenical Councils.
(6) Orthodox worship and life.
The trigger for my departure from the Church of
England proved to be a contentious departure from catholic apostolic order
in the ministry of the Church in the decision of General Synod to ordain women to the priesthood in 1992.
For me the primary issue
concerned the assumed authority to change the unbroken tradition of the
Church in both east and west without seeking any consensus for such a change
outside Anglicanism in those churches that had retained the threefold order
of bishop, priest and deacon, (Rome and Orthodoxy of course). By 1993 I had
decided to leave the Church of England and seek admission into the Holy
Orthodox Church together with a group of 20 or so like minded people, mainly
from his last Anglican parish.
With a number of other former Anglican priests I made contact with the
Patriarchate of Antioch in the Summer of 1993, initially through the
Archdiocese of North of America. Later, responsibility for our group of
communities was formally transferred to the Patriarch and Bishop Gabriel in
Paris.
Excursus on the Formation of the British Antiochian
Orthodox Deanery
The establishment of the Antiochian Orthodox Deanery in the United Kingdom
in 1995 was arguably a miracle of divine grace. The opposition to such a
venture encountered by members of the Pilgrimage to Orthodoxy (as it was
then called), sadly by many Orthodox as well as non-Orthodox alike, made
many of its members sometimes question whether or not the initiative would
indeed succeed. Most from these initial groups becoming Orthodox were
communities of ex-Anglicans with their priests who had withdrawn from the
Church of England on matters of principle (the increasing liberalisation of
its doctrinal base and the ordination of women amongst many issues).
The love of Orthodoxy by these groups both preceded and informed this
disenchantment such that by 1993 they were convinced that in order to be
authentically Orthodox they must actually become Orthodox. Remember that
these pilgrims constituted existing worshipping communities of friends. At
the very least they hoped to stay together as they journeyed into the
Orthodox Church. They longed that their pastors who had sacrificed so much
with them on the journey might one day be ordained to serve them anew but as
Orthodox priests. In this matter, however, they all submitted to the
Church's judgement preferring only to ask that they be kept together and in
areas where there was no Orthodox parish using English as a first language
to form the nucleus of a new parish. All would be prepared individually for
reception but the talk was of new Orthodox communities.
Initial meetings in Birmingham and High Wycombe had called together and
established a highly motivated group of people across the country who were
eager to see the project move forward. In the early days the American
Antiochian Archdiocese was involved in facilitating and resourcing this
pilgrimage which was just as well bearing in mind the negative reaction of
many other Orthodox in the UK. Notwithstanding this reaction the pastors in
the Pilgrimage considered it important to make some sort of formal approach
to the Greek and Russian diocese. A meeting to this end was convened in
Oxford in 1993 but it soon became clear that the only method of reception
made available to the groups would see their break up and assimilation into
existing Orthodox parishes. That most of these routes also involved
significant distances of travel and an entirely alien tongue for English
speaking converts it soon became clear that such options would be
still-born. Sadly it also became clear that a Committee set up to facilitate
understanding between the Church of England and the Orthodox Church in
respect of former Anglican converts was being convened without any
consultation with these concerned parties. Rightly or wrongly and in the
absence of such involvement many pilgrim groups suspected that these
consultations were being used to obstruct the pilgrimage, not facilitate it.
However, because the Committee had no involvement with the pilgrim groups
themselves it soon found itself with no business to conduct and soon ceased
to meet. It's loss was not mourned!
The Antiochian Orthodox Church had obviously been following these unfolding
events with careful concern and because the pilgrimage was now causing
ripples in the media and even in the Anglican Church itself, the Patriarch
of Antioch, His Beatitude Ignatios IV, took the initiative with the
Antiochian bishop in Europe, His Grace, Gabriel of Palmyra in taking over
responsibility for these pilgrim groups. To this end, there was a meeting
with the Patriarch and the Bishop in Paris in September 1994 which proved to
be a great encouragement to all involved. By the end of 1994 it became clear
that there would be ordinations and receptions in the Vicariate (later a
Diocese) and that the Antiochian presence in the UK would now grow beyond
the large Arab congregation in London to a new English speaking Deanery
constituted for the purpose of receiving English speaking converts. The
first ordinations and receptions took place just before Pascha in 2005 and
soon there were 9 new parishes which together with new missions had grown to
18 some 10 years later.
The Deanery, although still modest in size has contributed
disproportionately to the growth of indigenous Orthodoxy in the United
Kingdom. Antiochian Orthodox now play major roles in Orthodox societies and
the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge. The Deanery seeks
to work with all other Orthodox in the United Kingdom in extending and
deepening Orthodox Faith and Life. The original vision of the founders of
the Pilgrimage to Orthodoxy has indeed born fruit and holds much promise for
the future.
Returning to My Orthodox Story
I left the Church of England and my Anglican priesthood on 31st August 1994
... another end of August turning point. I chose St. Aidan for the community
under my care, and end of August saint (31st) for whom I had and have
considerable affection. Together with my family and people, I had embarked
on a period of education, preparation and retraining, culminating in 1995
with my chrismation by Fr Samir Gholam at the Cathedral of St. George in
London on 25 March. Bearing in mind the needs of the mission I had cared for
and who had been prepared along with me, I was ordained to the priesthood in
time for Holy Pascha in 1995. Members of the Community of St. Aidan were
chrismated by their ordained pastor on Palm Sunday of that year.
Since 1995, the Community of St. Aidan has bought a church building and
refurbished it for Orthodox worship. The Temple was consecrated by His
Grace, Bishop Gabriel on 21 October 1996. The rest, as they say, is history!
*********
Fr. Gregory's ordination to the
priesthood on 8 April 1995 in the Cathedral of St. Stephen, Paris by His
Eminence Metropolitan Gabriel
return to Directory Page |
