ST. PAUL’S SIGNS 4-YEAR CONTRACT – FIRST SHOW ON OCTOBER 29
The Church of England is facing criticism after Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London signed a four year agreement to host concerts inside the church building. According to the contract, Fabric, a nightclub that lost its license in 2016 after two drug related deaths, has secured the rights to hold concerts in the cathedral until 2030, with the first show scheduled for October 29. Saint Paul’s Cathedral has hosted concerts before, including a 2023 performance by musician R Y X and a 2024 show by singer Patti Smith.
DECISION SPARKS DEBATE
Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona Rochester has strongly condemned the move. In a post on X, Bishop Barron wrote that leadership of the Church of England has “lost any sense of the crucial distinction between the sacred and the secular.” He warned that the contemporary West was in danger of “collapsing the sacred into the secular,” and doing enormous damage to young people, adding that it was “another sign of pitiful surrender to ideological secularism.”
Responding to London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s post about the initiative, Conservative MP Nick Timothy stated that Saint Paul’s was not a “special landmark”, but a place of worship that could not be treated like a nightclub.
Canterbury Cathedral, where Saint Thomas Becket was martyred in 1170, first hosted a silent disco in 2024, prompting more than 3,000 people to sign a petition calling for the events to stop. Yet, on August 15 this year, Canterbury Cathedral hosted another disco that featured multiple bars and stalls in the nave’s side aisles.
Leave a Reply