EGN NEWS DESK
Let me take you right down to Strawberry Fields— no, not the memorial in New York’s Central Park to the previous Beatle John Lennon, who was slain in Manhattan in 1980, however to the place that impressed his track, the place the Salvation Army is conducting an experiment in mixing tourism with religion and social motion.
The authentic Strawberry Field was a kids’s dwelling in Liverpool, simply across the nook from John Lennon’s childhood dwelling. It impressed the Beatles’ 1966 observe “Strawberry Fields Forever,” penned by Lennon (who added an “s” to its title), in addition to what could also be probably the most progressive tasks undertaken by the Salvation Army, the Christian anti-poverty motion based in mid-1800s London.
Strawberry Field is understood for its crimson gates festooned with strawberry motifs, which are sometimes thronged with vacationers taking selfies and a few including to the graffiti on the gates’ stone pillars. But the military has now deployed the positioning’s connection to the Beatles to attract extra guests to fund its mission and encourage individuals who would by no means take into account stepping inside a church to search out out about Christianity.
The kids’s dwelling, closed in 2005, has been demolished. In its place is a brand new construction that incorporates a prayer area, a café, and an exhibition about Lennon and the Beatles that features considered one of Lennon’s pianos. The constructing additionally homes a coaching mission to assist younger individuals with particular wants get into work.
Stymied by Covid-19 pandemic closures when it first opened in September 2019, it’s finally coming into its personal. Last 12 months Strawberry Field welcomed 120,000 paying guests; this 12 months the Army expects much more. International Beatles Week, which began Thursday (Aug. 22), will put it on the vacationer path that features the close by childhood houses of Paul McCartney and Lennon, native Beatles museums and different landmarks.
But not one of the relaxation mix faith with Beatles tourism.
The Strawberry Field mission is the results of years of dialogue and prayer by the Salvation Army after it closed the kids’s dwelling. The worldwide motion, based by William and Catherine Booth to work in city slums, grew to become referred to as the Salvation Army in 1878. It adopted a quasi-military construction, with officers slightly than clergy main it and members carrying uniform. Its membership internationally of 1.5 million nonetheless focuses on social motion, and its officers, like Strawberry Field’s mission director, Kathy Versfeld, nonetheless put on the uniform.
Lennon just isn’t a pure icon for a Christian group. In 1966, he advised an interviewer that his band was “greater than Jesus,” and opined that “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink.” In the uproar that adopted, greater than 30 U.S. radio stations banned Beatles’ tracks, and younger individuals had been urged to burn their Beatles data and memorabilia.
In August 1966, because the Beatles launched a U.S. tour, Lennon mentioned at a press convention, “I’m not anti-God, anti-Christ, or anti-religion. I used to be not knocking it. I used to be not saying we’re better or higher.” Rather than evaluating himself to Christ, he mentioned, he was attempting to clarify the decline of Christianity within the U.Ok. (which has certainly seen extra affluent days).
Considering this historical past, honouring Lennon took greater than a leap of religion, based on Versfeld. “The Salvation Army via its analysis found a shocking truth, and that was that yearly 60,000 John Lennon followers and Beatles followers had been bringing themselves uninvited to the crimson gates, and plenty of got here not understanding what Strawberry Field was,” she mentioned.
“The Salvation Army realized there was the potential not only for a industrial operation right here,” she added, “however a possibility for engagement with these people who wouldn’t rapidly come via the doorways of a Salvation Army church or centre.”
The chorus of Lennon’s track — “Let me take you down, to Strawberry Fields” — is mirrored within the Salvation Army’s invitation to discover its web site, together with the gardens the place Lennon used to play. He later remembered visiting the house’s annual summer time fete along with his Aunt Mimi.
Paul McCartney, who wrote his track “Penny Lane” about his personal childhood reminiscences of Liverpool, in response to Lennon’s reminiscences of Strawberry Field, has mentioned that the Salvation Army dwelling and gardens had been a utopia for the younger Lennon.
“The bit he went into was a secret backyard … and he considered it like that, it was a bit hideaway for him … residing his goals a bit, a getaway. It was an escape,” McCartney says in Craig Brown’s biography of The Beatles, “One, Two, Three, Four.”
The Salvation Army mentioned that it desires guests to Strawberry Field to have the ability to “discover out extra about what it means to discover spirituality and religion” and that the Army strives to be “an inclusive neighborhood with God on the centre … however you don’t have to belong to a Christian church — or any non secular custom in any respect to participate in what’s on provide right here.”
Versfeld and her crew need to problem individuals who go to the centre: “Strawberry Fields Forever — however what does final eternally?” she mentioned. “What does abundance seem like and what does it imply for us to open the gates and to do good?”
Lennon’s track “Imagine” is highlighted at Strawberry Field as an anthem for peace, its phrases carved in stone within the backyard. The upright Steinway piano, on which he composed the track, is on mortgage to the positioning from the property of the late British singer-songwriter George Michael, who purchased it at public sale in 2000.
According to Allister Versfeld, Kathy’s husband and improvement director of Strawberry Field, it was the Salvation Army’s mission that satisfied Michael’s representatives to lend the piano. “They spent the day right here; it was the work performed right here that satisfied them it ought to come right here,” he mentioned.
Visitors at this time are invited to help in Strawberry Field’s employment and coaching programmes, Steps to Work, that are supported partially by the £11.20 admission charge — about $15 — for the Beatles interactive show, along with spending within the café and the reward store. A ukulele band is amongst those that volunteer their time; on a current day their model of the Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” crammed the café. In the backyard is area for individuals to spend their time in contemplation, whereas at a far finish is a huge bandstand formed like a Salvation Army drum.
“This drum is on its aspect as a result of in our early days individuals would see the band marching down the excessive road, and the drum can be used as a spot of prayer,” defined Versfeld.
The doorways are open seven days per week for vacationers and native individuals alike. When the Versfelds arrived, the well-known strawberry gates had been shut for years, however now, says Kathy, “The gates are open for good.”
© Religion News Service
