FOLLOWING IN CHRIST’S FOOTSTEPS
There is a theory that Jesus himself may have actually visited Britain – and it’s a belief that Christian historian Walter Seaman has faith in.
     
            ‘And did those feet
                    in ancient time
                       Walk upon
             England’s mountains
                          green…’
WALTER SEAMAN thinks they did. He has collected a mass of evidence to show that Jesus may well have visited Britain. And if not Jesus himself, almost certainly some of His disciples in the years immediately after the Crucifixion.
In the comfortable garden room of his home in Bexhill-on-Sea, where he lives with his wife Elizabeth, Walter lovingly handles the book that started him on this epic project. For that is what it has become, taking over much of his life and almost every available space in his house.
The book, published in 1906, is The Coming of the Saints by Professor John W. Taylor, an eminent surgeon, who was also a poet. It was lent to him by a friend in the late 1960s when he was living in Hertfordshire. “I think you’ll enjoy this,” his friend had said, knowing that Walter had had a scientific training and was also a Christian.
For two years the book gathered dust on Walter’s shelves; it was a busy period in his life – he was working fulltime in the paper industry and he just never got around to opening it. Then one day he did … and it would be true to say that his life has never been the same since.
‘I was absolutely riveted by what I read. Taylor believed, as did several other authors who later wrote books on the same theme, that in 36 A.D. Joseph of Arimathea, the great-uncle of Jesus, together with a group of the Disciples travelled from what was then Palestine, across the Mediterranean, up through France, across the English Channel to Falmouth, then finally to Glastonbury in Somerset, where they set up what could be regarded as the world’s first Christian church above ground.
‘The story unfolds in a very logical way: Joseph of Arimathea, the man who had taken responsibility for the body of Jesus after the Crucifixion, was a rich merchant trading in valuable ores tin, copper and lead. He was accepted by the Romans, not for any love of him personally, but because he supplied them with the metals from the British Isles that they needed for making weapons. A well respected man, Joseph would have travelled frequently to the west of Britain where he was known to the ruling king, Arviragus. He was also known in rnany places in France where he stopped on his overland journeys to Britain; he probably owned shares in shipping as well because a lot of ore was exported by sea frorn Cornwall.’
‘So to me it makes complete sense, that when the Roman and Jewish authorities were in pursuit of the Disciples after the Crucifixion, Joseph, who had both the money and the means, should take them to safety in Britain, and there set up a church. It is also believed that Joseph and his companions died and were buried at Glastonbury.’
‘As to the other story, of Jesus visiting Britain in those 18 unrecorded years between his appearance in the Temple aged 12 and the beginning of His ministry, well, that seems reasonable, too. It would be a very natural thing for the boy Jesus to have accompanied His great-uncle on his travels, especially when he made the journey to Britain by sea, where His skills as a carpenter would have been of value. This tradition is, in fact, known in Israel. An American bishop, a friend of ours, was talking to a young Jewish girl about this subject and she said, “Why are you so surprised? That story is well known.”‘
Walter’s charitable Foundation teaches Christians
about the history and traditions of their faithÂ
Having read The Coming of The Saints and other works on the subject, Walter was convinced of the truth of the stories. So was Elizabeth. Neither of them is what you might call “airy headed rnystics”; they both
have their feet very firmly on the ground. “And we have the same sense of humour,” says Walter. “We laugh together a lot!”
They were born in Altrincham, Cheshire, in almost adjoining streets. They even had the same doctor, yet they never met until several decades later, after the war.
‘I was by then living in London,’ says Walter. ‘We had a large five-storey house and my parents let out parts of it as flats; the top flat was occupied by several girls, Elizabeth was one of them. Something had gone wrong with the aerial which involved my going into her flat to get on to the roof. That’s when I met her, and we took it from there and married in 1950.’ They now have three grandchildren.
During the war Elizabeth was a boats crew Wren stationed at Portsmouth – she was arranging a WRNS reunion (advertised in the Old Comrades pages of Saga magazine) the day I visited them while Walter was in a reserved occupation, involved in technical design of national importance.
After taking his degree in mechanical engineering at Imperial College, London, Walter worked in various engineering firms, including British Aerospace. Later he worked for Bowater, the paper company. In the meantime he had become interested in what he calls ‘the human engineering side of industry’; how people in business relate to one another.
‘I introduced into the Bowater complex something called Management by Objectives. I said to the chap at the top, “I am going to start with you. Who do you have reporting to you? Do you breathe down their necks or let them get on with it?” We went from the director and the factory manager right down to the foreman and the men on the shop floor. They began to realise that everybody in a business should know how much was expected of them and why.’ Eventually Walter became Personnel Director of all the Bowater companies in Britain.
Before he read The Coming of The Saints Walter hadn’t really cared as to how, or even when, the Christian faith had come to Britain. ‘It was the faith itself that mattered to me, not its history,’ he says. The book made him appreciate how important the history could be. It astounded him that most people, including himself, didn’t know about these traditions.
He decided to rectify this by setting up a foundation, with charitable status, to spread the word. Walter enjoys telling the story of its inception. ‘I was in the bath,’ he says, ‘in our home in Frant, near Tunbridge Wells – it was 1970 – and as I lay there thinking about all the information I was gathering and all the things I wanted to do with it, I decided it was time to give a name to this project. So I thought, well … it’s about Christianity; it’s Historical; it involves Research, definitely; Education, yes; Study, continuously; and Tradition. CHREST And that’s how the name of the foundation arose.
‘I felt I must write something which could be made into a CHREST film. I’d recently met a cameraman who was also interested in these traditions, so we discussed the idea and I wrote the first script, Let There Be Light. Elizabeth and I visited some of the places on Joseph’s route and we asked our cameraman to film these, as well as many of the other places referred to in the script.’
That was in the early 1970s. Since then there have been two more films (on video), Light in the West and The Thread of Gold.
In 1984 Walter conducted a party of enthusiasts, mainly Americans, on a tour of the west country, visiting the sites shown in his second film, and in 1993 he published a paperback, The Dawn of Christianity in the West -‘a short, readable book to whet people’s appetite,’ a condensation of the authoritative writings on this subject.
Now he is busy planning another tour, but not one he will conduct in person. Scheduled for the spring of 1996 this two-week CHREST Foundation tour in collaboration with Interchurch Travel will begin in London, from where the group will fly to Marseilles, the port at which Joseph would have landed. Then, travelling by coach, they will visit a number of places in the area where there is evidence that the Disciples stayed, such as Arles and Les Saintes Maries de la Mer.
They will journey north through France, up the Rhone valley following the tin trade route, then move northwest towards the Channel, stopping at one or two interesting places in the Loire Valley before making the crossing from Roscoff to Plymouth. ‘It would be lovely if they could land at Falmouth,’ says Walter, ‘but that doesn’t seem practicable.’ From Plymouth the tour continues to Glastonbury, Bath and Stonehenge and ends in London.
Walter’s arguments for his belief in Joseph’s journey are very persuasive, but if this story of the early Church in Britain is so credible and there is sufficient evidence to make a good case for it, why is it not accepted, nor even generally known?
‘Well yes,’ says Walter, ‘It is extraordinary. Professor Taylor had spent years visiting holy places in France and he had a wealth of evidence, but there was antagonism from the Roman Church. As there had been much earlier, in the 16th century when Robert Parsons, a Jesuit priest, had been despatched to Britain to disprove the theory. Being an honest man, however, he actually proved the reverse, which he recorded in a book, The Three Conversions of England, in which he said, ‘The Christian religion began in Britain within 50 years of Christ’s ascension.’
‘There is also the feeling, deeply rooted in the Anglican church, that there is no historical proof for these happenings. An archdeacon in the west of England said to me, “You don’t really believe this, do you, that this is historically true?”‘
‘I said, “Yes I do”. Walter then told the archdeacon everything that he knew in support of the theory, including the fact that there are references to it in the writings of the early priests and monks.
To trace the development of the Christian faith through the ages, particularly during those neglected early centuries, as Walter has done, is one of the aims of the foundation. Another is to make you stop and think. Walter Seaman, with his enthusiasm and commitment, certainly makes you do that: I left Bexhill with a great deal to think about … and a completely fresh and enthralling view of part of our English history.
Reproduced from the January 1996 edition of Saga Magazine with their with kind permission
