War Cry World

Ten Hag and Butcher support on match day

MANCHESTER United manager Erik ten Hag and former England international Terry Butcher (centre) attended The Salvation Army’s annual five-a-side football tournament for people receiving support from its homelessness services.

More than 20 teams from around the UK took part in the Partnership Trophy competition in Manchester. One team was made up of modern slavery survivors from Salvation Army safe houses. Another was composed of refugees supported by the church and charity.

During the day Butcher, who captained the England team in the 1990 World Cup, talked with the players about how he had experienced depression after he lost his son to suicide. He also led a passing skills workshop and presented the trophy to the winning team, Blue Nile, from The Salvation Army’s refugee resettlement service in northwest England.

Reflecting on the event, which aims to boost the physical and mental health of participants, he said: ‘I know from experience that having people you can turn to is a huge help, and The Salvation Army is a perfect example of how getting the right support can go a long way towards rebuilding lives. Fighting power was evident at the tournament from all teams, and you need that in life, never mind on the football pitch. Everyone should be proud of themselves and what they are overcoming every day.’

The tournament was supported by the Guardiola Sala Foundation, a sports charity set up by Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola and his family.

Churches offer warmth as energy bills rise

CHURCHES, including The Salvation Army, have signed up to an initiative that will make warm community spaces available to people who are struggling to heat their homes because of rising costs.

Despite the price cap announced by the government, an estimated one in four people will not be able to afford their new energy bills this month. Community organisations and churches across the UK have already seen increased demand for their services and expect this number to rise further over the winter months.

The Warm Welcome campaign was launched by the ChurchWorks Commission and is backed by former prime minister Gordon Brown, who said: ‘This crisis goes far beyond politics; this is a moral issue – our responsibilities to our neighbours and in particular to those who have the least and whose needs are the greatest.’

nLEYTON Orient footballer George Moncur has told the Evening Standard that God is ‘working wonders in the team’.

The midfielder, who describes himself as a ‘massive, massive Christian’, explained to the London paper that seven players take part in a Friday prayer group and team-mates join him in prayer on the pitch before matches.

‘They are not necessarily Christians – and it’s very hard to explain – but I think they see the Spirit of God that’s working within the place,’ he said. ‘They must believe to some extent because they like me to pray for them before a game.

‘I’ve never had that ever in my career. It’s the best club I’ve been at in terms of where I feel settled, that God’s put me in the right place and he’s working wonders in the team.’

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Exhibition lens weight to church’s history

This Black History Month, photographer HOLLY-MARIE CATO is holding her debut solo exhibition, Heavy is the Mantle. It documents the days before her uncle stepped down as presiding bishop of Pentecostal City Mission Church in London. She explains why she decided to capture such a time and why she chose to exhibit the results this month

Interview by Sarah Olowofoyeku

Holly-Marie Cato

IN a moment, she changed her mind – and

her life changed too. Eleven years ago, architecture student Holly-Marie Cato was having a lie-in during a visit home from university in Leicester when her mum burst into her room and suggested she take backstage photographs of a play being put on at a former theatre used by a church in north London. Holly-Marie didn’t want to. She put her head on her pillow to go back to sleep.

‘But then,’ she remembers, ‘I felt God told me to get up and go – and that prompted me to do it.’

Armed with just a point-and-shoot camera and little knowledge of how to take professional images, Holly-Marie made her way to the building. As she was taking pictures of actors getting ready and rehearsing their lines, there was a commotion outside.

‘People were protesting at the police station,’ she says, ‘because this man had been killed by police. His name was Mark Duggan. It started with 30 people, then grew to 100 and then to a crowd blocking the high road. Eventually, after six hours of them protesting and wanting to see the head of the police, who didn’t come out, they went home. Then 500 people filed into this theatre to watch a dramatic play about the end of the world, rioting on the streets and chaos. And outside was the Tottenham riot.

‘The press came. Buildings were burning down and Molotov cocktails were being thrown, but I was one of the few people that had documented the build-up to the story. My photography ended up being used by the BBC on Panorama and by news groups across Europe. From then on I didn’t want to be an architect; I wanted to be a photographer.’

It is what Holly has become – and she has not forgotten how it started.

‘Everything in my career up until this point has been a lesson of faith,’ she says. ‘My friends always ask me how I do it and how I

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have so much confidence. I say that it’s all God. He has brought me this far, and he is not going to leave me.’

Since documenting that day in Tottenham, Holly-Marie’s work has taken her all over the world. She has photographed elephants in Zambia, inhabitants of slums in Mumbai and, earlier this year, Liverpool women’s football team at Anfield. But last year, she

embarked on a project which was closer to home and which is the subject of her first solo exhibition.

Heavy is the Mantle, at the Leica Gallery in London, centres on Pentecostal City Mission Church, and its presiding bishop, Herbert Cato, her uncle, in the days before he stepped down.

‘I’d travelled to all these amazing places, but suddenly I realised the most important story was at home,’ she says. ‘My mum knows I’ve been wanting to do a project around my faith for a long time, so she told me that my uncle – who has been bishop longer than I’ve been alive – was stepping down and that I should photograph him. So I did.

‘In his office, I saw all these beautiful portraits of previous bishops, and I asked him where he was. He said he’d never got one done. I thought, “Why don’t I take one?” So I returned to the church and set up a studio in one of their old storage rooms and took some formal photos. I also documented images of the church members in worship, of people in spectacular choir robes.’

The name of the exhibition describes the responsibility – the mantle – that she sees leaders and people in the church as having.

‘Everyone holds their roles with such reverence and pride, knowing that they are part of something bigger than themselves, and they really honour that responsibility.’

She tells me that Pentecostal City Mission Church was founded by a white British missionary who went to the Caribbean to preach the gospel. Years later, when Caribbean people arrived in England, they felt that they needed to preach the gospel to English people.

Holly-Marie says: ‘During the Windrush era, a lot of Caribbean people got the message from the Queen to rebuild England, thinking that they themselves were British subjects. They didn’t realise the hostility that they would experience in the UK. The Church is meant to be for everyone, but they soon realised they often weren’t welcome in church spaces,

Everyone holds their roles with such reverence

Holly-Marie captured her uncle Herbert Cato in the days before he stepped down as presiding bishop of Pentecostal City Mission Church

Congregants in worship at the church

and that was the birth of what we now know as the Caribbean Church in the UK, which has its own expression of culture and worship.

‘The Caribbean Church is a space that you can enter, experience the joy of worship and leave with a stomach full of food, as there will be dutchie pots, fried chicken, dumpling, pepper pot soup. You’ll be spiritually fed and physically fed. These churches have been pillars of their communities. They have done so much outreach work – for example, for people in need or single mothers.

‘Caribbean people have a level of faith and resilience. I think of when Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount, people gathered and wanted Jesus to tell them how to overthrow the Romans to end oppression. But Jesus didn’t give them that. He gave them a new understanding of the Kingdom of Heaven. He taught them about how to change their

perspective even if they couldn’t change their reality. ‘That’s what the Caribbean Church does so well. Its people are able to deal with so much hardship and inequality and cling to their faith, which is not based on sight. They’re creating Black history every day, so I wanted to Caribbean people champion them.’ Although this is have a level of a solo exhibition, Holly-Marie wanted faith and resilience the project to go beyond her. Inspired by the values of her Christian faith, which underpin all her actions, she is creating opportunities for others. ‘I could’ve had this project at any time of the year, but I wanted it in Black History Month,’ she says. ‘I said to Leica that I wanted to bring in other amazing black photographers to give talks during the exhibition. There are well-known artists, such as Simon Frederick, who has had documentaries on the BBC and Netflix, and others such as Jay Kammy, who has done beautiful projects in Sierra Leone.

‘We also have a portfolio review so that 15 photographers can have the opportunity to receive feedback about their work. We are awarding three of them with grants totalling £10,000, Leica equipment and free mentorship.

‘I always say that the glass ceiling is not broken if I’m the only one that’s through it.’

While the whole project is future-facing, the photographs in the exhibition capture a moment in time that was significant for Holly-Marie.

‘As much as what I photographed is visually beautiful,’ she says, ‘I was documenting a part of culture. It was a capsule of a time that might not exist in the future. People are worshipping in younger, more diverse and mixed places, so it was important to me to document Pentecostal City Mission Church as it is now.’

l Heavy is the Mantle runs

until 1 November

Change of scene for Emmerdale star

As Emmerdale approaches its 50th anniversary, actor TOM LISTER reflects on why he loved playing Carl King in the soap and how his faith in God helped him after he left the Dales

Interview by Claire Brine

ATHUNDERSTORM with

devastating consequences. A wedding in which the groom is torn between his bride and his ex. A pregnant woman having contractions in the countryside, with only a dead mobile phone for company. One thing’s for sure – Emmerdale fans are in for some nail-biting drama when the ITV soap celebrates its 50th anniversary tomorrow (Sunday 16 October).

Since the show’s first episode in 1972 Emmerdale has been gripping viewers with its stories of love and loss, families and feuds. The fictional Yorkshire village has played host to 74 weddings, 43 births and 105 deaths. Viewers have witnessed a plane crash and barn explosion, murders and kidnappings. It seems that life is never dull in this tight-knit farming community – and millions of viewers can’t get enough of it.

‘I think Emmerdale has become so woven into the fabric of people’s lives that the characters begin to feel like part of the family,’ says Tom Lister, who played Carl King in the soap from 2004 to 2012. ‘Because the show is on five nights a week, people end up investing a lot of time in it. Even people who don’t watch it will sometimes recognise the characters, simply because they are on the telly or in

the TV mags all the time. ‘I can remember that, back when I was part of the cast, people would come up to me in shops to tell me things that were going on with my The show has that character. I’d smile back and reply: “Yes, I do family feel to it know what my on-screen brother Jimmy is up to. Let’s all take a breath for a minute and remember that it’s not real!” But they were only doing that because they loved the characters so much. The show has that family feel to it.’ As well as creating memorable characters, such as the members of the Sugden and Dingle families, Emmerdale strives to tell powerful stories. In recent years the show has won multiple soap awards for its hardhitting storylines, including Ashley’s dementia and the Hotton Bypass crash. ‘Over the years, the dramas have become more sensational,’ says Tom. ‘When the show started off as Emmerdale Farm it was often about people sitting in their kitchens and chatting over cups of tea. But it has gone on to tackle some really tough subjects, such as schizophrenia and child abuse. And, because the characters facing these issues are loved so much, fans are paying attention, watching stories about subjects that they might not otherwise seek out. In

Tom as Carl with his on-screen brother Jimmy, played by Nick Miles

Tom Lister

that sense, Emmerdale can be a safe space for people.’

It was also a place where Tom enjoyed working. He landed the role of Carl in 2004 while he was working as a labourer on his dad’s building site. Though the contract with Emmerdale was set up for six months, Tom starred in the soap for ‘the best part of a decade’.

‘I look back on it with so much fondness,’ he says. ‘And I learnt a lot. Emmerdale was where I cut my teeth on what it means to be an actor working in television. It was a place where I was able to make mistakes and learn on the job, because the episodes came thick and fast.

‘It was also a show with a strong family network, which I loved. When I joined we weren’t in the limelight quite as much as the cast of EastEnders and Coronation Street, and so no one was on set trying to be the big “I am”. Everyone was pulling in the same direction.’

During his time in the soap, Tom enjoyed his fair share of dramatic storylines, thanks to Carl’s impeccable ability to land himself in trouble.

‘Carl was a ruthless businessman and a loveable rogue who always got himself into the most horrendous scrapes,’ says Tom. ‘I loved playing him. He was terrible with women. He was forever fighting. And people kept dying, accidentally, in his presence! The first person he killed was the postman, and his brothers helped him to cover it up. Then he killed his own dad. But no one used to call him a villain. Viewers would forget that he’d done all these things.

‘Although Carl was a bit of an idiot at

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times, I saw him as a massively flawed individual. He was like a little boy in that he kept on making stupid mistakes, but he was always devastated by them. I think he was completely misunderstood.’

Though Tom was grateful for the opportunity to appear in some of Emmerdale’s biggest storylines – such as the love triangle between Carl, Chas and Lexi – he felt a responsibility in entertaining the show’s viewers.

‘Sometimes we would all feel the pressure,’ he says. ‘In the weeks when I was being Carl King more than I was being me, it was easy to feel a bit bamboozled by it all. But being on Emmerdale was also just a job. And during the time I was working there, I was able to get married, have children and set up a home, so the show gave me a level of security, which I’ll forever be thankful for.’

Tom is also proud to have staged one of the most memorable deaths in the soap’s history. In 2012, during a special live episode to mark Emmerdale’s 40th anniversary, viewers watched in horror as Carl was battered to death by the man he was blackmailing.

‘That episode was the biggest challenge of all because it was such a huge feat,’ remembers Tom. ‘It was the first time we’d done a live episode and it

LUCE NEWMAN-WILLIAMS

Carl got into a few fights

involved pretty much all the cast. There were two weddings, two births, and I had to do three stunts which ended up in Carl being murdered. The pressure on us all was massive, because we knew that on the other side of the camera there were 10 million people waiting for us to mess up. But it went brilliantly and felt great.’

After Carl finally met his Maker, Tom decided to take his career in a slightly different direction, setting his sights on

London’s West End. ‘I’d always had this dream to see my name up in lights,’ he says. ‘So when I left Emmerdale I did a UK tour of Calamity Jane and then Legally Blonde, which we took to South Korea. Then my agent told me to go to London to audition for 42nd Street. I didn’t know the show at all, but she explained that it was going to be massive and I needed to get myself there. So I did as I was told and was pretty much offered the part in the audition room. I almost fell off my chair with shock.’ From 2017 to 2019, Tom played the role of Broadway director Julian Marsh in the West End revival of the 1980s musical. Performing night after

Carl and Chas (Lucy Pargeter) had a stormy relationship

night at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane was, he says, an amazing experience.

‘I was so glad to be in it. Especially because the next year, Covid hit. All of a sudden, actors were put in a position where they couldn’t work, because there was no work. I really struggled with that. I had a crisis of confidence and a crisis of faith, asking God why I was having to go through this period of not being able to provide for my family. I felt redundant and that life wasn’t fair. I know that a lot of people were having the same feelings.’

With no acting work in the pipeline, Tom and a couple of friends set up their own production company with an aim of providing an online pantomime for schools. During the bleakest months of national lockdowns, it kept him going. So did his Christian faith.

‘When the panic was setting in and my wife was asking what was going to happen, I just knew that everything was going to be OK somehow. Whatever the next 18 months would bring, I knew we’d be fine because God was there – and in his still small voice, he was whispering: “Don’t worry. It’s OK. I’ve got you in my hands.”

‘I can pinpoint so many times in my life when God has proved his faithfulness.’

Ever since Tom was taken to church as a child, faith has played a significant role in his life. He remembers with fondness the times he spent at his church’s youth club. ‘We used to do Nativities and write our own sketches,’ he says. ‘We even formed a band and took our youth services all over Lancaster. It was crazy but amazing, because we had one another to rely on. At Christian youth camps, we explored what it meant to be in a relationship with God and how important it was to make him the foundation of our lives. Doing stuff like that together made us a really close group of friends, and I still see those lads regularly now.’

Through life’s ups and downs, Tom has found that having a steady faith has helped him to stay positive. But he admits that it hasn’t always been easy to be a Christian.

‘I’ve made mistakes in the past and done things which I wish I could undo,’ he says. ‘But what’s constant is my belief that God is for me. And if God is for me, then who can be against me? My relationship with God brings me peace in life’s chaos. It’s the anchor that tethers me. And when I find myself thinking that I

haven’t spent as much time with God as I should have, that relationship is still there. The hard times, such as Covid, have probably made my faith stronger.’ Struggles during the pandemic also God brings prompted him to find work in areas other than acting. Last month Tom made me peace in newspaper headlines after he revealed in a radio interview that he had set up his life’s chaos own business as a window cleaner. ‘During lockdown, I started working with a mate of mine from church, who had a window cleaning business,’ he tells me. ‘I’ve now franchised his business, so that I can still have an income when I’m not acting. Being recognised for being off the telly when you’re cleaning someone’s windows is a humbling experience, but it helps me bring stability to the family. I think the last few years have been a big time of self-discovery for me.’ In terms of acting, Tom is waiting patiently for the right job to come along. Earlier this year he turned down a role because he didn’t want to be away from home during his son’s GCSE year. ‘It didn’t feel like the right time to be away,’ he says. ‘So I’m just waiting to see what happens next. I don’t always find it easy when things are out of my control, but I have to trust God – and when I hand my worries over to him, the peace that comes is amazing.’