Canon Christopher Hall writes:
BRIAN FROST, who died in Redhill on 4 December, aged 84, was an ecumenical go-between Christian.
He was prepared for confirmation in Redhill by Theresa May’s father. Later, while at Oxford, he also became a Methodist. Sustained by the eucharist and the pastoral support of a Methodist “class”, Brian lived out his faith through words, deeds, and prayer. His inability at Headingley Methodist College to reconcile F. D. Maurice’s Kingdom theology and Wesley’s sermons liberated him from ordained ministry; he nevertheless ministered as a Methodist local preacher for more than 50 years.
In 1986, Goodwill on Fire, his perceptive biography of Donald Soper, the first Methodist minister to join the House of Lords, was published. He was then asked to research the history of the Westminster Central Hall, in preparation for its centenary. He was cross that his meticulous manually typewritten draft was mislaid and not published. He died before it was rediscovered; its content is now being re-keyed on to a computer for use in a future publication.
Brian never entered the digital age; he stuck to his manual typewriter, though ribbons for it became ever scarcer. While working for Christian Aid, the Notting Hill and then London Ecumenical Centre, the Churches’ Council for Health and Healing, and the British Council of Churches, his participation in more than two dozen published works as well as many articles and poems was literarily hands-on. Those publications were variously endorsed by the United Nations’ Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, the Revd Dr Kenneth Greet, the Revd Dr Gordon Wakefield, Dr Una Kroll, Archbishops Robert Runcie, Desmond Tutu, and Sentamu, Bishop David Sheppard, Dean Michael Mayne, and the Revd Dr Philip Potter, the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches.
Apartheid was a key concern for Brian from the time, as a Sunday-school teacher in Redhill, he heard a curate’s sermon on South Africa’s racial injustices. In 1956, as SCM student secretary, Brian introduced Fr Trevor Huddleston to a congregation of a thousand in the University Church, Oxford. In 1969, as Director of the Notting Hill Ecumenical Centre, he hosted the WCC Consultation on White Racism, which conceived the Programme to Combat Racism. In 1974, he arranged for Afrikaner Day to be marked in ten UK cities. In 1998, his book Struggling to Forgive, which explored Nelson Mandela’s commitment to reconciliation, was published.
Brian had an impressive career as an impresario. In 1965, as Christian Aid area secretary for Greater London, he encouraged Sydney Carter to write “When I needed a neighbour”. Christian Aid Week 1966 was launched at a Beat and Folk Festival in Trafalgar Square compèred by the disc-jockey Pete Murray; it attracted tens of thousands, mostly beatniks, to enjoy songs on human need written by the winners in a national competition. That year, Brian chaired a meeting at Notting Hill on “New songs for a new age”, prompted by Donald Swann, who suggested a festival of worship. Brian with others made that happen in 1973. The That’s the Spirit Festival was celebrated over ten days in 50 London venues, culminating at Pentecost in a eucharist in Trafalgar Square, at which Bishop Colin Winter from Namibia presided. Televised live by the BBC, at least 2000 people received the broken bread from 24 male and female assistants, drawn from many denominations.
Brian founded London Entertains, an annual multi-ethnic arts festival. Sponsored by, among others, Cardinal Hume, Bishop Trevor Huddleston, and Cleo Laine, it was launched by Dean Alan Webster in 1978 on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral. Children from Brent, Lewisham, east, west, and south London, wearing their national costumes — saris, shulwars, kanga, kitenge, chung sam, sam fu — sang “Children of the City”. After ten years, London Entertains had its finale at the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury in 1988.
In the 1980s, Brian was Director of the BCC Forgiveness and Politics Project. Forgiveness had been a guiding principle for Brian ever since 1963, when the anger he felt at J. F. Kennedy’s assassin was dissolved at the communion rail as he remembered Christ’s dying prayer: “Father forgive.” The BCC project produced a well-received study guide, “Britain and Ireland — a test case?”, made available throughout the UK and Ireland. Brian also wrote Women and Forgiveness: Forgiveness in politics in the lives of Una O’Higgins O’Malley and Sybil Phoenix, and The Politics of Forgiveness, for which Desmond Tutu wrote the preface.
As a member of the Methodist Renewal Group (MRG), Brian attended a conference at Butlins. Each day in Butlins’ enormous dining halls, one table won a bottle of champagne, to be recorded by the Butlins photographer. As luck would have it, one of the MRG tables won. The chairman was very worried that the photo of the winners might reach the editor of the Methodist Recorder. Brian leapt to fill the spare seat at the winning table.
Brian never married, but had several godchildren. To one he gave an Abba album; her response was: “How cool was that from a godfather!”
