Read Online Murdering Ministers by Alan Beechey - Free Book Online Page A

to have one. An ear. Musical, that is.” ( Like you, Oliver added silently.)
    Tapster looked surprised and gratified at the literary turn. “Lamb,” he said appreciatively.
    By now, Oliver had been studying Tapster’s style for ten minutes, and found himself developing a perverse admiration for the preacher’s technique. Nobody could feel insignificant in Tapster’s presence—and despite the thinning hair and sparse, untidy beard, you could not deny that the man had presence. When you were the focus of those intense brown eyes, he made you feel that it was a permanent appointment, and that whoever may have held his attention a moment earlier had slipped out of the galaxy in the meantime. At a social gathering, Tapster would never look over your shoulder for other, more interesting encounters, or check his watch or fiddle unconsciously with his car-keys. Small talk would rapidly grow up. Your every utterance would be treated as a profundity, and no remark, no matter how mundane or facetious, could escape without being carefully weighed and hailed as a new discovery. No wonder adolescents flocked to him, especially those with old-fashioned parents like the Quarterboys, who were uncomprehending of their children’s slavery to peer approval and of the hormones sloshing though their sprouting bodies. What teenager could fail to believe that Tapster truly understood and respected him or her?
    â€œYou hold meetings with the young people in your home,” Oliver was saying. “Why do you feel the need for a separate community from the main church?”
    Tapster put his mug down and licked a stray trickle of honey from his fingers. “We are not separate, Mr. Swithin. All are welcome to join us here. Every house can be a house of worship, and every man a minister of the Lord’s word. The very earliest Christian communities met in the homes of believers, and witnessed many miracles of the spirit, despite being persecuted and despised.”
    â€œBut they had no alternative. Over time, those early communities grew into the churches we have today. Why start all over again? Doesn’t this contribute to the further fragmentation of the Christian Church?”
    Tapster idly picked up one of the wooden carvings on his desk, an ebony paca that looked alarmingly like the pictures of Finsbury in Oliver’s books. “Are you familiar with homeopathy, Mr. Swithin? Heather became adept with homeopathic medicine in Brazil, it spared her from the tragedy of worms—a diet of worms, so to speak. As you may know, when you practice homeopathy, you dilute and dilute and dilute the toxin until, mathematically, there should be no molecule left of the original. And yet it works, because the essence of the substance is still there. I think we can apply this metaphor to the Christian Church. No matter how much we divide the church, the essence of God, which we call the Holy Spirit, will still surface among the fragments. Some of them, anyway,” he added slightly caustically. “I prefer to take my instruction directly from that essence rather than through self-appointed, self-interested intermediaries, such as priests and theologians.”
    â€œDoesn’t that make you an intermediary too? Why should the children of Plumley listen to your interpretation of God’s will instead of the minister’s?”
    Oliver was despairing of finding any angle for his story. Could Tapster be trapped into denouncing Paul Piltdown, a man who, nominally at least, was supposed to be singing from the same Diaconalist hymnal?
    â€œI have no quarrel with the church here in Plumley,” Tapster said cautiously. “By the grace of God, I’m standing as a deacon at tomorrow night’s meeting. Heather plays the piano for the church services. Why would we do that if we wanted to create a barrier between the church and my fellowship? My desire is to do what I can to help the whole community