In his days as a Curate in Portslade, the Revd Richard Enraght was friends
with the
Revd Maxwell Mochluff Ben-Oliel, a
curate at St Michael’s Church in Brighton, who was also a
controversial Anglo-Catholic priest, they were both
members of the Brighton Branch of the
Confraternity of the
Blessed Sacrament.
Richard Enraght invited Maxwell to St
Andrew’s Church Portslade to preach at the two services on Harvest Festival Day.
Maxwell was a Bible Scholar and a gifted multi-linguist, he drew large congregations to the churches where he
preached.
Revd Maxwell Ben-Oliel, served a long and colourful ministry, which took him to three continents, and finally ending his days in Walsingham Road, Hove, and where he died in 1907.
Maxwell is buried in St Leonard’s churchyard, a mile from St Andrew’s Portslade, where he preached in 1874.
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Revd Maxwell Mochluff Ben-Oliel
Originally named Mejluf, he was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Tangier,
Morocco in 1832. His parents intended Mejluf to train as a Rabbi, he
was educated at the Rabbinical College in Tangiers, where he spent
five years studying the Talmud, Maimonides and Rabbinical
literature.
His father was the physician, interpreter and
advisor to the King of Morocco and later moved his family to
Gibraltar to become the King’s Consul General in the British
Colony.
In 1852 Mejluf was baptised in a Wesleyan Chapel
in Gibraltar and took the Christian name of Maxwell, his older
brother, the Revd Abraham Ben-Oliel had converted to the Christian
faith five years earlier in 1847.
In 1853, Maxwell moved
to Richmond in London to study at the Wesleyan Theological College.
In 1857, like his older
brother Abraham, he served as a missionary for The British Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel Among the Jews in the Holy Land
and Morocco. A few years later Maxwell resigned from missionary
service and became the pastor of the Congregational Chapel at
Isleworth in Middlesex.
Maxwell was a gifted
multi-linguist, speaking Hebrew, Chaldean-Aramaic, Arabic, Berber, Spanish
and English. In the British Workman periodical of 1856, it
reported that it was fortunate that the missionary Maxwell Ben-Oliel
was in Plymouth when three former slaves arrived in the port from
Cuba. The periodical went on to say, Maxwell Ben-Oliel was the only person in
Plymouth who spoke Spanish and could interpret for the freed slaves
and address their welfare needs while they were awaiting a ship to
take them to the Gambia.
(The three former slaves had bought
their freedom through a lottery scheme and paid the British Consul in
Havana for safe passage to England. Slavery was not abolished until
1886 in Cuba.)
Maxwell left the Congregational Church in
1860 and entered an Anglican Theological College in Birkenhead in
preparation to seek Holy Orders. He was ordained a priest by the
Bishop of Carlisle and was subsequently Chaplain to the Duchess of
Northumberland.
After serving as curate at a number of
churches in the north of England he then took a temporary curacy at
St Matthew's in Croydon. Ben-Oliel had the reputation of being a
brilliant theologian and preacher. His preaching attracted a large
congregation who were keen on the idea of a new church with Ben-Oliel
as the incumbent
Ben-Oliel left St
Matthew's for a new church called St Paul’s which was set up in the
converted Havelock Hall. The church grew and flourished.
Ben-Oliel's brother in law, Robert Parnell, was a wealthy business man
and guaranteed the money for a new church building to be erected in
Canning Road in Croyden. The new St Paul’s Church building was
opened in September 1868 and Havelock Hall was sold. The Archbishop
of Canterbury twice refused to license St Paul's and he, together
with the vicar of St James, set up a new District with an ‘iron
Church’ in competition to this ‘new’ St Paul’s.
June
1872 was a seismic moment in Ben-Oliel’s ministry, when he
announced to his very large evangelical congregation that all
Services would now be conducted in the ritualistic Anglo-Catholic
Tradition. There were protests from the congregation to the Bishop of
Croydon and the Archbishop of Canterbury over the adoption of illegal
ritualistic practices which culminated in the congregation leaving en
masse for the nearby ‘iron Church’. St Paul’s struggled to stay
open and finally closed down in 1874 when it was sold by the Revd
Maxwell Ben-Oliel (who owned the freehold) to the Church of England
for £7,000.
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| Image from Academy Architecture & Architectural Review, Vol 18., (1900) St Mary Magdalene, Canning Road, Croyden, London. (The tower was not completed until the 1930s) |
On 5th August 1874 the church building was re-opened and dedicated according to Anglican rite. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s son, Rev Crawford Tait, performed the ceremony and the name of ‘St Mary Magdalene’ was transferred from the iron church to Ben-Oliel’s former ‘St Paul’s Church building’.
From 1874 until 1876,
the Revd Maxwell Ben-Oliel, served as a curate at St Michael and All
Angels, a leading Anglo-Catholic church in Brighton. In 1874 he was
a guests for the official opening of St Bartholomew’s Church
Brighton, the largest and tallest Anglo-Catholic church in England.
Also in the same year, Maxwell was invited to preach, Revd Richard
Enraght in St Andrew’s Church, Portslade, the subject he chose, for
which he was passionate about, 'The Disestablishment of the Church of
England'.
In 1878, Maxwell Mochluff Ben-Oliel was back in London, he paid £4,310 for the site and a further £1,000 on the fabric, for St Patrick’s ‘iron church’ in Kenway Road, Earl’s Court.
Early in 1879 a correspondent of the Kensington News described the quaint iron church under Ben Oliel's cure, still soldiering on in hope of a brighter future, with its blue-painted walls, its harmonium and its 'asthmatic bell-pull'
In September 1879 St. Patrick's burnt down. Ben-Oliel quickly had a mission-room re-established, and issued an appeal for funds.
The Bishop of London,
John Jackson, expressed his sorrow that Ben-Oliel’s iron church had
burnt down but also issued the following statement of rebuke: 'I
have distinctly told him, as the two previous owners of the chapel,
that I have no intention of consecrating, or of consenting to the
assignment of a district to, any permanent church built on that site.
The neighbourhood is not a poor one.'
Following the Bishop of London’s edict, Ben-Oliel decided to look for a new site, after several failures in his quest to build a new church in the heart of Earl’s Court, he left the area in 1881.
From 1881 until late in
1889 he served as a curate at several churches around London.
The
Revd Maxwell Ben-Oliel, although a very experienced priest, never
achieved a status higher than a parish curate. He hardly endeared
himself to the Archbishop of Canterbury when his ministry took him in
a controversial Anglo-Catholic direction and he also made public
speeches on the 'Disestablishment of the Church of England'. This is
probably why his ministry took him to the Episcopal Church in the
USA, the only part of the Anglican Communion that was disestablished
from the Crown.
In 1889 Maxwell was in the U.S.A., he
served as missionary for the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of
California. Maxwell’s older brother, the Revd Abraham Ben-Oliel,
was serving as a Presbyterian minister in Chicago after spending many
years in the Holy Land and North Africa as a missionary.
Some years later
in 1891, Bishop Nichols sent Ben-Oliel, who was described as a very
distinguished Biblical scholar and preacher, to St John’s Episcopal
Church, San Bernardino for a month or so as cover when the previous
priest left. This cover as Rector in effect lasted just over two
years.
On arriving in the Parish in December 1891, he found the Church advertised for sale, with debts of nearly $6000 ($150,500 in today’s values). Through clever management and the sale of Church property, Revd Ben-Oliel put the Church on a sound financial footing, staving off the Sheriff’s sale of the building and even finding $500 to improve the Church’s interior.
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| 1890s church notice from The San Bernardino Daily Courier (U.S.A.) |
On Trinity Sunday in 1892, Bishop Nichols visited St John’s
to conduct a Service of Thanksgiving assisted by Revd Ben-Oliel and
Canon Fletcher. While serving as Rector of St John’s, Revd Ben-Oliel gave practical advice to the Diocese of California on the
subject of Diocesan and Parochial organisation.
In 1893
Revd Ben-Oliel wrote to the secretary of the Diocese of California
giving news of his ministry since he left St John’s in August 1892,
in which he indicates he seemed to be in high demand in the East.
‘I have preached, lectured and officiated in Boston,
New York, Philadelphia, Camden, Baltimore Jacksonville and many other
cities and parishes, delivered altogether 137 sermons, lectures and
addresses in 29 churches and other places. During Lent I preached
every Sunday evening in St John’s Cathedral, Jacksonville, Florida
and every Sunday morning in St Andrew’s Church in the same city. I
have reason to believe that God has blessed my work, I had large
congregations, sometimes the churches were full and overflowing.’
In 1894 Revd Ben-Oliel accepted a permanent position in
the Diocese of Rochester.(USA)
In an article in the Sun
Weekly (California) newspaper for 4th February 1900, it was stated
‘Revd Ben-Oliel’s services to St John’s Church at such a
critical time in its history, must be recognised as of great value’.
On his return to England in 1896 he founded the Kilburn
Mission to the Jews and took Sunday services in various London
churches. At the Church of England’s Church Congress held at the
Royal Albert Hall in 1899, Revd Ben-Oliel delivered a speech on the
subject ‘The Social and Religious Conditions of Jews’. In 1901 he
was elected president of the Hebrew Christian Alliance.
The Hastings & St Leonards Observer reported on the 29th November 1902, ‘GREAT LINGUIST AT ST LEONARDS. The Rev. Maxwell Ben-Oliel who occupied the pulpit at Christ Church, St Leonards, on Sunday, is a very cultured preacher and an accomplished linguist, being master of no less than sixteen languages.’
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| Copyright © D. Sharp 25, Walsingham Road, the former home of the Revd Maxwell M. Ben-Oliel |
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| Copyright © D. Sharp 'Looking unto Jesus' In Loving Memory of Maxwell M. Ben-Oliel, Priest Who Entered into Rest, March 8th 1907 Aged 74 years. (St Leonard's churchyard, Aldrington, Hove, Sussex.) |
This much travelled
priest, missionary, lecturer and author was laid to rest in St
Leonard’s Churchyard, Aldrington, (now a part of the City of
Brighton & Hove)
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("Revd Maxwell Ben-Oliel" research compiled from many newspaper articles and church publications by D. Sharp)