It is time to catch up with the Rev Calvin Robinson. You remember him? The controversial priest with his own show on GB News who then got “cancelled”…?
In fact, the story was a little more complicated.
Calvin criticised his employer for suspending Dan Wootton for misogynistic comments on a GB News show fronted by provocative actor Laurence Fox. In the end, their shows all got cancelled – and Calvin went on to host a double-act YouTube show with Lozza Fox. They were, at last, free to speak their minds!
Around the same time, Calvin left the Church of England, which had declined to ordain him a minister. Calvin claimed he had once again been cancelled and joined something called the Free Church of England (FCE), with a parish in northwest London. But no sooner had he settled in there than, in October 2023, he abandoned the tiny FCE for the equally esoteric Nordic Catholic Church (NCC) (“We are Old Catholics from the Union of Scranton”).
Keeping up? I hope so, because it wasn’t long before Calvin jettisoned the NCC and moved to Michigan, US, to be priest in charge of an Anglican Catholic Church (ACC) in Grand Rapids. The NCC, based in Oslo, was not best pleased and denounced him with a formal reprimand and admonition. Or, as Calvin would put it, another cancellation.
By now, he was developing something of a martyr narrative, claiming to have been further cancelled by the Royal Academy of Dance and the Conservative Party, among others.
In the middle of all this professional turmoil, Calvin tried to raise £1.5m to buy a 271-acre Scottish island to turn it into a religious retreat – “an opportunity to reclaim the land for Christendom”. This, too, was cancelled.
What happened next? This will come as a shock, I know, but Calvin has once again been cancelled. The ACC has revoked Calvin’s licence to be a minister. And then – wait for it – his US visa was revoked. Double cancel.
Calvin was visiting Israel at the time – “You know, out here, the Mohammedans are tolerated far too much,” he told Lozza – and pondered whether it was safe for him to return to England. Perhaps a leftist UK politician would have the police arrest him on a trumped-up charge. Or he might even be “killed by an intolerant Mohammedan”.
In the end, he bravely returned to the UK, sorted his visa problems and is safely back in Michigan, where he claims he has received invitations to Mar-a-Lago. Meanwhile, his chums have launched a crowdfunder to support “the most cancelled man alive”. The aim is to raise $350,000 to buy him a modest house in Grand Rapids, not far from the latest church to cancel him.
But was he actually cancelled? Read it all in The Independent
Alan Rusbridger is the editor of Prospect magazine
