Let me take you right down to Strawberry Fields— no, not the memorial in New York’s Central Park to the previous Beatle John Lennon, who was slain in Manhattan in 1980, but to the place that inspired his song, where the Salvation Army is conducting an experiment in mixing tourism with faith and social motion.
The original Strawberry Field was a kid’s home in Liverpool, just across the corner from John Lennon’s childhood home. It inspired the Beatles’ 1966 track “Strawberry Fields Forever,” penned by Lennon (who added an “s” to its name), in addition to what could also be one of the crucial progressive projects undertaken by the Salvation Army, the Christian anti-poverty movement founded in mid-1800s London.
Strawberry Field is thought for its red gates festooned with strawberry motifs, which are sometimes thronged with tourists taking selfies and a few adding to the graffiti on the gates’ stone pillars. But the military has now deployed the location’s connection to the Beatles to attract more visitors to fund its mission and encourage individuals who would never consider stepping inside a church to seek out out about Christianity.
The kid’s home, closed in 2005, has been demolished. In its place is a recent structure that comprises a prayer space, a café, and an exhibition about Lennon and the Beatles that features one in every of Lennon’s pianos. The constructing also houses a training project to assist young individuals with special needs get into work.
Stymied by Covid-19 pandemic closures when it first opened in September 2019, it’s ultimately coming into its own. Last 12 months Strawberry Field welcomed 120,000 paying visitors; this 12 months the Army expects much more. International Beatles Week, which began Thursday (Aug. 22), will put it on the tourist trail that features the nearby childhood homes of Paul McCartney and Lennon, local Beatles museums and other landmarks.
But none of the remainder mix religion with Beatles tourism.
The Strawberry Field project is the results of years of dialogue and prayer by the Salvation Army after it closed the youngsters’s home. The worldwide movement, founded by William and Catherine Booth to work in urban slums, became often called the Salvation Army in 1878. It adopted a quasi-military structure, with officers quite than clergy leading it and members wearing uniform. Its membership the world over of 1.5 million still focuses on social motion, and its officers, like Strawberry Field’s mission director, Kathy Versfeld, still wear the uniform.
Lennon shouldn’t be a natural icon for a Christian organization. In 1966, he told an interviewer that his band was “larger than Jesus,” and opined that “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink.” In the uproar that followed, greater than 30 U.S. radio stations banned Beatles’ tracks, and young people were urged to burn their Beatles records and memorabilia.
In August 1966, because the Beatles launched a U.S. tour, Lennon said at a press conference, “I’m not anti-God, anti-Christ, or anti-religion. I used to be not knocking it. I used to be not saying we’re greater or higher.” Rather than comparing himself to Christ, he said, he was trying to elucidate the decline of Christianity within the U.K. (which has indeed seen more prosperous days).
Considering this history, honouring Lennon took greater than a leap of religion, in accordance with Versfeld. “The Salvation Army through its research discovered a surprising fact, and that was that each 12 months 60,000 John Lennon fans and Beatles fans were bringing themselves uninvited to the red gates, and plenty of got here not knowing what Strawberry Field was,” she said.
“The Salvation Army realized there was the potential not only for a business operation here,” she added, “but a possibility for engagement with those individuals who wouldn’t quickly come through the doors of a Salvation Army church or centre.”
The refrain of Lennon’s song — “Let me take you down, to Strawberry Fields” — is reflected within the Salvation Army’s invitation to explore its site, including the gardens where Lennon used to play. He later remembered visiting the house’s annual summer fete together with his Aunt Mimi.
Paul McCartney, who wrote his song “Penny Lane” about his own childhood memories of Liverpool, in response to Lennon’s memories of Strawberry Field, has said that the Salvation Army home and gardens were a utopia for the young Lennon.
“The bit he went into was a secret garden … and he considered it like that, it was just a little hideaway for him … living his dreams just a little, a getaway. It was an escape,” McCartney says in Craig Brown’s biography of The Beatles, “One, Two, Three, Four.”
The Salvation Army said that it wants visitors to Strawberry Field to give you the option to “discover more about what it means to explore spirituality and faith” and that the Army strives to be “an inclusive community with God on the centre … but you shouldn’t have to belong to a Christian church — or any religious tradition in any respect to participate in what’s on offer here.”
Versfeld and her team need to challenge individuals who visit the centre: “Strawberry Fields Forever — but what does last endlessly?” she said. “What does abundance appear to be and what does it mean for us to open the gates and to do good?”
Lennon’s song “Imagine” is highlighted at Strawberry Field as an anthem for peace, its words carved in stone within the garden. The upright Steinway piano, on which he composed the song, is on loan to the location from the estate of the late British singer-songwriter George Michael, who bought it at auction in 2000.
According to Allister Versfeld, Kathy’s husband and development director of Strawberry Field, it was the Salvation Army’s mission that convinced Michael’s representatives to lend the piano. “They spent the day here; it was the work done here that convinced them it should come here,” he said.
Visitors today are invited to help in Strawberry Field’s employment and training programmes, Steps to Work, that are supported partially by the £11.20 admission fee — about $15 — for the Beatles interactive display, along with spending within the café and the gift shop. A ukulele band is amongst those that volunteer their time; on a recent day their version of the Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” filled the café. In the garden is space for people to spend their time in contemplation, while at a far end is a big bandstand shaped like a Salvation Army drum.
“This drum is on its side because in our early days people would see the band marching down the high street, and the drum could be used as a spot of prayer,” explained Versfeld.
The doors are open seven days per week for tourists and native people alike. When the Versfelds arrived, the famous strawberry gates had been shut for years, but now, says Kathy, “The gates are open for good.”
© Religion News Service
