Michael Claude Harper (1931-03-122010-01-06) was an English
priest. Originally a priest in the
Church of England, he became a priest of the
Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch. He was a key leader of the British
charismatic movement
The charismatic movement in Christianity is a movement within established or mainstream Christian denominations to adopt beliefs and practices of Charismatic Christianity with an emphasis on baptism with the Holy Spirit, and the use of spirit ...
from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Harper won a scholarship to Gresham's School, Holt, then attended
Emmanuel College,
University of Cambridge, where he read law and theology.
Harper was a curate at
All Souls Church, Langham Place
All Souls Church is a conservative evangelical Anglican church in central London, situated in Langham Place in Marylebone, at the north end of Regent Street. It was designed in Regency style by John Nash and consecrated in 1824.
As it is d ...
(
London), when he received what
Pentecostals and charismatics refer to as the
Baptism of the Holy Spirit, a
religious experience accompanied by
speaking in tongues. This put him at odds with the church's
evangelical rector,
John Stott, and Harper left All Souls in 1964 to found the
Fountain Trust, an organisation dedicated to spreading the charismatic message.
In his days as an Anglican charismatic leader, he wrote at least 35 books, including ''As at the Beginning'' (1965), a narrative of the growth of Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement in the 20th century. His most popular book, ''A Love Affair'' (1982), discussed the necessity to distinguish between material love (''eros'') and spiritual love (''agape'').
Harper left Anglicanism in 1995 because of what he saw as the Church of England's increasing
doctrinal laxity, particularly with regard to the
ordination of women
The ordination of women to ministerial or priestly office is an increasingly common practice among some contemporary major religious groups. It remains a controversial issue in certain Christian traditions and most denominations in which "ordina ...
. He and his wife, Jeanne, joined the
Orthodox Church. He was ordained and made the first dean of the then newly established Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of the British Isles and Ireland. He wrote about his views on female ordination in the 1994 book ''Equal and Different'' and related his journey to Orthodoxy in ''The True Light'' (1994). He was subsequently made an archpriest by Metropolitan Gabriel of Western and Central Europe in 2005. He was senior priest of the Orthodox Parish of Saint Botolph in London that worships in
St Botolph's without Bishopsgate.
His full biography, ''Visited by God'', was published by his wife Jeanne in late 2013.
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Harper, Michael
1931 births
2010 deaths
20th-century Eastern Orthodox priests
20th-century English Anglican priests
21st-century Eastern Orthodox priests
Converts to Eastern Orthodoxy from Anglicanism
English Charismatics
English Eastern Orthodox Christians
Members of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch