Love him or hate him, agree with his theology or disagree it’s hard to argue against the fact that Father Calvin Robinson is one of the most prominent Christian voices in the culture wars of recent years.
I write as a personal friend of Calvin’s and as a fellow cancelled priest, although between mates I joke that he holds the record as the most cancelled man alive! To the cynic and to his critics my brother in Christ is often maligned as a trainwreck bouncing between denominations and courting controversy wherever he goes.
But to those who know and love him, he is one of the most pious disciples of Christ and ridiculously brave. Calvin has a problem that I think all clergymen should have, he simply will not back down nor compromise on his principles and religious convictions.
The problem is, amid the sea of vapid sycophants, God-forsaken heretics and closet (or not so closet) homosexuals that make up the modern pastorate of most denominations in the 21st century, Calvin is an island of courage, fidelity to Christ and dogged determination.
We are at a stage in church history where compromise is the norm, abandoning traditional dogma and biblical doctrine is the fashion of the day and only a precious few pastors have the balls to really plant the flag of Christ in the soil, stare down the rainbow haired, seething servants of Satan and proclaim Jesus is LORD!
Calvin is an uncommon warrior for truth, in stark contrast to the majority of priests and pastors these days who have abandoned the bible and spat in God’s face, he stands out even among the few orthodox church leaders left most of whom have the spinal strength of a jellyfish. In the desolate landscape of the contemporary visible church Fr Robinson is like Mad Max roaring across the irradiated ruins of Christendom cracking the proverbial skulls of heretics, priestesses and errant bishops along the way. He is a giant of the faith, both his physical stature (he’s 6’4) and in moral integrity. Of all the clergymen I know, it’s him who I am certain is “not for turning” as Maggie Thatcher once famously said.
Irrespective of the risk, the cost, and the personal sacrifice required Calvin will not budge on righteousness. The man simply does not have “retreat” in his vocabulary, he reminds me of a modern-day Saint Athanasius who when faced with the terrible situation of almost all other Christian leaders falling into the Arian heresy in the 3rd century stubbornly said, “If the world is against the truth, then I am against the world”.
I won’t deny that Calvin and I disagree on a great many secondary points of theology and he can be a polarizing figure, but on the essentials of Christian truth he is unflinching and I suspect that is why he has locked horns with so many Bishops in his relatively short ministry career.
The contemporary church is plagued with a dual curse of senior leadership that is either completely apostate or so effeminate that it is utterly ineffective and woefully insufficient to meet the rigorous challenges of Christianity in the public sphere in our day and age. Father Calvin would be a huge asset to a godly bishop who wasn’t afraid of allowing his priest to have a bigger profile than his superiors and who could allow him the freedom to engage in his vital public mission alongside a well-supported parish ministry without micromanaging him like a ninny.
Unfortunately, Calvin has repeatedly had the displeasure of dealing with the weakest bishops contemporary Christianity has to offer, who are enchanted by the idea of using some of his star power to draw people into their nearly dead, dysfunctional denominations but lack the guts to deal with the double-edged sword of controversy that comes with that. Bishops with fragile egos or heavy-handed micromanagement are always going to clash with men like Calvin who will submit to their leadership in all things biblical and canonical but will buck against the mere opinions of corrupt bishops who rather frequently like to act like god-kings ruling a little fiefdom and treating their own words as if they were law.
To his critics of which there are many, Calvin’s rapid succession through four denominations is used to accuse him of being an unstable and schismatic chap. The bishops of these micro-denominations tend to love a tight grip on their own self-importance and struggle to cope when a big personality joins their ranks, the reality is actually that far from being a trouble maker, Fr Robinson is simply too righteous for most church leaders to handle as he holds up a mirror to their own spiritual inadequacies and won’t blindly obey ungodly orders like a trained dog.
The first denomination he was booted from sent his public profile into the stratosphere when the woke bishopette of London essentially refused to ordain him in the Church of England because of his conservative theological and political views. To many in the general public, this was a significant wakeup call revealing how corrupt and pathetically leftist the Established Church had become.
He then was welcomed with open arms into the Free Church of England, a micro denomination of barely a dozen active churches that splintered off from the Church of England in the Victorian era and has been in serious decline since the Second World War. It has seen significant controversies in the last twenty years that accelerated attrition. Ordained initially as a Deacon by Bishop Paul Hunt, sadly despite being open about his High Church convictions and public media work Fr Robinson found roadblocks on his path to being ordained as a Presbyter (Priest) with the can kicked constantly down the road. It was Calvin that attracted me to the FCE as I was departing the apostate Church of England and it was our time in that tiny church that bonded us together as brothers, the odd couple of continuing Anglicanism as it were. It’s well documented that like Calvin I had a rocky time in the FCE butting heads with corruption, narcissistic leadership and becoming the latest in a long line of godly clergy sacked without legitimate cause.
Calvin had a less dramatic exit from the FCE than I as eventually it was obvious the ordination to the Priesthood was never going to eventuate and after negotiations, he was offered ordination as a Priest by the Nordic Catholic Church, an even tinier micro denomination which is virtually non-existent in the UK. A deal was struck for an amicable transfer from the FCE and Calvin was graciously magnanimous towards his inept FCE bishop as he transferred to the NCC. The ailing Nordic bishop was flown in almost on life support and an ordination occurred in a Free Church parish, signalling mostly cordial relations between the two terminal denominations.
Shortly after joining the Nordics, it was very obvious God had bigger, better plans for Fr Calvin and it was clear he was being called to serve in the USA, however, there is no Nordic Catholic presence there and so an offer was made for him to take on a quiet parish in Michigan which belonged to the Anglican Catholic Church, a slightly larger micro-denomination of around 200 churches Stateside. Unfortunately, the Nordic Catholics weren’t very happy about this, I suspect they had pinned hopes of a revival on one man’s fame and became rather jealous when the Lord decided to move His soldier to a different deployment. There was a dummy spit of episcopal proportions and the Nordics demanded Fr Calvin return his symbols of ordination, a churlish and unnecessary insult by an ancient bishop with virtually no churches to lead who given his advanced age should have shown far more maturity and Christian kindness. Nonetheless, Fr Calvin did not bite back or lash out publicly, as usual he was benevolent and Christ-like, quietly moving on to his new role in America seeking to turn the other cheek and put the Kingdom of God first.
To anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, the USA was clearly where Calvin was meant to be. The Lord rapidly elevated his reach for the gospel even further as he rubbed shoulders with prominent American conservative leaders, celebrities and even President Donald J Trump on the campaign trail! His local bishop Patrick Fodor seemed to love the lime light, filmed dancing with Fr Robinson alongside Kid Rock and Tucker Carlson, but there were dark forces of liberalism lurking in the supposedly orthodox Anglican Catholic Church that were furious a right-wing clerical star had joined the ranks of their tiny branch of continuing Anglicanism.
Without going into the nitty gritty, what is self-evident now is that there was a clear plan behind the scenes to oust him as soon as the opportunity arose. For example, the denominational Canon Lawyer Mrs Sarah Wassen seemed utterly obsessed with criticism of Calvin on X for months on end and it appears she still is, sometimes posting about him multiple times in a single day. I empathize because I suffered the same plotting and scheming in the Free Church of England!
The guillotine dropped for Fr. Calvin when my friend made a tongue-in-cheek reference to Elon Musk’s “my heart goes out to you” gesture at a national pro-life rally. In my experience, if an evil bishop and his minions are searching for a way to oust a priest, they will twist almost anything to their advantage, for example, one of the reasons I was sacked was because I smoke a tobacco pipe and my bishop disliked smoking (no I’m not kidding). For Calvin, it was this silly hand gesture, the secular looney left began their cancel culture dog-pile and undoubtedly bombarded the top man in the ACC, Archbishop Mark Haverland, with relentless complaints as Calvin himself received hundreds of psychotic abusive emails, postal mail and phone calls from woke lunatics.
I wonder if Haverland was either in on the alleged conspiracy to boot the turbulent priest or he was simply too much of a beta male to withstand the tidal wave of woke whining and the internal pressures of leftists within his church structures who wanted to get rid of the bro with a fro. Either way he failed the test of leadership miserably and revoked Calvin’s license without warning via email only 45 minutes after complaints hit, effectively sacking one of the godliest and most popular priests on the planet. A good Archbishop would’ve seen the publicity Calvin brought as a boon of blessing, as the culture war tide turns hard towards conservatism in the USA.
On the coat tails of Trump’s victory, he could have positioned his minuscule denomination as a place that champions old school Christianity and in doing so packed the pews in all of his churches with scores of young men who are desperately yearning for muscular, biblically faithful Christianity. But maybe that is precisely what Haverland and his ilk didn’t want! Perhaps the man who is pictured egotistically gazing at his own portrait online preferred the control of a relatively small grouping of churches under his dominion and would’ve found an influx of right-wing truth seekers an unwanted burden, to be clear that is purely my speculation. Only God knows his true motives, but whatever they were they led him to make a spectacularly bad error of judgement.
I find wicked people are usually actually pretty stupid. If you were going to sack the most popular young clergyman on the planet, it’d probably be smart to do it with kid gloves. At least the FCE and NCC who for their own nefarious reasons wanted rid of the TV clergyman did so fairly quietly aware of the PR disaster simply sacking him outright would cause.
Haverland instead dropped an ecclesiastical nuke on himself and his whole church. Then when confronted with backlash from conservatives, both Christian and non-believers alike, instead of going into damage control he and his team dug in. Evidently the ACC has nobody skilled in media and communications on staff who could advise them against such a foolish course of action that would lead to reputational suicide among all but diehard lefties. I’ve seen lesbian Episcopalian priestesses gushing with praise for Haverland and the ACC online, which is incredibly ironic considering the ACC split off from the Episcopal church in the 1970s over women’s ordination! It’s almost as though one can imagine Haverland applying the words of Charles II as he bemoaned St. Thomas Becket “who will rid me of this turbulent priest”. Sure, he got rid of Robinson, but at what cost to himself and the church he ostensibly desires to defend!
The pastoral disdain Haverland has shown for Calvin and his parish in Grand Rapids is similarly appalling, in one of their poorly written public statements written by God knows who as they are never signed, the ACC openly admits their Archbishop was against the parish’s decision to hire Fr Robinson to begin with, further fueling suspicions of a plot to quickly remove him! I hope and pray that Calvin’s parish stands with their priest and seeks episcopal oversight from another bishop in a different jurisdiction. I won’t hold my breath as such bravery in the midst of spiritual warfare is hard to come by and I certainly wouldn’t hold it against the people of St Paul’s if they don’t end up having the intestinal fortitude to do so, although staying under Haverland and the ACC would clearly be severe to their detriment.
Similar pastoral failure has been shown by Haverland’s underling Fodor who as I mentioned above was all too happy to use Calvin’s fame to boost his own ego chumming up to celebrities but has made no effort whatsoever to show any care for his priest who has gone through a horrible ordeal or the parishioners under his care. Neither Haverland nor Fodor bother to answer calls or emails. I even reached out to the Archbishop offering an unedited, uncensored, unscripted interview on my Youtube channel to tell his side of the story, that was nearly a month ago and he never bothered to reply. So much for bishops being shepherds to the shepherds!
All this culminated in Fr Calvin’s visa being revoked, which mercifully has been reversed! There is a lot of uncertainty but no matter what the future holds, I am confident that God has a plan to use my dear brother mightily for His glory at the bleeding edge of the culture war, pushing the Overton window in the West towards Christendom again. It’s often these prophetic men of God who the Lord uses to drag the church kicking and screaming back to righteousness. Calvin is like an Elijah figure, exposing the prophets (and bishops) of Baal as the charlatans they are, men like him will always come under heavy fire from the Pharisaic, self-righteous religious elites in an age of apostasy.
My prayer and I urge you, dear reader, to join me in this intercession is that Almighty God would pair Fr Calvin up with a godly bishop who can allow him the trust and freedom to fulfil his anointed public media mission, whilst being a godly mentor and Father in the Lord utilizing the vast gifts my friend brings to the body of Christ for God’s glory. I also pray Fr Robinson is blessed to lead a God-fearing congregation who will stand with their priest through thick and thin appreciating his media ministry is a great boon of blessing to their local congregation. This I know, the Common-Sense Crusade will continue and the Lord will keep blessing the turbulent priest.
