On a glorious summer's day, Chowbent Chapel celebrated the life of its congregation, the glory of flowers and natural beauty, and the life of Rev Dr Norbert Capek, minister to Unitarians in Prague and a Unitarian martyr, who created the Flower Communion.

 

The chapel is a place of great beauty, enhanced by the flowers adorning the handsome three-tier pulpit each Sunday. These flowers are arranged by June Crowther and her sister Ruth, and are given by members of the congregation in memory of loved ones. At the end of the service, they are distributed to the sick and those unable to attend the chapel because of disability or ill health.

 

At the Flower Communion service, the minister, Rev Brenda Catherall, held a dazzling sunflower, symbol of the Czech Unitarians, chosen by Capek as an element of a new communion, which those who rejected the traditional Christian service, with bread and wine, could accept. The practice spread to America, and then to Britain, where the service is a popular annual event in many congregations.

 

Those arriving for the service bring a flower, and during the final hymn these are carried among the worshippers, who choose a different bloom from the one they brought.

 

The service included some lovely hymns and music, including 'When the summer sun is shining...' to the beautiful tune of Calon Lan. And the sun did, indeed, shine most beautifully as the congregation sang:

 

                                   When my open heart is glowing,

                                    Full of warmth for everyone,

                                    And I feel an inner beauty

                                    Which reflects the summer sun.

 

 

 

Rev Dr Norbert Capek

 

Rev Dr Norbert Capek founded the Unitarian Church in Prague in 1921. A former journalist and Baptist minister, he had become convinced that Christianity should have a distinct social message, that God was to be regarded as a parent of the human family, Jesus as an elder brother, and our task to create a new and better society for everyone.

 

He became active in the International Association for Religious Freedom, founded in 1900 by Unitarians, and at its Berlin Congress in 1910 met active Unitarians. He worked for a while in America, where he encountered Unitarian ideas, and when he returned home to the then Czechoslovakia established a new religious movement.

 

Many of his congregation were disaffected Catholics, to whom the conventional communion service was unacceptable, and this inspired Capek to create the Flower Communion, drawing his ideas from the natural beauty around him. He was a prolific hymn writer and an acclaimed orator. These very talents endangered him as the threat of Nazi invasion loomed, but he remained in Prague, accepting into membership of his church Jews who would otherwise have been rounded up by the Gestapo.

 

His wife, Maja, had left the country, but Capek and his daughter, Zora, remained and were arrested, she for listening to the BBC radio, he for that 'offence' and for high treason. Zora was sent to a labour camp, her father to Dachau concentration camp. There, he inspired other prisoners by his words and example.

 

On 12 October, 1942 he was sent to Hartheim Castle near Linz in Austria, where he died of poison gas.

 

When we celebrate our congregations and the beauty of the earth, we also remember Norbert Capek for his inspiring leadership and great courage.

 

Photo and content by Jennifer Whitelaw