Fr. Calvin Robinson Has Hoof & Mouth Disease

“I am not a Nazi!”

By Mary Ann Mueller

VOL Special Correspondent

www.virtueonline.org

February 5, 2025

Like St. Peter before him, the Rev. Calvin Robinson has a case of Hoof & Mouth disease.

Both Simon Peter and Calvin Robinson have the tendency to open mouth, insert foot and twist. And then act impetuously which has gotten them both in a lot of trouble.

Peter challenges Jesus over His upcoming Passion and Death. (Matt. 16:21-23)

Peter won't let Jesus wash his feet at the Last Supper. (John 13:6-10) Peter cuts off Malchus’ ear. (John 18:3-11)

Peter denies knowing Jesus three times. (Matt. 26:69-75; Mark 14:66-72; Luke 22:54-62; and John 18:15-27)

Peter argues with Paul over the place of the Gentiles in the Church. (Galatians 2:11-21)

Such is the case now in the United States when Robinson conflates politics with religion.

Long story short Fr. Calvin Robinson crossed the rubicon of priestly etiquette and his Archbishop Mark Haverland stepped in and removed his faculties – license (permission) – to exercise his priesthood within the Anglican Catholic Church.

Now to the rest of the story …

First of all, Robinson is a British citizen. He was born in Mansfield, England 39 years ago. He immigrated to the United States in September 2024 to become the priest-in-charge at St. Paul's Anglican Catholic Church (ACC) a small congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

VISA ISSUES

Robinson is a British immigrant, not an illegal border crossing migrant. Basically, he followed immigration law.

He did not fly to Canada – a British Commonwealth nation – and sneak across the Canadian southern border into the United States. He came to the United States with passport, documents and paperwork in hand.

However, the question has been raised whether Robinson followed American immigration law to the letter when it comes to the status of immigrating clergy.

US Immigration law outlines the qualifications needed to apply for a US Religious Work Visa: “To qualify as an immigrant religious worker, for at least two years before a petition may be filed on your behalf, you must: (1) Have been a member of the religious denomination having a bona fide nonprofit, religious organization in the United States for which you are coming to work; and (2) Have been continuously carrying out the religious vocation or occupation that you intend to carry out in the United States.”

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) also states that to qualify for an immigrant

visa as a “Minister of Religion” the cleric “must be entering the United States to work solely as a minister of your religious denomination.”

CHURCH HOPPING

Therein lies the problem. Robinson is a church-hopper. He has belonged to four different denominations in a space of three years. Not all of the churches are Anglican. He was initially a member of the Church of England (CofE) until he left for the Free Church of England (FCE) in early summer 2022. He then united with the Old Catholic – nonAnglican – Nordic Catholic Church (NCC) in late 2023. Less than a year later he gravitated to the Anglican Catholic Church (ACC).

It is not totally clear if he is still a priest in the AAC – albeit an inhibited priest – or is he a priest without a denomination.

VirtueOnline has reached out to Metropolitan Archbishop Mark Haverland (VIII ACC) for a clarification concerning Robinson's status with the Anglican Catholic Church. At the time of posting Archbishop Haverland has not responded to VOL’s query.

Like a man without a country Calvin Robinson is a priest without a parish. Former Church of England priest Gavin Ashenden feels that Robinson is indeed without a denomination.

However, as a result of Robinson's priestly ordination in the Nordic Catholic Church, which is not a part of the Anglican Continuum, he is “a priest forever after the Order of Melchizedek.” (Psalms 110:4)

Ashenden, himself, left the CofE after the Koran was read in Arabic at a 2017 Epiphany service at St. Mary's Cathedral in Glasgow, Scotland. The passage denied that Jesus is the Son of God.

This infuriated Ashenden. Giving up his royal chaplaincy to the Queen he eventually swam the Tiber in 2019 and is now a Roman Catholic layman.

“You (an ordained priest) belong to a denomination,” the former Queen's Chaplain explained on his recent YouTube program Catholic Unscripted. “The ACC message saying that Calvin had been released by removal of his license said in fact he's not part of the ACC. So they are not just deparishing him, they are dechurching him.”

For all practical purposes Calvin Robinson is a “Catholic” priest, albeit not a Roman Catholic priest but an Old Catholic priest, for he was ordained into the priesthood through the Nordic Catholic Church. He is not an ordained Anglican priest. Although he was ordained as an Anglican deacon in the Free Church of England he sought his priesthood elsewhere.

The Old Catholic tradition separated from the Roman Catholic Church during Vatican I (circa 1870) over certain doctrines such as papal authority and papal infallibility. Old Catholics are not in communion with Rome however the Nordic Catholic Church (NCC) is in ecumenical dialogue – not intercommunion – with the Free Church of England (FCE) and the Anglican Catholic Church (ACC).

The NCC was the bridge Robinson used to go from the FCE to the ACC picking up Old Catholic priestly ordination along the way.

Robinson initially started out seeking ordination in the Church of England (CofE). That failed.

The young Robinson got a degree in computer games design and programming from the University of Westminster. He then went on to teach computer science at St. Mary's & St. John's Church of England School in Hendon where he became head of the school's IT department before pursuing a path in religion.

He undertook seminary studies at St. Stephen's House, an Anglo-Catholic theological college at the University of Oxford.

But Robinson was at cross swords with the Bishopette of London — Sarah Mullally, who couldn't find a "suitable curacy" for him due, in part, to his strong political views.

He is a noted and popular conservative British political commentator with a large social media following who rails against homosexuality, same-sex marriage, the LGBTQ ideology, critical race theory, the ordination of women, the cancel culture, and abortion.

Finding the CofE path to ordination blocked, Robinson turned to the Free Church of England as a gateway to ordination. The FCE accommodated him and ordained him a transitional deacon on June 25, 2022 and appointed him Minister-in-Charge at Christ Church in Harlesden. A position he held for nearly three years even though he became an Old Catholic priest midway through his tenure. His final service at Christ Church was celebrated on Trinity Sunday (May 26, 2024).

But, alas, Robinson didn't stay long in the FCE. He was seeking the priesthood on his own terms and found through the Nordic Catholic Church (NCC), an Old Catholic denomination of Scandinavian Lutheran patrimony. He was priested on Nov. 4, 2023 as an Old Catholic priest.

Next the new British priest set his sights on moving to the United States as a clergyman. But he had to find a continuing Anglican denomination which would accept his hopscotch patchwork of ordinations, provide him a High Church altar and pulpit, and grease the skids to a US religious minister's work visa. He found that in the Anglican Catholic Church (ACC).

The ACC is an outgrowth of the 1977 Congress of St. Louis which met following the 1976 Episcopal General Convention that approved women's ordination; set the stage for the adoption of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer; and provided equal rights to the LGBT movement including the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the Episcopal Church and equal protection under the law.

Robinson's honeymoon with his Michigan parish lasted a mere four months. His religious denomination has booted him out and he is barred from seeking another ACC pulpit.

However, a foreign clergyman is to “work solely as a minister of your religious denomination” to keep the US green card.

With the drop in priestly vocations, particularly in the Church of Rome, many bishops turn to foreign dioceses to find priests to fill their pulpits. Many Catholic priests now serving in the United States hail from Africa, India and Asia. Calvin Robinson is considered a “foreign priest” in the American Anglican world.

The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), too, has close ties to Anglican churches in the Global South such as in various African Anglican provinces – Kenya, Rwanda, Nigeria – through GAFCON.

MERE ANGLICANISM KERFUFFLE

Robinson has danced with ACNA before and ACNA was stung. He was invited to be a presenter to a sellout crowd at the January 2024 Mere Anglicanism Conference hosted by St. Philip’s Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

The conservative high church Anglo-Catholic priest hit the hot button issue of Women's Ordination in a gathering that was being held in an ACNA diocese which allows females in the priesthood and women clergy were in the audience.

Fr. Robinson’s presence at the conference was a mismatch from the beginning. The young priest is a passionate Anglo-Catholic with a strong commitment to traditional biblical values concerning the priesthood, marriage and the family, along with same-sex and transgender issues.

However, the Mere Anglicanism Conference is a low church evangelical event based in the ACNA Diocese of South Carolina which supports ideology that Robinson strongly opposes, particularly that of women in the priesthood.

The match up was disastrous. As a result, Robinson’s wings were clipped and he was asked to stand down from the concluding panel discussion.

However, the young-not-yet-40 priest failed to humbly accept his chastisement silently, turning to prayer and keeping mum. He immediately started posting on social media and hit the YouTube circuit defending himself while being critical of his Mere Anglicanism hosts.

Robinson is passionate. He is controversial. He is committed. He is provocative. He is outspoken. He is conservative. He is opinionated. He is polemical. He is basically a High Church Anglo-Catholic with an Old Catholic priesthood.

ACC SACKS ROBINSON

Robinson started dancing with ACC in October of 2023 when he first visited the ACC’s Provincial Synod in Orlando, Florida and subsequently expressed an interest in serving a parish in the US.

“After undergoing the necessary procedures, he was received in orders and licensed to serve at the parish of St. Paul’s, Grand Rapids, Michigan,” the ACC fleshed out on its website Monday (February 3). “As of January 29th, 2025, he had served in the ACC a little over four months.”

Taking all things into consideration apparently the ACC attempted to rein in their newly-immigrated priest Calvin Robinson.

Last week (January 29) the ACC initially posted: “Mr. Robinson had been warned that online trolling and other such actions (whether in service of the

left or right) are incompatible with a priestly vocation and was told to desist.”

Then the AAC referred to their priest as “Mr. Robinson” rather than “Fr. Robinson,” or even “Rev. Robinson.”

This week even the “Mr.” designation has been dropped. The ACC is clearly fed up with Calvin Robinson.

“He (Robinson) was not hired by the ACC to be an official spokesman, social media influencer, or to provoke the ‘hysterical liberals’ (his words) in online culture wars,” the ACC explained. “He was licensed by an ACC bishop to serve as a parish priest.”

It seems that the ACC's strong admonition fell on deaf ears. As a result, Robinson was canned … fired, or as the British say, “sacked.”

“Clearly, he has not (listened), and as such, his license in this Church has been revoked,” posted the ACC in a statement about Robinson's situation. “He is no longer serving as a priest in the ACC.”

Monday the ACC fleshed out: “He was repeatedly warned not to engage in the sort of behavior that he displayed at the National Right to Life Conference, and he did not comply. As such, his license to serve in the ACC was revoked. In doing so, the bishops acted in accordance with ACC canons.”

“I have not been defrocked. My licence was revoked. This means I cannot minister in ~250 ACC churches,” Robinson explains in an email missive defending himself which he sent on Monday (Feb. 3). “I am still a priest.”

ROBINSON’S MANY CANCELLATIONS

The ACC priest seems to be taking the cancellation of his priestly license to minister in stride.

“Not wanting to labour the point. I made a silly joke, I will accept the consequences for it. I have been cancelled before,” he emailed. “I am a man; I can take it.”

Yes, Robinson has been cancelled before. Several times before.

Wikipedia says that until 2021 Robinson was a frequent contributor to The Telegraph, the Daily Mail and Sp!ked with no explanation why he no longer writes for those British publications.

In October 2023 GB News axed him, as well as TALK RADIO.

Then in March 2023 he was also booted from the Royal Academy of Dance’s subcommittee on education for opposing a children's “Drag Queen Story Hour” at a London library.

Mere Anglicanism clipped his wings in January 2024 and he was cancelled from the concluding roundtable panel.

Finally last week Robinson was cancelled by his own video game and news website staff.

PCGamer, a British website that monitors the gaming world, reports that the editorial staff of “God is a Geek” website walked out last week following Robinson's behavior at the pro-life summit event.

“Calvin Robinson is a far-right political commentator and former games journalist who founded and still owns the gaming website God is a Geek,” PC Gamer posted. “On Thursday (January 30) the entire editorial staff of God is a Geek resigned.”

However, the British priest is clearly upset that Archbishop Haverland has not been in direct contact with him.

“Bishop Chandler Jones broke the news, but he is not my bishop, and he is not responsible,” Robinson wrote in his email. “Archbishop Mark Haverland revoked my licence. He is yet to have a conversation with me about any of this …”

PRIESTLY DISOBEDIENCE

“As a direct response to the cancel culture bandwagon, the Archbishop of the Anglican Catholic Church, where I serve, removed my licence without so much as a conversation,” he emailed. “I will not go into that further, as I

believe in being obedient to one’s bishop and would like to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

But as an ACC priest Father Robinson has not been obedient to his bishop as he proclaims.

Repeatedly he has been admonished by his ecclesial authorities about his political leanings, engagement and rhetoric. He was asked to be a simple parish priest – to attend the Altar, celebrate the Sacraments, preach the Word and be a pastor to his flock.

“When Robinson was received into the ACC, he was told that there was a distinction of offices between political activist and parish priest. His bishops made it clear to him that he had been received into the Church to minister to a parish, and as such, he would have to eschew the provocative political behavior that characterized his prior career as a TV presenter, blogger, and social media influencer,” the ACC posted. “He has not done so, and what happened at the National Right to Life Summit was not an isolated incident.”

The ACC is a part of the G3 Synod which is a grouping of Continuing Anglican bodies which are a full Communion ecumenical partnership with each other. The current membership of the G3 consists of the Anglican Catholic Church (ACC); the Anglican Church in America (ACA); and the Anglican Province of America (APA). These three Anglican bodies are working towards full unification in much the same way that the member organizations of the Common Cause Partnership joined forces in 2009 to form the Anglican Church in North America.

Bishop Chandler Jones is the II Presiding Bishop of the Anglican Province of America. He is in full communion with Archbishop Haverland.

The Episcopal Visitor for Robinson's ACC Diocese of the Midwest – which encompasses Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana – is Bishop Patrick Fodor who is the III Bishop of the ACA Diocese of the Missouri River Valley. He, too, is in full communion with Archbishop Haverland.

Robinson's ACC diocese has been sede vacante since August 21, 2023 when the VI Bishop of the Midwest Rommie Starks died.

The British priest first approached the ACC in early October 2023, six weeks after Bishop Starks died.

THE PRO-LIFE SUMMIT SALUTE

The event which pushed the Anglican Catholic Church over the edge came as the result of a very questionable and ill-advised hand motion at the close of Robinson's address at the National Pro-Life Summit in Washington, DC, on January 25, the day after the 52nd Annual March for Life.

Even before Robinson moved to the USA, he had endeared himself to the religious and political right. He has hobnobbed with then Presidential Candidate Donald Trump, former Catholic Bishop of Tyler Joseph Strickland, and laicized Priests for Life national director Frank Pavone.

Last week (Jan. 25) he was with some pro-life heavy weights at the National Pro-Life Summit including: Matt Walsh from the Daily Wire, Dr. Ben Carson former Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Shane Winnings of Promise Keepers, and Abby Johnson formerly with Planned Parenthood.

This was the political backdrop that Robinson was stepping into. He appeared in a floor length black Roman cassock topped with a mozzetta sartorial cape. He is always stylishly dressed.

Through the years his diaconal/priestly demeanor has changed. As a man of color – his mother is a British gentlewoman and his father’s folks come from Jamaica making him a light-skinned mixed-race child – he initially wore a full Afro hairdo. Then following his ordination as a Old Catholic priest his hair became closely cropped. Then after coming to the United States, he has started wearing a beard with a few tell tail grey hairs beginning to show.

At the pro-life summit the then-ACC priest encouraged his American audience to stay the course in defending preborn life. A fight he feels has already been lost in England.

“Every country in Europe is embracing death. America, as I can see, is the only country fighting for life,” he said. “God bless all of you for what you are doing.”

Then, using very poor judgement, he added a controversial hand motion. “Please keep doing it. I hope I can encourage you …” he continued.

“and my heart goes out to you …” he said as he placed his hand on his heart and then reached out to the crowd. “God bless.”

As he left the podium he was met with laughter, applause and cheers.

What the crowd was responding to was the questionable hand motion. The stiff-armed 45⁰ salute was seen only days before when Elon Musk forcibly gave a similar stiff-armed salute during Trump's Inauguration Day festivities. It was his way of thanking American voters for returning Trump to the Oval Office.

Robinson was apparently trying to imitate Musk. Whereas Musk’s salute was forcefully done three times while grimacing. Robinson's hand-to-heart one time salute was more natural in an attempt to convey heartfelt emotion rather than political rhetoric.

“At the end of an encouraging pro-life speech, I gave a cheeky nod to Elon Musk, mocking the ludicrous response he received to sending his heart out to the crowd in his excitement at the inauguration,” Robinson explained in Monday's email missive. “I sent my heart out to the wonderful audience at the pro-life summit. It was well received at the time and immediately afterwards. That is, until the hard-Left caught hold of it and decided to label me a nazi.”

Yet the similarity between Musk's and Robinson's salutes and the WWII Nazi salute are striking and can easily be misconstrued, landing the priest in hot water making him lose his parish and possibly jeopardizing his American immigration status as well.

19th CENTURY FLAG SALUTE

Historically the Nazi Salute is a corruption of what is called the “Bellamy Salute” that American school children initially used when reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.

The Rev. Francis Bellamy, a Baptist pastor, penned the first publicly recited version of the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag in 1892 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ sailing the ocean blue and landing on San Salvador in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492.

A Presidential Proclamation called for the special national holiday honoring Christopher Columbus to take place on Friday, October 21 rather than October 12. This is when Bellamy's Pledge was first recited as a part of an initiative to bolster the Schoolhouse Flag Movement to get Old Glory into all American schools. Bellamy's Pledge of Allegiance was coupled with Bellamy's straight – not 45⁰ – stiff-armed flag salute.

The change in date was to account for the switch between the Julian and Gregorian calendars.

Bellamy's original words were: ‘I pledge Allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.”

Wikipedia explains: “The recital was accompanied with a salute to the flag known as the Bellamy salute.”

This flag salute was created by James B. Upham as the gesture that was to accompany the Pledge of Allegiance of the United States of America, but the salute was named after Francis Bellamy who wrote the text.

The Bellamy flag salute was inherently used by school children until late 1942 the year after the United States entered World War II.

The straight stiff-armed flag salute was officially replaced by the now familiar hand-over-heart gesture of respect when the 77th Congress amended the Flag Code on December 22,1942 when Public Law 77-829 was enacted.

The joint Flag Code resolution was passed to codify and emphasize existing rules and customs pertaining to the display and use of the United States flag. It was enacted because the familiar Bellamy flag salute was usurped by the Nazis in the 1920s and 1930s in the run up to World War II.

The Nazi salute shows allegiance to a single person – Adolph Hitler – not a country, nor a flag. And it has remained associated with him ever since.

ROBINSON'S MISSTEP

Musk's 45⁰ stiff-armed gesture is not as furious as portrayed. But for Robinson, an “Anglican” priest, it was very bad optics. Such as in 2020 when President Trump went to St. John Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square for a photo op holding up a Bible during the height of the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests.

Robinson's bishops saw the gesture as a “pro-Nazi salute” which was the straw that broke the camel's back in dealing with their new politicized priest.

“At approximately 3:00 pm today (1/29) members of the College of Bishops of the ACC were made aware of a post made on X showing the end of a speech made by Calvin Robinson at the National Pro-Life Summit in Washington, DC,” the ACC posted last week. “In it, he closed his comments with a gesture that many have interpreted as a pro-Nazi salute.”

Robinson is young, not yet 40, and he is an inexperienced priest. The oils of ordination haven't fully dried from his palms and the Character of the Priesthood hasn't fully formed him. He has yet to learn prudence, humility, charity and obedience to his superiors. He has an ego perhaps from his strong Internet presence as a religious and political influencer.

Nor did the Anglican Catholic Church fully understand Robinson when it took him under its wings. And apparently it wasn't understood that the British priest would be that political, provocative and problematic coupled with polemical rhetoric as well as hard to leash and tether to his parish.

In today's hyper politicized world any stiff-armed salute naturally draws references to the Nazi regime especially since the 80th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz would occur in two days (January 27).

The ACC initial statement had strong words to say about the optics Robinson presented.

“We condemn Nazi ideology and anti-Semitism in all its forms. And we believe that those who mimic the Nazi salute, even as a joke or an attempt to troll their opponents, trivialize the horror of the Holocaust and diminish the sacrifice of those who fought against its perpetrators.” the ACC posted. “Such actions are harmful, divisive, and contrary to the tenets of Christian charity.”

Robinson went on Facebook to defend himself chalking it up to British dry wit. “For the record, in case it needs saying: I am not a Nazi,” he posted. “My attempt at dry wit, in that typical British way, was not a joke at the expense of WWII, nor an admission of my membership in the Nationalist Socialist Party.”

The English priest has his detractors, but he also has his passionate supporters. But the optics he created has reflected negatively on his denomination, the wider Church and Christianity. The Gospel failed to be faithfully represented.

LIMITED OPTIONS

The ACC is emphatic about Robinson's future with them. He has burned his bridges behind him. His options are very limited.

“He may seek a new Church to affiliate with, or continue an independent online ministry,” the ACC explains. “What he may not do is serve in the ACC or with its ecumenical partners.”

This means he cannot approach the Anglican Church in America; or the Anglican Province of America seeking an altar, pulpit and rectory.

Calvin Robinson is a priest and not a politician. His place is behind a pulpit and not a podium. On Candlemas Sunday (Feb. 2) he did not have a parish

family to celebrate the Eucharist with and his stay in America may be precarious due to the dictates of his religious work visa.

Mary Ann Mueller is a journalist living in Texas. She is a regular contributor to VirtueOnline.