Saturday, December 20, 1997

Twitching faithful find God in vision of Diana's flowers

By MARTIN WROE / London Observer Service

LONDON -- A young woman is bent double and on her knees, wailing as if in childbirth. Nearby, a businessman in pinstripes falls to the ground and lies jerking gently. Someone else is laughing like a hyena.

A stone's throw from the Houses of Parliament, a primitive religious revival is breaking out in a former Christian Science Church. Its origins lie with a housewife from the northern English city of Sheffield and the "prophecy" of Princess Diana's death that she is said to have received last May.

More than 40,000 people have so far attended the nightly meetings organized by Gerald Coates and his Pioneer People, a nationwide chain of "house-churches" based in Surrey, in southeast England. They believe that Britain is about to turn back to God and that Diana's death was the sign.

"Just let it come, Lord," moans Coates, wearing jeans and running shoes. "Let it come strong."

As the rock band plays on, most of the 200 souls in the cavernous Victorian building not already flat out on the floor are shaking, twitching or speaking in tongues.

"There's little doubt the Diana Prophecy is a sign,' " says Coates. "Revival is coming, but it may not be within the established churches."

Ginny Burgin, 43, the wife of a Sheffield taxi driver, was praying on May 18 when she claims to have received a "mental image" that Britain would shortly go into mourning and the streets of its cities would be carpeted with flowers. She wrote it all down and told her minister, who told her to wait and tell no one.

But on the morning of Aug. 31, when Diana died in Paris, Mrs. Burgin revealed her prophecy to startled fellow members at Wortley Baptist Church. She added: "Do not despise the day of small things. For I tell you, when you see the sign, I am on the move, says the Lord. And I am on the move in the cities of this nation and where the flowers are laid."

Before the day was out, the first flowers were being laid; by the end of that week, atheist florists everywhere were praising God for their good fortune. Within weeks, word of "the Diana Prophecy" had spread like wildfire through evangelical churches.

"I wasn't prophesying Diana's death,' " Mrs Burgin said in an interview last week. "I saw a nation in mourning, a day when everything ground to a halt ... I think that was the day of her funeral."

Coates and the members of his 12,000-strong Pioneer People charismatic church believe wholeheartedly in the Diana Prophecy. The signs of spiritual awakening are all around, he says, for those with eyes to see.

"There is a softness in people since Diana's death. They are asking about faith,' " he says. "God uses national events prophetically ..."

He cites mass conversions in British prisons and among the Gypsy population as signs the Diana Prophecy is already being fulfilled.

The Rev. Sue Talbot of Manchester University, an Anglican priest researching dreams, visions and altered states of consciousness, says the Diana Prophecy may have been the kind of precognition that can come in a "hypnogogic" state but is skeptical of the spin placed on it by others.

"The woman may have had a genuine spiritual experience and her vision of national mourning and flowers in the cities appears to have been vindicated, but it is a classic error for others to read religious revival into this," she adds.

The sniffiness of mainline churches at the Diana Prophecy is further evidence to revivalists that it must be authentic.

The evangelical Rt. Rev. James Jones, Bishop of Hull, in northeast England, says there are plenty of signs of renewed vitality in the Church of England -- though not connected with the Diana Prophecy. He argues that authentic religious revival is always accompanied by social action on behalf of the disadvantaged. But he does believe Diana's death has profound religious implications.

"It was guilt which motivated so many to sign books of condolences and lay flowers," he says, "but guilt is a spiritual issue which the Church teaches that only God can remit."

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)