The Grail Church: Ancient Tradition and Renewed Flowering is a 1995 book by Sean Manchester, published by Holy Grail, setting out his account of what he terms the "Grail Church" — a claimed early British form of Christianity said to have arrived in the first century, distinct from the later Anglo-Saxon and Roman Catholic traditions established in England.
Overview
The book traces a legend, longstanding in parts of British folklore, that Joseph of Arimathea travelled to the British Isles and established an early Christian church at Glastonbury in Somerset, predating the arrival of Roman Catholic Christianity under Augustine. Manchester's account holds that this "British Church" was gradually absorbed into the Roman Catholic Church, notably following the Synod of Whitby in 664 AD, but that its memory and symbolic tradition persisted and was later revived. Manchester, an Old Catholic bishop of the Apostolic Church of the Holy Grail, presents the book partly as an account of this claimed spiritual lineage's recovery and continuation into the present day, describing its central purpose as offering spiritual sanctuary amid what he characterises as growing secularism and moral decline in modern Britain.
Reception
The book has received a more favourable response than some of Manchester's other works, with reviewers noting it as well-researched within the tradition of British Christian legend, and of particular interest to readers already familiar with the broader Joseph of Arimathea and Glastonbury legends associated with the region.