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"Whatever you can do, or
dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in
it!”
- William Hutchinson Murray
"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterwards. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have the right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right. Law never made men a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it, even the well disposed are daily made the agents of injustice."
- Henry David Thoreau
"We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time."
- T.S. Eliot
- William Hutchinson Murray
"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterwards. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have the right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right. Law never made men a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it, even the well disposed are daily made the agents of injustice."
- Henry David Thoreau
"We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time."
- T.S. Eliot
About John Kersey
H.G.
The Most Revd. Professor John Kersey, MKNL, GCSC, KCStG, KGStJ, was born in
London in 1972, ordained in 2002 and consecrated to the episcopate in
the Liberal Catholic tradition in 2006.
In March 2008, John Kersey was elected Metropolitan Primate of the Liberal Catholic Apostolic Church under the religious title of His Grace Mar Joannes III. Consequently, he has overall responsibility for a church with clergy and communities in the United Kingdom and United States and its dependent religious orders and societies, as well as for its wider outreach through the Independent Liberal Catholic Fellowship. The LCAC is a member of the International Council of Community Churches and through the ICCC shares in membership of bodies including the World Council of Churches and Churches Uniting in Christ. In July 2008, he was further appointed as official representative of the Apostolic Episcopal Church in the UK in succession to the late Archbishop George Boyer.
H.G. Mar Joannes III is 116th in direct Apostolic Succession from the Apostle St Thomas through the Chaldean Catholic line and 139th in direct Apostolic Succession from the Apostle St Peter through the Syrian-Orthodox Antiochian line. He is also in succession from the Apostles St James the Less and St Andrew. He is a member of the Sophia Circle, the international association of bishops in the esoteric tradition.
In addition to his religious responsibilities, which in common with all Liberal Catholic clergy are non-stipendiary, John Kersey is also an award-winning concert pianist and a radical educationalist. Both an economic and social libertarian with strong Rothbardian leanings, he regards intellectual freedom and the expression of individual creativity and spirituality as essentials for a progressive and fulfilled society, and seeks to promote a radical inclusivity as an alternative to prevalent hegemonic and authoritarian paradigms. He is a member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in the USA and a subscriber to the Libertarian Alliance in the UK. In recent years he has debated for Civitas advocating UK withdrawal from the European Union, and has been an invited speaker at meetings of the Adam Smith Institute TNG, Café Philo at the Institut Français, and the Libertarian Alliance.
Educated at institutions including The Latymer School, Edmonton, the Royal College of Music, Christ's College, Cambridge, and INSEAD, he holds the degrees of Bachelor of Music with First Class Honours and Master of Music in Performance Studies: Applied Research, of the Royal College of Music. He holds a further master's degree in history (specialising in the history of private tertiary education), and doctorates in music, humanities and divinity from institutions in Denmark, France and the USA respectively.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts at the youngest possible age of 25, and is also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. He is a Freeman of the City of London and Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians, and a member of the Royal Over-Seas League.
In 2002, John Kersey received the Medal of Honour for Science and Art of the Österreichische Albert Schweitzer-Gesellschaft (ÖASG), and an honorary visiting professorship from the Parthasarathy International Cultural Academy in Chennai, India. In the following year, he became the first non-German to receive the Friedrich Silcher Medal in Bronze of the Chorgruppe Aartal of the Dill-Sängerbund of the Hessischer Sängerbund, Hessen, Germany. At a ceremony in Rochester Cathedral he was invested as a Knight Commander of the International Knightly Order Vitéz of St George (Hungary), and further appointed as an Honorary Colonel of the Hungarian National Guard (Magyar Nemzetõrség), having also received the National Guard Grand Cross and its Medal of the Hungarian Freedom Fighters. At a ceremony in Coventry's Guildhall he was invested as a Knight of Grace of the Order of St John of Jerusalem - The Hereditary Order (Malta). He is also a Chevalier Grand Cross of the Military and Religious Order of St Cornelius the Centurion (Anglican Independent Communion).
He has received several honorary awards from educational institutions around the world, including in 2001 an honorary Cultural Doctorate in the Philosophy of Music from the World University Roundtable, Arizona, USA. He is an honorary member of the International Writers and Artists Association, Ohio, USA, an honorary fellow of the Central Institute, London, and a member of the International High IQ Society, New York, USA. In 2003, he was appointed a Deputy of the International States Parliament for Safety and Peace, a diplomatic organisation based in Italy that works to promote peace throughout the world.
In March 2008, John Kersey was elected Metropolitan Primate of the Liberal Catholic Apostolic Church under the religious title of His Grace Mar Joannes III. Consequently, he has overall responsibility for a church with clergy and communities in the United Kingdom and United States and its dependent religious orders and societies, as well as for its wider outreach through the Independent Liberal Catholic Fellowship. The LCAC is a member of the International Council of Community Churches and through the ICCC shares in membership of bodies including the World Council of Churches and Churches Uniting in Christ. In July 2008, he was further appointed as official representative of the Apostolic Episcopal Church in the UK in succession to the late Archbishop George Boyer.
H.G. Mar Joannes III is 116th in direct Apostolic Succession from the Apostle St Thomas through the Chaldean Catholic line and 139th in direct Apostolic Succession from the Apostle St Peter through the Syrian-Orthodox Antiochian line. He is also in succession from the Apostles St James the Less and St Andrew. He is a member of the Sophia Circle, the international association of bishops in the esoteric tradition.
In addition to his religious responsibilities, which in common with all Liberal Catholic clergy are non-stipendiary, John Kersey is also an award-winning concert pianist and a radical educationalist. Both an economic and social libertarian with strong Rothbardian leanings, he regards intellectual freedom and the expression of individual creativity and spirituality as essentials for a progressive and fulfilled society, and seeks to promote a radical inclusivity as an alternative to prevalent hegemonic and authoritarian paradigms. He is a member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in the USA and a subscriber to the Libertarian Alliance in the UK. In recent years he has debated for Civitas advocating UK withdrawal from the European Union, and has been an invited speaker at meetings of the Adam Smith Institute TNG, Café Philo at the Institut Français, and the Libertarian Alliance.
Educated at institutions including The Latymer School, Edmonton, the Royal College of Music, Christ's College, Cambridge, and INSEAD, he holds the degrees of Bachelor of Music with First Class Honours and Master of Music in Performance Studies: Applied Research, of the Royal College of Music. He holds a further master's degree in history (specialising in the history of private tertiary education), and doctorates in music, humanities and divinity from institutions in Denmark, France and the USA respectively.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts at the youngest possible age of 25, and is also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. He is a Freeman of the City of London and Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians, and a member of the Royal Over-Seas League.
In 2002, John Kersey received the Medal of Honour for Science and Art of the Österreichische Albert Schweitzer-Gesellschaft (ÖASG), and an honorary visiting professorship from the Parthasarathy International Cultural Academy in Chennai, India. In the following year, he became the first non-German to receive the Friedrich Silcher Medal in Bronze of the Chorgruppe Aartal of the Dill-Sängerbund of the Hessischer Sängerbund, Hessen, Germany. At a ceremony in Rochester Cathedral he was invested as a Knight Commander of the International Knightly Order Vitéz of St George (Hungary), and further appointed as an Honorary Colonel of the Hungarian National Guard (Magyar Nemzetõrség), having also received the National Guard Grand Cross and its Medal of the Hungarian Freedom Fighters. At a ceremony in Coventry's Guildhall he was invested as a Knight of Grace of the Order of St John of Jerusalem - The Hereditary Order (Malta). He is also a Chevalier Grand Cross of the Military and Religious Order of St Cornelius the Centurion (Anglican Independent Communion).
He has received several honorary awards from educational institutions around the world, including in 2001 an honorary Cultural Doctorate in the Philosophy of Music from the World University Roundtable, Arizona, USA. He is an honorary member of the International Writers and Artists Association, Ohio, USA, an honorary fellow of the Central Institute, London, and a member of the International High IQ Society, New York, USA. In 2003, he was appointed a Deputy of the International States Parliament for Safety and Peace, a diplomatic organisation based in Italy that works to promote peace throughout the world.
Work in music
John Kersey is
particularly known as a concert pianist for
his pioneering work in researching and bringing unknown
nineteenth-century music to a wider public. He is author of a
major series of première recordings consisting of over 100
nineteenth-century works which are available on compact disc via his
record label, Romantic
Discoveries Recordings. His playing has been described as
"superb" (Newsletter of
the Guild of
Musicians and Singers) and "simply mellifluous" (Grantham Journal).
In 2006, he released the first recording of the original, unfinished version of Beethoven's Sonata in D major, Biamonti 213, together with other Beethoven unfinished sonatas and sketches, in a CD described as a "treasure trove" by the website The Unheard Beethoven. He has also made the first recordings of music by Alkan, Sir Frederic Cowen, Clara Schumann, Czerny, S.S. Wesley and Friedrich Bürgmuller. In February 2005, he was 'Editor's Pick - Classical' on CNET's Download.com, and in September 2006 was their 'Pick of the Day', the Editor saying "This British pianist has devoted his career to unearthing great lost composers, and he plays them with genuine reverence". His work has been featured on several American radio stations and on Dutch radio. He founded the online Henselt Library at European-American University which makes rarities of nineteenth-century piano music available to the public.
Making his professional début at London's Purcell Room aged seventeen, he gave over 800 public performances in the ensuing seven years, appearing both as concerto and recital soloist and collaborative artist, and also as an organist and continuo harpsichordist. In the course of his performing career, he has been presented to HRH the Prince of Wales, performed before the President of Portugal and appeared at all of London's major concert halls. With mezzo-soprano Sarah Tyler, he gave the public première of Jonathan Dove's song-cycle All the Future Days to poems by Ursula Vaughan Williams in the presence of the composer and lyricist, and he has also given the British concert premiéres of works by Beethoven, Alkan and S.S. Wesley, among others.
Since the late 1990s, John Kersey's musical interests have been concentrated in historical scholarship and recording, and also increasingly in composition, where his style is best described as Neo-Romantic. His compositions include two major song-cycles, Bathsheba and Inscape, and other vocal, instrumental and orchestral works. Several well-received London concerts have featured him performing his music with other artists. He has also been active as a critic, currently writing for International Piano on historic and modern piano recordings, and previously for Tempo, International Record Review and Hi-Fi News and Record Review.
John Kersey graduated as the top pianist of his year from the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Professor Yu Chun-Yee (who described him as "immensely gifted"), and was later elected to a Junior Fellowship. During his time at the RCM, he was awarded a dozen prizes and awards, including the Sir Arthur Bliss Trust Solo Piano Prize, the Sir Percy Buck Award, the Bernard Stevens Performance Prize, the Marjorie and Arnold Ziff Prize for an outstanding Diploma Recital, the Ernst Pauer Prize, the Margot Hamilton Prize, the Teresa Carreño Memorial Piano Prize and the Constance Poupard Prize.
He is a Fellow of the Curwen College of Music, Metropolitan College of Music (where he also serves on Council) and Norwich School of Church Music, and an Honorary Fellow of the Academy of Saint Cecilia, ICMA, the Central Academy of Music and the North and Midlands School of Music.
In 2006, he released the first recording of the original, unfinished version of Beethoven's Sonata in D major, Biamonti 213, together with other Beethoven unfinished sonatas and sketches, in a CD described as a "treasure trove" by the website The Unheard Beethoven. He has also made the first recordings of music by Alkan, Sir Frederic Cowen, Clara Schumann, Czerny, S.S. Wesley and Friedrich Bürgmuller. In February 2005, he was 'Editor's Pick - Classical' on CNET's Download.com, and in September 2006 was their 'Pick of the Day', the Editor saying "This British pianist has devoted his career to unearthing great lost composers, and he plays them with genuine reverence". His work has been featured on several American radio stations and on Dutch radio. He founded the online Henselt Library at European-American University which makes rarities of nineteenth-century piano music available to the public.
Making his professional début at London's Purcell Room aged seventeen, he gave over 800 public performances in the ensuing seven years, appearing both as concerto and recital soloist and collaborative artist, and also as an organist and continuo harpsichordist. In the course of his performing career, he has been presented to HRH the Prince of Wales, performed before the President of Portugal and appeared at all of London's major concert halls. With mezzo-soprano Sarah Tyler, he gave the public première of Jonathan Dove's song-cycle All the Future Days to poems by Ursula Vaughan Williams in the presence of the composer and lyricist, and he has also given the British concert premiéres of works by Beethoven, Alkan and S.S. Wesley, among others.
Since the late 1990s, John Kersey's musical interests have been concentrated in historical scholarship and recording, and also increasingly in composition, where his style is best described as Neo-Romantic. His compositions include two major song-cycles, Bathsheba and Inscape, and other vocal, instrumental and orchestral works. Several well-received London concerts have featured him performing his music with other artists. He has also been active as a critic, currently writing for International Piano on historic and modern piano recordings, and previously for Tempo, International Record Review and Hi-Fi News and Record Review.
John Kersey graduated as the top pianist of his year from the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Professor Yu Chun-Yee (who described him as "immensely gifted"), and was later elected to a Junior Fellowship. During his time at the RCM, he was awarded a dozen prizes and awards, including the Sir Arthur Bliss Trust Solo Piano Prize, the Sir Percy Buck Award, the Bernard Stevens Performance Prize, the Marjorie and Arnold Ziff Prize for an outstanding Diploma Recital, the Ernst Pauer Prize, the Margot Hamilton Prize, the Teresa Carreño Memorial Piano Prize and the Constance Poupard Prize.
He is a Fellow of the Curwen College of Music, Metropolitan College of Music (where he also serves on Council) and Norwich School of Church Music, and an Honorary Fellow of the Academy of Saint Cecilia, ICMA, the Central Academy of Music and the North and Midlands School of Music.
Work in education
A
libertarian and progressive educationalist, John Kersey places emphasis
on the role of the private sector in achieving high standards, the
fulfilment of individual potential and person-centred education. His
writings on higher education stress the importance of educational
institutions being accountable to the free market as a means of
ensuring high standards and diversity, and the ideological dangers of
suppression of innovation, market protectionism and political
manipulation consequent upon governmental control of the universities.
He takes a particular interest in private sector provision across the ideological spectrum, strongly supporting new and innovative education projects that seek to empower students, and both corporate and proprietorial models of the private university. In addition, he advocates the liberating potential of distance learning and other developments in flexible curriculum delivery. In educational outlook he is particularly influenced by figures such as Carl R. Rogers, Rudolf Steiner, Maria Montessori, E.G. West and A.S. Neill. He is also interested in the Taking Children Seriously philosophy, and in the educational philosophy of Karl Popper. In a 2007 paper for the Libertarian Alliance he drew attention to the plight of homeschoolers in Belgium facing state repression.
His short book A History of the Central School of Religion traces the history of one of the oldest of America's still-extant private institutions providing education via distance learning. In the course of a number of individual and collaborative articles and papers for the Amos Bronson Alcott Center at European-American University (published by European-American University Press), he has examined both historical and contemporary issues affecting the private and progressive tertiary sectors, with a particular emphasis on their analysis in political terms. This controversial work has provided an exposé of the prevailing educational establishment and a robust challenge to its foundations in crude market protectionism and authoritarian models of mass education.
John Kersey has taught at every level from primary school to postgraduate, embracing a number of arts and science subjects. Following his junior fellowship at the Royal College of Music, he went on to help start the BA joint honours programme in Music at Morley College and South Bank University. Subsequent full-time posts in the independent further education sector included those of Head of Department, Academic Administrator and Vice-Principal, in addition to part-time examining for several national boards. Several of his music students have been award-winners at national level. He has also taught and consulted for a number of private-sector universities working via distance learning.
In 2005, in recognition of his expertise in credential-related matters, he received an invitation to move from teaching into educational consultancy. Here, his work has centred on international academic credentials and their contexts, principally for the benefit of law firms and their clients in the United States. His company Marquess Educational Consultants, Ltd., has provided expert opinion on over one thousand cases, and continues to be in demand to deal with the most complex and problematic of credential-related matters. In 2005, he co-authored research on the equivalency of South-East Asian degrees that subsequently helped to achieve greater justice for professionals from the sub-continent in terms of their treatment by the US immigration authorities. He continues to carry out research in this area.
For some years, John Kersey has worked with others towards the aim of creating a genuinely independent global online university that would put into action the spiritual and political principles of holistic education now absent from the mainstream tertiary sector. The fulfilment of this process is European-American University, the educational outreach of the Liberal Catholic Apostolic Church's Society for Humanistic Potential, of which he became President in August 2007. EAU opened its virtual doors to the public in November 2007 and has already received acclaim as a highly innovative and progressive venture in alternative education. In July 2008 it received accreditation from the International States Parliament for Safety and Peace.
In 2008, John Kersey was elected a Fellow of the Academic Society of London in recognition of his contribution to non-traditional education.
He takes a particular interest in private sector provision across the ideological spectrum, strongly supporting new and innovative education projects that seek to empower students, and both corporate and proprietorial models of the private university. In addition, he advocates the liberating potential of distance learning and other developments in flexible curriculum delivery. In educational outlook he is particularly influenced by figures such as Carl R. Rogers, Rudolf Steiner, Maria Montessori, E.G. West and A.S. Neill. He is also interested in the Taking Children Seriously philosophy, and in the educational philosophy of Karl Popper. In a 2007 paper for the Libertarian Alliance he drew attention to the plight of homeschoolers in Belgium facing state repression.
His short book A History of the Central School of Religion traces the history of one of the oldest of America's still-extant private institutions providing education via distance learning. In the course of a number of individual and collaborative articles and papers for the Amos Bronson Alcott Center at European-American University (published by European-American University Press), he has examined both historical and contemporary issues affecting the private and progressive tertiary sectors, with a particular emphasis on their analysis in political terms. This controversial work has provided an exposé of the prevailing educational establishment and a robust challenge to its foundations in crude market protectionism and authoritarian models of mass education.
John Kersey has taught at every level from primary school to postgraduate, embracing a number of arts and science subjects. Following his junior fellowship at the Royal College of Music, he went on to help start the BA joint honours programme in Music at Morley College and South Bank University. Subsequent full-time posts in the independent further education sector included those of Head of Department, Academic Administrator and Vice-Principal, in addition to part-time examining for several national boards. Several of his music students have been award-winners at national level. He has also taught and consulted for a number of private-sector universities working via distance learning.
In 2005, in recognition of his expertise in credential-related matters, he received an invitation to move from teaching into educational consultancy. Here, his work has centred on international academic credentials and their contexts, principally for the benefit of law firms and their clients in the United States. His company Marquess Educational Consultants, Ltd., has provided expert opinion on over one thousand cases, and continues to be in demand to deal with the most complex and problematic of credential-related matters. In 2005, he co-authored research on the equivalency of South-East Asian degrees that subsequently helped to achieve greater justice for professionals from the sub-continent in terms of their treatment by the US immigration authorities. He continues to carry out research in this area.
For some years, John Kersey has worked with others towards the aim of creating a genuinely independent global online university that would put into action the spiritual and political principles of holistic education now absent from the mainstream tertiary sector. The fulfilment of this process is European-American University, the educational outreach of the Liberal Catholic Apostolic Church's Society for Humanistic Potential, of which he became President in August 2007. EAU opened its virtual doors to the public in November 2007 and has already received acclaim as a highly innovative and progressive venture in alternative education. In July 2008 it received accreditation from the International States Parliament for Safety and Peace.
In 2008, John Kersey was elected a Fellow of the Academic Society of London in recognition of his contribution to non-traditional education.
Work in the church
John Kersey's work within the Liberal Catholic Apostolic Church includes responsibility for the church's international administration as a member of its College of Bishops as well as the direct administration of the Independent Liberal Catholic Fellowship, in addition to his busy sacramental and funeral ministries. He is also Director of the Arnold Harris Mathew Center for the Study of the Independent Sacramental Movement at European-American University.The Mathew Center is the first and only university center to be devoted to the study of the ISM deriving from Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Anglican roots in the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries, and is the only center to promote scholarship into the Independent Sacramental Movement from within the movement itself.
The Center has access to a large archive of key historic source documents on the ISM, some of which have been placed online, and is engaged in the promulgation of both research into the ISM and the reprinting of key out-of-print or otherwise hard-to-obtain texts in high-quality hardcover editions (via European-American University Press). John Kersey is editor of the new edition of C.W. Leadbeater's esoteric masterpiece The Science of the Sacraments, which presents that text complete, in contrast to most other editions available, and also of two shorter works by Bernard Mary Williams, second Archbishop of the Old Roman Catholic Church of Great Britain. His research in the area of the Apostolic Succession in the ISM has been published as The Apostolic Succession in The Liberal Rite, to be followed by a second updated edition, The Apostolic Succession in The Liberal Catholic Apostolic Church, later in 2008.
John Kersey maintains contact and dialogue with other scholars in the area of the Independent Sacramental Movement and has collaborated in particular with Archbishop Bertil Persson, Emeritus Primate of the Apostolic Episcopal Church. In 2008, he assisted with research for the Encyclopedia of American Religions by the Revd. Dr. J. Gordon Melton, the standard text of its kind. His own biography features as a chapter of the forthcoming book A Strange Vocation: Independent Bishops Tell Their Stories, edited by Bishop Alistair Bate and published by Apocryphile Press.