Bishop Michael Curry, who captivated the world with his address at the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, speaks to Peter Stanford
It was, it has been claimed, the biggest single airing of the Christian message in the history of the world.
When Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount, his voice only reached as far it would carry into the crowd.
When Bishop Michael Curry preached at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in May, with the sort of exuberant pulpit oratory that the ever-so-British St George’s Chapel has rarely witnessed, he had a global audience of two billion hear him proclaim the power of God’s love.
His 13 minutes in the world spotlight may have raised eyebrows among the assembled Windsors – TV cameras caught the Duchess of Cornwall looking somewhat amused under her pink feathered hat, and the less subtle Princess Eugenie giggling nervously as she tried to catch the eye of other family members.
However, it has made a celebrity of the head of America’s two-million strong Episcopal Church, previously little known outside the States.
Invitations suddenly started flooding in and his diary is now filled into 2020.
That congestion means that the 65-year-old bishop, the first African-American ever to lead his country’s branch of Anglicanism, is on a 48-hour flying visit to London.
Outside London’s Southwark Cathedral people are queuing for the chance to see him speak in the flesh as he launches The Power of Love, a new book that includes both Harry and Meghan’s wedding sermon and some of his other finest moments in the pulpit.
Inside, he is every bit as genial and compelling in person as he appeared that sunny day in May.
The invitation to preach for the royal couple, he recalls, came completely out of the blue.
He had a visit to the diocese of Arizona booked for that date when a “phone call came from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s staff at Lambeth Palace”.
Had he had any previous contact with Meghan Markle before, I wonder, or was there any attempt to check him out first?
“No. I was just happily minding my own business and . . .”
He leans forward, looks me straight in the eye, as is his way, and gives an almighty chuckle.
“It was a member of my staff who found me. I told him, ‘stop’. I just thought it was a joke. ‘Get serious’. He had to convince me it was really for real.”
The post-wedding analysis has cast Bishop Curry’s appearance as choreographed by the now Duke and Duchess of Sussex to convey a particular inclusive message.
But now he seems to be suggesting that his participation was in fact the idea of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, rather than Meghan – who had not even been baptised until days before the wedding, and who, despite being born in America, had no link with the Episcopalian Church.
“It was a decision of the royal couple,” Bishop Curry replies diplomatically.
For all his abundant good humour and ebullient nature, he is now treading with great care.
“They were in consultation with their advisers, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. I wasn’t privy to how they arrived at that decision.”
His contact with the happy couple, in the build up to the wedding, was at one step removed.
He wasn’t given a particular theme, just the reference for the Bible reading from the Song of Songs that they had chosen.
He, then, made of it what he wanted, without any prompting.
Did they approve his script before he delivered it so strikingly?
“Oh yes. They were really very gracious about it. We submitted the manuscript a week or two before, I don’t know who read it, but I know it was looked at.”
It was, he explains, more a matter of making sure there weren’t language issues.
“Well, you have to remember too that I’m an American. We all speak English, but something that means one thing on our side of the pond may mean something else on your side.”
Once he was in Windsor, with his wife, Sharon [with whom he has two grown-up daughters], he attended one of many rehearsals, but the couple weren’t there.
He didn’t actually meet Harry and Meghan before they were sitting in front of him at the altar. What about afterwards?
“I met them at the initial reception, the family one. It was just, ‘hello and thank you and very kind’.”
And was he presented to the Queen? As we have all recently been reminded by The Crown, in the Fifties she was quite taken by Billy Graham, whose evangelical preaching style has echoes in Bishop Curry’s way to delivering a sermon.
“Oh no, no, no. I don’t know how many people were there. There must have been a thousand people, wandering around the rooms and talking.”
And, he adds, he didn’t stay for long. The Archbishop of Canterbury whisked him off to St Albans Cathedral to attend an evening event with 1,000 young people.
Bishop Curry is clearly not someone nervous of speaking in public, but surely the prospect of having such a prominent role at an event that was going to be televised all around the world must have daunted him a little?
“I know it sounds like humble pie, but I was really conscious of wanting Michael to get out of the way,” he answers.
“But we are all human and we are all complex and, oh my God, this was the Royal family.
“Still, I wanted this message of the way of love to get across. And that isn’t about me, or you, but about us. In the end that’s what matters.” He ends on a whisper.
He certainly has a specific preaching style, which may have prompted the raised eyebrows in the congregation on the day.
So, what, does he think makes for a good preacher?
“Well, I don’t know if you ever watch jazz artists. Many are classically trained, but the jazz happens when they take what is the text, the notes on the page, and then riffs, improvises and weaves it around, and brings life to what is on the page.
“So I preach like that. There is this text, but then there is this riffing. That’s where the Holy Spirit comes in.”
Part and parcel of his rhetorical style, though, is to touch on the current parlous state of the world without getting into naming and shaming. It was there in his wedding sermon and explains, he believes, why it made such an impact.
“The message of love, and how that’s the key to life for us all, that resonated.
“Most have a sense that we must find a way to live together as a human community, whether for the sake of the planet, or the implications of change in our climate and environment. No individual nation can solve that alone.”
In my briefing notes before the interview, it said the bishop would not answer questions about Donald Trump, but the link between what he has just said and the policies of the president is unmissable.
And it is there, too, in another sermon on loving neighbours included in the book that Bishop Curry preached at an immigration detention centre in the States for women who had been separated from their children.
Speaking truth to power – whether to presidents or princes – is for Bishop Michael Curry a subtle art, rooted in scripture but delivered with warmth, sincerity and panache, as seen at the royal wedding.
“It was,” he muses, “like that violin string when it hits the perfect note and pitch. It causes the other strings to vibrate. The message hits the moment and a deep human need that is in all of us.”
The Power of Love by Bishop Michael Curry is published by Hodder and is available now for £14.99. – The Daily Telegraph