Certainly not since the harsh Pharisee St. Paul set his sights on the road to Damascus has there been such an unlikely conversion to Christianity.
russell brand Announced this week that he has become a Christian, and was baptized last weekend. The apostle Paul was baptized in Damascus, after which ‘the scales fell off his eyes’ and his blindness was cured. The disgraced comedian’s experience was apparently more prosaic: He says he completely drowned in the notoriously dirty River Thames.
The Mail has revealed that the beleaguered brand’s spiritual rebirth – if that is what it is – has been mirrored by an upturn in its worldly fortunes. Thames Valley Police have closed their investigation into a woman’s allegations that he stalked and harassed her between 2018 and 2022.
A Thames Valley spokesperson said: ‘We have carried out a thorough investigation. There is no new scope of investigation now, unless new information comes to light. The brand remains the subject of parallel investigation Metropolitan Police On various charges of sexual offences.
He has been accused by four women of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse, which were allegedly committed over a seven-year period from 2006 to 2013, when he was at the peak of his fame and working for . BBC And channel 4 Also acted in Hollywood films.
Russell Brand announced this week that he has become a Christian, and was baptized last weekend. They say he completely drowned in the notoriously dirty River Thames
All Saints, an Anglican church near Brand’s home in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, seemed a likely candidate to baptise him – yet the church has refused to do so.
Brand has vehemently denied the allegations and insisted that their relationships were ‘always consensual’.
However, it appears that his interest in Christianity has increased significantly since being implicated in the allegations in 2023. Brand said he was baptized because he saw it as ‘an opportunity to leave the past behind’ and ‘leave sins behind’.
Reaction to the news of his baptism has been mixed. Some Christians have welcomed them into the faith, citing the Gospel of Luke that God has greater pleasure over one sinner who repents than over 99 people who remain righteous.
Others are skeptical, some suspecting a publicity stunt to tarnish his reputation and others skeptical of a man who promotes many New Age ideas and philosophies, and who Has a pick ‘n’ mix attitude towards.
He previously said he was Buddhist, and hours after his baptism he posted a video online in which he discussed predicting the future with Tarot cards.
Brand claimed that ‘Many Christians would say that tarot and even yoga are a kind of heresy’, but – indulging his pretentious and not always convincing penchant for long words – asked whether People may follow ‘hybrid modalities’ in their beliefs.
Brand has had a crucifix tattooed on his right arm since at least 2019, which suggests that his interest in Christianity is not entirely fabricated.
He told his four million Instagram followers that his baptism was an ‘incredible and profound experience’.
He said: ‘This is my way now. And I already feel incredibly blessed, relieved, nourished.’
However, Brand, whose wife Laura (daughter of golfer Bernard Gallacher) is Catholic, was oddly vague about which church he had been welcomed into.
And one would have thought that a cleric as notorious a criminal as Brand – who has spoken openly about his past womanizing and drug use – would not hesitate to say so. But an investigation by the Mail around Brand’s home near Marlow on Thames in Buckinghamshire found that no one, not even the church he attended, could give any clue as to who had Or where baptized.
Reaction to the news of the brand’s baptism has been mixed. Some Christians have welcomed him into their religion, while others suspect that it is just a publicity stunt to save his reputation.
In March, Brand said he would visit Anglican and Catholic churches and was considering Orthodox churches. He has repeatedly mentioned Catholicism in his online messages and has recently used the rosary to pray. He says he has used Helo, a Catholic prayer app, and watched videos from a YouTube Catholic priest, Father Mike Schmitz.
However, Catholic canon law states that except in ‘necessity’, baptisms must take place in a church or oratory. Catholic sources have stated that it is highly unlikely that the ceremony was conducted by a Catholic cleric.
Brand has also said that he has investigated Anglicanism by taking the Evangelistic Alpha course.
Anglican churches sometimes perform river baptisms, including the Thames, as do Pentecostal churches. According to Brand, he plucked petals from a flower to decide which church would baptize him, reading: ‘Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, Pentecostal…’
A river baptism sounds like the classic brand – for that doesn’t have to be a simple splash of water from a church font, it has to be melodramatic.
But the Mail visited churches and spoke to clergy and church officials in Henley-on-Thames and Marlow and no one acknowledged the act. Denis Harwood, warden of St Peter and St Paul’s Church in Medmenham, near Marlow, said: ‘We are completely traditional in the Hambleden Valley group and use the font in the church and that’s it.
‘No other church in the valley participates in this type of service.’
One church leader said: ‘We do baptisms but we do it here in the church, but it’s not dramatic enough for them.’
Most churches perform baptisms only at the font. According to a photo on social media, one exception is All Saints, an Anglican church in Marlow which also runs Alpha courses and which the brand has attended in the past. This seemed a likely candidate yet All Saints also declined to do so.
Father Kelvin Robinson, a longtime Catholic priest and conservative commentator, posted on Twitter last Friday urging people to ‘please keep Russell Brand in your prayers. As he approaches his baptism, and immediately thereafter, he is going to be heavily attacked by the enemy. There will be people who will tempt him, doubt him, hate him, harass him, fight over his sect.’
But about baptism he says: ‘It wasn’t me but it’s a very good thing. I am praying for him.
And where would the brand have been baptized? The beautiful thatched house, bought for £3 million in 2015, has the brand’s own garden leading straight to the river.
But none of the neighbors paid attention to the baptism. One said that although the river looks calm, it is quite choppy due to its proximity to a lock.
An elderly neighbor laughed: ‘I can’t believe he would have been baptized in this part of the Thames – he would have been swept away and never seen again.’
Brand upset the locals when he bought The Crown Inn in the village of Pyshill, south Oxfordshire, and turned it into a base for his internet broadcasting career. The Mail reported in January that despite being ‘canceled’ over sex crimes allegations, he makes millions from ‘conspiracy theory videos’ recorded in a converted pub for social media platform, Rumble.
But Brand seems popular with his neighbors, who say he talks to them when he’s out jogging or walking the dog.
Some were surprised by the news that he had been baptized.
Cowboy Sam Horner said: ‘The thing is he’s a big proponent of not going in the river because it’s dirty.’
Another burst out laughing when he explained that Brand had been baptized in the Thames. ‘He must have caught some insects there. This is the funniest thing I’ve heard. I haven’t seen Russell in a while. That’s pure comedy.
Brand likes to joke around, but his confession of Christianity may not have had the reaction he had hoped for.
Additional reporting: Stephanie Condron and Ross Slater