Читать книгу Know the Truth - George Carey - Страница 11

‘He never attempted brilliance, but thoroughness; he thought more of conscience than genius; more of great futures than little results. He was deaf to the praise or blame of the world.’

Tribute to Archbishop Frederick Temple

OUR FIRST VISIT TO ST MARY’S to meet Peter Johnston and his wife Phyllis, and to see the church and parish, was an unforgettable moment in our lives. After a distinguished ministry at St John’s, Parkstone, Dorset, Peter had only been instituted a few months before our arrival, and was beginning to find his feet in this very different parish. He was a bluff, determined and clear-sighted man with firm objectives and a steady evangelical spirituality. Phyllis was a sparkling woman a few years older than her husband. As they had married late in life, the energy and love they might have poured into family life they gave instead in generous commitment to others. Their open home and commitment to building Christian community became a lifelong model for us. We were immediately attracted to them, and an instant friendship developed. Phyllis took Eileen under her wing, and through the training and leadership I received at his hands Peter was to become one of the greatest influences on my development as a minister.

We joined a large and vigorous team. St Mary’s was – and continues to be – a leading London church. Under Peter’s predecessor Maurice Wood, later to become Bishop of Norwich, it had become very popular with students and nurses. Peter did not want to diminish this ministry, but he did want to make St Mary’s a church for those who actually lived in the parish, and this became the central plank of his policy. Islington in the sixties was not the ‘yuppie’ place it is today. It was a predominantly working-class district with a great deal of poverty, and there were many destitute families and desperate, housebound elderly people. Situated at the southern end of the A1, the church received more than its share of ‘gentlemen of the road’ – so much so that one of Peter’s initiatives included turning the crypt into a night shelter for the homeless.

St Mary’s was also distinguished for its firm commitment to the evangelical tradition. In the nineteenth century Prebendary Wilson had founded the Islington Clerical Conference, which had become a major annual gathering of evangelical clergy for fellowship and teaching, in reaction to the increasing ‘Catholicising’ of the Church of England through the Oxford Movement. Peter continued the Conference, and indeed developed it, broadening its emphasis to take into account relevant themes confronting the Church. However, he used to joke that St Mary’s was more famous for its curates than its vicars, and would trot out such names as the great hymn-writer and Methodist leader Charles Wesley, Donald Coggan, who was later to become Archbishop of Canterbury, and a future Bishop of Liverpool, David Sheppard.

My predecessor, David Fletcher, had been a very popular teacher and evangelist. I felt unworthy to be stepping into his shoes, and was secretly afraid that I might let Peter down. The senior curate was Michael MacGowan, and we were soon joined by five other staff members: David Green, Chrisanther de Mel, David Boyes, Tom Jones and John Barton. Peter was assembling a new team to serve the community.

Together with my fellow curate David Green and at least forty other young men, I was ordained Deacon of St Mary’s in St Paul’s Cathedral on Michaelmas Day 1962 by the Bishop of London, Robert Stopford. I cannot recall much of the service, except my very strong feeling of unworthiness and helplessness. I was only too well aware of my shortcomings, and the burden of my background seemed a weight too great to bear. However, I was equally aware that the grace of God was more than a promise – it was a fact in the lives of those who took the plunge. And so it proved to be.

Eileen and I lived in a tiny cottage in the grounds of the church, and there in the course of the next four years we were to bring into the world our three eldest children, Rachel, Mark and Andrew. We were poor but very happy. My stipend was very low, and Eileen recalls that her housekeeping amounted to £3.155. a week. We could not afford a car, but through the generosity of a friend were never without one to get away on our day off. We did not have a washing machine or any of the gadgets that most young married people now take for granted.

The cottage, the oldest building in Islington, was very damp, but we managed to bring up three very healthy children in it. In spite of living on our beam ends, it was a wonderful four years of training in a great parish and at a significant cultural period. London was the pulsating centre of the ‘swinging sixties’. Rock and roll was in the ascendant, and the Beatles were making their way into the hearts of the young everywhere. A heady and optimistic excitement about the future prevailed, accompanied by a cynicism towards spiritual values and tradition. The witty but irreverent That Was the Week That Was expressed the mood of the decade. The Church was not immune from the spirit of enquiry and the culture of the age. Across the River Thames, the diocese of Southwark appeared to be the vanguard of new ideas, new experiments in ministry and new approaches to gender and sexuality. In America as well as in Britain, certain theologians affirmed ‘the death of God’, by which they meant the demise of traditional ways of conceiving of Him. Harvey Cox, one of the most radical and interesting of the new wave of theologians, predicted the death of orthodox theology by the end of the century. In Britain John Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich, produced a sensational book, Honest to God, which seemed to call into question the nature of the Christian faith. In the view of the press and the chattering classes it signalled that the Church had realised at last that traditional ways of talking about God were no longer relevant. The Church was at a crossroads: either it entered this heady new world where everything was being questioned and nothing was sacred, or it lived on as an out-of-touch irrelevance in a buzzing, exciting new age.

In reality there was nothing new in Robinson’s book – it was little more than a scaled-down popularising of the thinking of such theologians as Paul Tillich, who had posited the image of God as ‘ground of being’ (rather than an external deity), Rudolf Bultmann and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor who resisted the Nazis and claimed that man had come of age. It caused an instant sensation, however, and made Robinson famous and the book a bestseller. Within weeks Archbishop Michael Ramsey, greatly alarmed by the furore aroused by Honest to God, responded with a devastating riposte arguing that, while Robinson’s concerns were very real, orthodox teaching properly understood and interpreted had the depth and strength to give confidence in the Christian faith. The irony is that today, despite the sales of Honest to God it now appears dated, whereas Michael Ramsey’s reply to it has a timeless quality.

The intellectual storm created by Honest to God was far from altogether negative. At St Mary’s, with an intelligent and discerning congregation, the opportunity was taken by the staff to preach on the themes of Robinson’s book, and we were not afraid to encourage the congregation to read it. One of my responsibilities was for the thirty-to-forty age group, which met following the Sunday-evening service. We usually numbered in excess of fifty, and sometimes up to a hundred if I managed to tempt a popular speaker to address us. In addition, I started a fortnightly study group for those who wished to explore the Christian faith more deeply, and a regular membership of twenty to thirty was soon established.

Peter was a disciplined leader whose expectations were high. Visiting the parish systematically was a priority, and each of the staff had to make twenty-five calls a week, which had to be written up with a verbal report to be presented at the Monday staff meeting. To start with I found this a great irritant, but as time went on I grew to appreciate its thoroughness and the concern for people that it demonstrated.

Without realising it at the time, I caused a small sensation in my first week by going to the local town hall and asking if I could speak to the person in charge of Social Services. I managed to see the Chief Social Officer, and after explaining who I was, asked him whether, as I would be visiting a great many people in the months and years to come, he did not agree that there would be some virtue in my knowing who was concerned with the elderly, handicapped and others from the standpoint of the Social Services. Could not some collaboration be considered?

I recall to this day the look of astonishment that passed over his face. ‘In all my years of working,’ he slowly remarked, ‘a representative of the church has never bothered to contact us or made a suggestion of this kind. I think it is a splendid idea, and we must make sure we are in touch.’ Peter Johnston was contacted later that week, and was delighted that official links would be established between Social Services and the church. For myself, I was startled that everyone found the approach so remarkable. I thought it was obvious. It was illustrative of the wide gap between the church and the community which still exists to this day. It also highlighted an unwillingness on the part of many clergy to work with other professionals.

As a curate I was required to attend Post-Ordination Training with other Deacons and young clergy in the diocese of London. ‘Potty’ training, as it was known to us all, consisted of lectures on themes related to the ordained ministry, together with essays that we had to submit at regular intervals. I had heard from others that the training was unsatisfactory, and decided to approach the Bishop of London with another idea – could I be allowed to enrol at King’s College, London to pursue a master of theology degree? Permission was given, and soon after ordination to the priesthood I began research on the Apostolic Fathers. At college I had become aware of the importance of a collection of writings – some obscure, others less so – that appeared at the end of the New Testament era and at the beginning of the second century AD. This little-known period is of critical importance for the study of the Church and its ministry, known as ecclesiology, because it was then that the Church first wrestled with vital principles relating to its development and growth throughout the Mediterranean region. I was fully aware that it would be very difficult to balance the demands of parish and family life with the obligations of a research degree, but I was determined to try. Eileen was also keen for me to do postgraduate work, and I duly registered and obtained the services of Professor H.D. McDonald, Vice Principal of London Bible College, as my supervisor. ‘Derry-Mac’, as he was popularly known, was an Irish nonconformist scholar of great erudition and ability. We clicked immediately, and the work began.

Central to my desire to study this period of the Church’s life was a fascination with the Catholic tradition of the Church, especially Roman Catholicism. All I knew of Roman Catholicism had been derived from books, largely anti-Rome, and from the partisan sermons of Pit-Pat. I was unable to accept that the Roman Catholic Church was as heretical and unreformed as I had been led to believe, and believed that research into the Apostolic Fathers would help to answer many of my questions.

I was fortunate that my study coincided with the Second Vatican Council, called by Pope John XXIII in 1959 and concluded in 1965. Although John XXIII was an old man, dismissed by many as a ‘care-taker’ Pope, his decision to call a General Council revolutionised the Catholic Church through its policy of ‘aggorniamento’ (renewal). It was a breathtaking decision. From that moment on the Roman Catholic Church entered upon an engagement with the world, other Churches and other religions that allowed it to speak again with authority.

The Second Vatican Council was having an effect at the local level too. I was asked by the Bishop of London to join a small Roman Catholic/Church of England study group to study the impressive documents of the Council. If I had any prejudices or suspicions about Catholicism, this encounter with Roman Catholic priests, religious and lay people, laid them to rest entirely. I particularly recall a Bible study when a nun of my age exclaimed, ‘We must go back to the scriptures and find our unity there!’ The statement surprised and angered me at first, but the more I thought about it, the more it appealed to me. My anger evaporated as I found myself thinking, ‘What do you mean, “get back to the scriptures”? You Catholics are the ones who have left them behind through teaching things which are not found in them.’ But I knew instinctively that such a possessive attitude to scripture was wrong, however disagreeable I might consider some aspects of RC teaching to be. She was correct – the only way forward was to go back to our common roots. Only by doing that could we find unity, by seeing one another as brothers and sisters bound by a common commitment to Jesus Christ, and not as two warring groups, each claiming to possess the whole truth and denying the other’s version.

I completed my fifty-thousand-word dissertation for the M.Th., sat a three-hour paper on the Apostolic Fathers, and then shortly before Christmas 1965 had to appear before the leading theologian Professor Eric Mascall and another examiner for the ‘viva’. It seemed to go well, but towards the end of the session I was longing for someone to put me out of my misery – had I passed or not? I didn’t feel I could ask, and believed that the examiners would certainly not tell me. But as Professor Mascall walked me to the door, he reached out his hand and, looking me intently in the eye, said, ‘You WILL have a very happy Christmas!’

All I could reply was, ‘Thank you, sir. I am so glad to hear it. Happy Christmas to you.’ I think I floated home to tell my patient wife what Eric had said. He was an outstanding scholar, and it was a privilege to have been taught by him and to have known him. I still feel a tinge of sadness that, although I regard the ordination of women as a wholly positive and necessary thing, and am delighted that under my leadership the Church of England had the courage to legislate for it, the decision caused Eric so much distress in his old age, as he felt our Church lacked the authority to take such a momentous decision alone.

Despite my other activities, ministry in the parish was certainly not neglected. I poured myself into the responsibilities entrusted to me – the work with adults, and also the Sunday school. With the help of Liz Salmon the Sunday school became a thriving and important part of the church’s mission. Liz became a friend of the family for life, and remained a committed member of St Mary’s as a churchwarden and a great supporter of missionary work abroad.

I felt strongly that the Sunday school could not rely simply on children coming to a dreary church hall on a Sunday afternoon – we had to supplement it with exciting initiatives to reach into the homes of the parish. I started a Boys’ Club, and established a football team. This certainly helped attract boys in football-mad Islington, the home of Arsenal FC. Every year during the Easter holidays several of us held a Children’s Holiday Club that attracted many youngsters. The theme varied: one year it was a ‘Wild West Week’, another the ‘Jungle Holiday Club’, another ‘Treasure Island’. Church members were roped in to assist, and we had considerable success in reaching out to the local schools and community.

The work was serious, but there were many funny moments too. One that stands out was my attempt to procure a horse and wagon for the Wild West Week. While I found a man with a horse and wagon – which in Islington was not easy – he would only hire them out if his pet monkey was also employed. There was much bemusement and laughter as I paraded through the streets of Islington dressed as a cowboy, with a monkey perched on my shoulder. It pulled in the children, however.

One of our most mischievous boys was a ten-year-old called Billy Budd. The reason I still remember his name forty years on was he was left behind in Southend when three coachloads of children went to the seaside for our annual summer outing. The trip was planned thoroughly, and considered foolproof; we did not take into account, however, the mischievousness of London children. Each child was given a card with details of the trip, the church and telephone numbers in case they got lost or needed help. Those were the days when one could take children to the seaside and let them roam at will. We drummed into the boys and girls the importance of being back at the coach station at 6 p.m.

The day was sunny and warm, and the trip was a great success. Most of the children stayed with their appointed leaders. When 6 o’clock came we did a thorough round-up – or thought we did. I counted all the heads in my coach and called out names; but somehow Billy fell through the net. Later we found that one of his friends had put up his hand when Billy’s name was called.

The next day was Sunday, and Mrs Budd came along to the hall that afternoon with a tired-looking Billy holding her hand. Looking accusingly at me, she said: ‘You left Billy behind yesterday, you know.’

I was startled, and laughed, ‘Certainly not, Mrs Budd. We counted everybody.’

She replied, ‘You did, you know. When he got to the coach park at 7 p.m. the coaches had left. He went to the police station and they put him in a comfortable cell, and I returned with him this morning on the milk train at 5 a.m.’

I stammered out an apology, and her tone softened immediately. She said, smiling, ‘I thought you would like to know.’ I dread to think what would be a parent’s reaction today.

In my third year at St Mary’s Peter asked me if I would be prepared to do a little teaching at Oak Hill Theological College in Southgate, as the member of staff teaching the doctrine paper for the London BD was sick. I was delighted, and accepted immediately, reasoning that as well as assisting the college, it would provide me with an opportunity to consolidate my knowledge. I was just about to register for a doctorate. I had decided so because just a few weeks previously I had received an envelope enclosing £50 with a one-sentence note: ‘For your Ph.D.’ Eileen was convinced – correctly, as it later turned out – that this kind and generous gesture had come from Peter Johnston’s wife Phyllis.

Spurred on by such belief in me, I registered for a doctorate in ecclesiology whilst still juggling the demands of the parish, family life and teaching at Oak Hill. It was a busy existence, but I loved it. If in later life I achieved anything at all it was due to the thorough training I received from Peter Johnston: his love of people and that rare gift of giving the other person instant and total attention; his thorough sermon preparation; his confidence in the gospel and evangelical witness; his humanity and tolerance of human weakness; his strategies for church growth – all these, and much more, were his legacies to his curates. He was never a soft touch, however. Never once in my four years working with him did I dream of calling him ‘Peter’ – he was always ‘the Vicar’ or ‘Mr Johnston’. He expected the highest standards from us, and showed his disapproval clearly when it was necessary. I remember being angry with him once in my first year when I turned up for the Sunday services in a pair of brown shoes – my black pair were unfit to wear. Mr Johnston took one look at them and said, ‘You can’t possibly process in brown shoes – go and sit in your stall at once.’ I did so in silence, feeling indignant that he did not allow me to explain that at the moment we did not have enough money to buy a new pair of shoes.

On another occasion I had agreed to speak at a meeting on my day off and I went to see the vicar to get my day off changed. He heard me out, then said: ‘George, I want you to learn that a day off is very important, and it should be only for emergencies that it is ever changed. No, you can’t have a different day. Fulfil that engagement, and learn the lesson.’ I did so, very quickly.

Peter Johnston was in every sense of the words a thorough professional in all he did. He was convinced that those who served Christ in the ordained ministry must give of their very best, and be a disciple and learner until their time was over. He was not a particularly exciting preacher, but his talks were learned, well prepared and biblical. He built up St Mary’s to be at the heart of the community and relevant to its needs because he understood that the Christian faith spoke directly to the hearts of all. Yet he had his Achilles’ heel. He often compared himself unfavourably with Maurice Wood, his predecessor, because he did not possess a degree. He had gone to Oak Hill College straight from the navy, and felt inadequate as a result. Of course he should never have thought that. His intelligence and wide reading made him an outstanding evangelical leader, and I am not alone among his many curates in testifying to the way he prepared us for our ministries ahead.

Our time at St Mary’s was drawing to an end. Eileen too had found it a place of growth. I marvelled at her ability not only to create such a warm family life but to open our home to all comers, as well as taking a full part in parish life alongside Phyllis. It was typical of Peter to mark our departure with a hint of humour. I preached for the last time on the evening before we left, and following my address I was astonished to hear Peter stand and say: ‘Our final hymn is “Begone, Unbelief, our Saviour is near!”’

‘Could any ministerial work be better and happier than St Mary’s, Islington?’ I asked myself as we followed the van containing our belongings in a friend’s car. Prebendary Maurice Wood had asked me months before if I would join his staff at Oak Hill, and I had agreed after much consultation. I regretted leaving parish life behind, as I had only ever thought of my ministry in terms of working with ordinary people and leading them to our Lord. I had never thought of myself as a teacher, and this invitation had taken Eileen and me by surprise. But instinctively we felt that it was right to accept.

We joined a strong and happy faculty with members of the calibre of Maurice himself, a gifted pastor and evangelist; John Taylor the Vice Principal, a superb Old Testament teacher later to be Bishop of St Albans; Alan Stibbs, the éminence grise of the college, whose biblical expositions were outstanding; John Simpson, who taught history, and would become Dean of Canterbury Cathedral during my time as Archbishop; and a number of other impressive teachers.

It was my task to take on the bulk of teaching doctrine for the London BD and Dip.Th. courses, which was an extremely heavy load. Considering that I was just thirty – younger than many of the students – I had every reason to worry if I would be up to it. I need not have done so: I managed to keep slightly ahead of the students in the first term, and then quarried away until I was on top of the material.

We had a very happy four years at Oak Hill, during which I completed most of my dissertation for the Ph.D as well as having time to reflect more on the challenges facing the Church, and the desperate need for unity. In particular I began to wonder if I was truly at home in the evangelical tradition. I felt guilty about even entertaining the question. After all, everything I had received and everything I was, I owed to this noble tradition.

As I wrestled with the issue, I realised that it was not the substance of evangelicalism I was doubting, so much as the superficial assumptions many evangelicals made. It was depth that they seemed to lack. When I considered the books on my study shelves it was clear to see the influence of a godly liberal tradition ever since I had started to become a thinking Christian. Furthermore, I was uncomfortably conscious that, even at Oak Hill, there was too much superficial teaching and intolerance concerning other traditions in the Church, especially any form of Catholicism. More to the point, I was finding myself increasingly drawn towards that tradition. Just a few miles away in Cockfosters was a small Roman Catholic monastic community, and on the occasions when I was there for an act of worship I found it inspiring and moving. I could not accept that Christ was absent from that small band who, though no doubt different from me in many respects, were just as devoted as I was to the Christian faith.

I realised that I could be of best service to Oak Hill if I used these feelings, doubts and questions to inform my teaching and to challenge those listening to me. My focus became the intention to help evangelicals to become as inclusive as I believed the Christian faith to be – in other words, to be aware of the strength of other traditions as well as the strength of their own.

I was helped by a sad incident. That laid-back philosopher Victor McCallin, Vice Principal of the London College of Divinity, had just left the college to become vicar of Jesus Church, Enfield, a few miles from Oak Hill. It seemed an unusual post for a Low Church Irishman, because Jesus Church was notoriously ‘High’. Nevertheless, I was delighted to have my old teacher and friend so close. No sooner had Victor started his new work than he asked me if I would cover his services while he and his wife Joan took two weeks’ holiday. I was glad to agree, but within a few days I was told that on the eve of his holiday Victor had collapsed, and had been rushed to hospital. Eileen and I visited him, little suspecting that anything was seriously wrong – but we were told that Victor had leukaemia, and was not expected to live. Within days he was dead.

We could scarcely take in the suddenness of his death. It hardly seemed possible that the smiling, relaxed Irishman with his kindly and gentle humour was no longer with us. Instead of covering his services for two weeks, I became the resident minister and priest for nine months. The congregation of Jesus Church were shattered by Victor’s death, and I did my best to provide cover and care during this period. It meant learning the ropes of doing things the ‘Anglo-Catholic’ way, and I began to respect the thorough and painstaking character of Catholic worship. Donning chasubles and copes eventually became second nature. Students from Oak Hill came across to preach and share in the life of the church, and they too began to appreciate the strength of a tradition so different from their own.

In 1970 I joined the staff of St John’s College, Nottingham. This sideways move was not made because I had been unhappy at Oak Hill. For some time Michael Green, who had replaced Hugh Jordan as Principal at the London College of Divinity, had kept me in touch with the exciting plans to move LCD to Bramcote, Nottingham, where it became St John’s, Nottingham. The invitation to return to my old college as a staff member was an exciting one, and I was attracted by the teaching I was offered and the more historical approach it would enable me to take. An additional attraction was that St John’s would be a constituent college of the University of Nottingham, which would bring me into contact with a wider range of fellow teachers.

The difference between St John’s and Oak Hill lay not in evangelical character so much in ethos and style. The students at St John’s were on the whole much younger, with a greater number of graduates. There was a heady buzz about the place, with a strong missionary focus and great intellectual content. The students were lively, and were not content with half-baked views or shoddy thinking. Spirited discussion shaped the life of the place, and a deep and healthy spirituality fused academic and worshipping life. Some of the friendships we made with students continued for the rest of our ministry – particularly with Paul and Mary Zahl. Paul, a very bright American, was reading for a master’s degree, and later went on to complete his doctoral studies at Tübingen under Professor Jurgen Moltmann. He would later become Dean of Birmingham, Alabama, where his scholarship and effective preaching increased the cathedral congregation significantly, and where he developed an international ministry. Paul was not the only high flier at St John’s by any means; there were others there whose academic prowess may have been less distinguished, but who were not lacking in other skills and abilities. The chemistry of intellectual vigour; spiritual commitment and deep interest in engaging with the contemporary world made the college an exciting place to be in the 1970s.

The staff was the most able and happiest team I have been privileged to be part of. Michael Green led us with typical enthusiasm and enormous commitment to the gospel, and there was little doubt that his presence drew many students to the new college. Julian Charley, the Vice Principal, had just joined the newly formed Anglican/Roman Catholic International Commission as its only evangelical scholar. The awakening of evangelical interest in and sympathy towards Catholicism owes a great deal to Julian’s dedicated interest in the Roman Catholic Church, which took a personal form in his deep friendship with Father Jean Tillard, one of the Catholic representatives on the Commission. Sadly, Julian’s outstanding ability was never fully recognised by the “Church, and he was never offered a senior office commensurate with his gifts.

Colin Buchanan was another outstanding teacher whose energy, entrepreneurial ability and scholarship made a breathless and dynamic contribution to the college. Possessor of one of the sharpest brains in the Church, Colin was also a man of integrity and deep faith. His combative personality and direct, uncompromising style earned him a few enemies over the years, but his pastoral concern and commitment to people won him more friends than he lost.

Charles Napier taught doctrine alongside me, and brought something very special and distinctive to the college. Brought up as a Roman Catholic and ordained a Roman Catholic priest following advanced studies at Louvain University, Charles had left his Church and had become an Anglican. He contributed a deep stillness and a lovely debunking attitude that gently put any bumptious student – or staff member, for that matter – in his or her place.

Within a short while St John’s became the largest and most popular college in the Church of England. Whilst clearly within the evangelical tradition, its stance on most things was refreshingly radical, in the biblical sense of being rooted in a commitment to New Testament orthodoxy, yet open to all that God wanted to give us together. The Charismatic Movement was now beginning to make inroads in all Churches and it was hardly surprising that it soon found a home at St John’s. At first the form this took was in new songs, and especially a beautiful Polkingham sung mass that we used at every college communion service. Later it manifested itself in several students claiming that if one desired to be empowered, ‘baptism in the Holy Spirit’ was necessary. I found myself in strong conflict with this theology, although not in opposition to the spiritual awakening it brought. In my view, the idea that there could be a special group of Christians, superior to others by reason of a second baptism, flew in the face of Christian thought. There could only be one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

Before very long I found myself somewhat embarrassed by an event that was to change me dramatically, and that made me more sympathetic to Charismatic theology. Things were going well at St John’s. I had finished my Ph.D, and I was thoroughly enjoying the intellectual challenge of the work and the close friendships with students. But I was beginning to be aware that my spiritual life was lagging behind my intellectual development. I was at a loss to know what to do about this. I realised that part of the problem stemmed from the nature of priesthood. When one is a priest, and particularly when one is associated with such a clear-cut tradition as evangelicalism, the pressure to conform and to give the impression that one’s faith is impervious to doubt and unbelief is enormous. Unlike the Catholic tradition with its time-honoured policy of spiritual direction, the individualism of the evangelical tradition had no comparable support structure. There was no one to whom I could turn and talk things through frankly. Even to admit to questioning the essence of Christianity in a theological college where I, as one of the teachers, was a purveyor of certainty, seemed shameful. Although I knew I could have trusted any of my colleagues, I was reluctant to do so. I felt trapped.

As I analysed my problem, I detected a layer of fear in myself that I had never encountered before, including fears of death and dying. These surprised me, and I had no idea where they had come from. At first I wondered if they originated in the study I was doing at the time on existentialist thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and others. This focused on the principles that seemed to underpin modern life and culture, and I was enjoying this particular dimension of thought. The fears, however, were real, and faith seemed so insubstantial. The challenge of the ‘absence of God’ coincided with a spiritual barrenness that I was palpably aware of. Worship seemed boring and unreal; God Himself seemed remote and without substance, and the arguments for His existence weak and foolish. Even Jesus Christ, for so long the heartbeat of my faith, now appeared to be little more than a vague historical figure, incapable ever again of inspiring enthusiasm and commitment in me.

In the priesthood, the job and life are one. I was in my mid-thirties, still very young in ministerial terms, and merely to go through the motions was hypocritical and out of the question. I knew that if I could not sort this out, I was finished as a priest. I was faced with a dreadful reality – all that I had worked for and stood for seemed perilously close to disappearing.

I tried to confide my feelings to Eileen, but she was bearing the burden of a growing family, and as a protective father and husband I felt inhibited from sharing them fully with her. Much later I realised that I was wrong to carry this all alone – Eileen was more than capable of understanding, and would have been an enormous help. Nevertheless, only those who know something of the ‘dark night of the soul’ can comprehend the darkness I was feeling then. Of course, as anyone in the priesthood knows – and for that matter anyone in any profession where strong convictions prevail – one can fool people a great deal of the time, and I am sure that few of those around me knew anything of my inner turmoil. But one cannot fool oneself. These struggles went on for many months, and were resolved in an unexpected manner.

The summer of 1972 was spent in London, Ontario, with Eileen’s widowed mother, and her sister Evelyn and brother-in-law Roy and their family, who had moved to Canada some years earlier. We were now a family of six, as Elizabeth had joined our brood eight months earlier. It was a delightful holiday with much bonding, laughter and fun. I took time out to study the Canadian Church, and read a great deal besides.

I refused all offers to preach or lecture – except one, to preach at Little Trinity, Toronto. Little Trinity, a large evangelical church, was led then by Harry Robinson, a dynamic minister and a very effective leader in the Canadian Church. The engagement necessitated a trip on my own, and I was put up in a community house on the evening prior to my sermon. I shall never forget what happened after I was shown to my room. I walked across to the bookshelves and saw a charismatic book that was very popular at the time, Aglow with the Spirit by Robert Frost. As I skimmed through its pages, I seethed with indignation at the author’s interpretation of the work of the Holy Spirit. Uncharacteristically I tossed the book away from me in disgust, and to my shame it hit a picture, which fell to the floor with a crash. As I walked over to replace the picture and retrieve the book, I found myself thinking that it is easy enough to throw away a book, but that what I could not discard was the faith, the confidence and the sheer joy of the Christian life.

I sat down and began thinking more about my faith, my spiritual state and my hopes for the future. I thought back to the start of my spiritual journey and the deep convictions I had had then, and which I no longer felt. I traced that journey of faith from my origins in the East End of London to Dagenham, and to the trust that others had placed in me. I knew that I still longed to serve God, but my personal integrity was crucial to my survival as a believer. In that quiet Toronto room I began to wonder if it was possible to recover my former assurance when it seemed that the iron of deep unbelief had entered my soul.

I decided to bury my pride, and fell to my knees. I remained wordless for a very long time. Then a prayer started to form which was, I suppose, in essence a confession of failure and an admission that intellectual pride and human arrogance had stopped me hearing God’s voice. How I longed to come home, I said to myself and to that ‘Other’ who was listening. Then something happened. There was no answering voice, no blinding light or angelic appearance – only a deepening conviction that God was meeting me now. I felt the love of God and His tenderness towards me. As I prayed out loud – a practice I strongly recommend – I felt a sense of joy and elation, of reassurance and hope as I resumed my walk with God.

I returned to my feet after what had been a very long period of quiet prayer, reflection and encounter. Even now, many years later, it is impossible to say why that moment was so important to my life and experience. Was I so longing to believe that I made myself believe? That might be possible, but so strong in me is the spirit of enquiry that such an interpretation could not sustain me in the long run. I am not the kind of person who is afraid of doubt – indeed, I regard it as an essential component of faith. The steadiness of my faith since that encounter in 1972 is for me an assurance of the reality of faith, not an illusion. It represented a ‘coming home’ to the roots that alone hold one fast. The nearest approximation I have read to what I felt then is by the scientist F.C. Happold, who in his book Religious Faith and the Twentieth Century recounts his own experience:

It happened in my room at Peterhouse in the evening of Feb 1st 1913 when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge … When I tried to record the experience at the time I used the imagery of the Holy Grail; it seemed just like that. There was, however, no sensible vision. There was just the room, with its shabby furniture and the red shaded lamp on the table. But the room was filled with a presence which in a strange way was about me and within me, like light or warmth. I was overwhelmingly possessed by Someone who was not myself, and yet I felt I was more myself than I had ever been before.

That seemed to capture the essentials of my experience.

Two things flowed immediately from this unspectacular but important event. First, the grave doubts and spiritual darkness were a thing of the past. I was now able to move on with contentment and trust – and with no little joy. Of course, such experiences of God’s love do not mean the end of doubt or distrust. Any thinking Christian will encounter the unknown, the darkness within and without. Doubt, as I have observed, is an important element for faith and may at times even be the engine that drives trust. But what I had dealt with – or rather, what God had sorted out in me – was that terrifying shadow that had clouded my faith and work.

The second result of that meeting with God was that it denoted for me an awareness of the Holy Spirit and, as a consequence, an experiential discovery of the Trinity. I guess that many evangelicals encounter God through Jesus, and this can result in an overfamiliar view of God that scorns mystery, distance and wonder. In the same way, there are Catholics whose Christian experience seems wholly theistic, avoiding any personal intimacy with Jesus Christ. I recall once overhearing a Bishop say: ‘I’m a God-the-Father kind of Christian’ – a code that intimated that he found ‘Jesus’ talk too embarrassing to handle.

My Toronto experience unexpectedly opened up the Trinity for me in a most exciting way. It dawned on me that I had never thought much about the Holy Spirit, who up to that point had been for me either a doctrine in the Creed or a mysterious force at work in the Bible. Now I saw Him as a living reality in the Church today, and at the heart of what we mean when we say ‘God’. This led me to a greater sympathy with Charismatic theology and practice, whilst still rejecting the two-stage baptismal theology that some believed in. Where I found myself overlapping with Charismatic thought was in the realisation that there was so much to discover, experience and understand about God’s love. In the wonderful words of John Taylor, Bishop of Winchester: ‘Every Christian is meant to possess his possessions and many never do.’

This new experience of God’s love in Christ, made known again to me through the Holy Spirit, was like a second wind to me in my work. I returned to St John’s bursting with energy and eager to get on with the job. The remaining three years of my time at the college were very creative ones, in which I completed my first book, I Believe in Man, which explored human nature and sexuality. But the Toronto experience led me to reconsider my future. After nine years in two theological colleges it was time to move on, and put into practice all I had gained in theology and experience. In 1975, at the age of thirty-nine, I became vicar of St Nicholas’s, Durham.