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5

Chicago, Chicago!

Departure and arrival, the path and the goal, all are part of the adventure, and if you leave on such a journey, you will return as a different person.

(Christopher Engels)9

In July 1963, Isobel, Stephen (now twenty-one months old) and I set off on the Southern Cross for Southampton. We crossed the equator – Stephen and I for the first time – and I was ceremoniously dunked into a tub of water. Stephen spent much time in the crèche, but when on deck he would occasionally break free from my grip and, to my horror, run to the railings. I came second in the table tennis tournament, led an evening service at the request of the captain and, on a more sombre note, conducted two funerals – one that of a New Zealand diplomat. We called in at Las Palmas, one of the Canary Islands, and spent an interesting day exploring its mountainous interior.

Once we had arrived England, we stayed some days with friends in London. Visiting the city’s well-known tourist sites (usually with Stephen in tow) was exciting, despite the rain. We then toured the Oxfordshire countryside in a small Morris Minor station wagon, cooking our meals on a gas cooker perched on the lowered back door of the car, again in the rain. We visited Cornwall and Isobel’s relations whom she had last seen when she was twelve. This was her ancestral home and remains close to her heart.

We crossed the Atlantic on the old Queen Mary, deep in the bowels of steerage class. En route we experienced an Atlantic storm, and generally had a dismal time in a tiny cabin whose single light went off the moment we closed the door. But apart from seeing the iconic Table Mountain in the distance as you arrive in Cape Town, few things can compare to arriving in New York for the first time by sea. After disembarking, we sat on the quayside with our luggage for several hours, having no idea as to how we would get from there to Chicago. Leaving our trunks in the care of officials who promised to rail them to us (the trunks arrived three weeks later), we took a cab to a dodgy downtown hotel where we spent the night. The next day, a South African student friend who was studying at Union Theological Seminary, Bob Hammerton-Kelly, introduced us to Union and helped us catch an overnight train to Chicago.

We were met at Chicago Central Station by Jo Davis, a warm and generous staff member at CTS, and were soon settled into our apartment in Hyde Park on Kimbark Avenue. The house, which we shared with three other families, had once been the residence of the philosopher-educationalist John Dewey, whose famous experimental school was across the road. The University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Chapel towered close by. It was all invigorating and exciting.

I registered for a one-year Master of Theology (MTh), which required a dissertation and six semester courses, at least two of which had to be taken at the university. I did courses in Constructive Theology, Cultural Anthropology, Social Psychology, and one on the Ministry of the Laity. I also did a course on Ministry to the Mentally Ill, and an experimental course in Leadership Sensitivity Training. I learnt much from this eclectic assortment of courses, but ached to do some “serious” theological study. Therefore, I attended as many additional lectures a possible. These included a series by the French philosopher Paul Ricœur on Hermeneutics, and a weekly seminar by Paul Tillich on his major works. I also learnt much from Franklin Littell, a noted Methodist historian, about the German church struggle. In January 1964, I was a delegate at the Ecumenical Student Conference held in Athens, Ohio, where I heard daily lectures by the Yale church historian Roland Bainton, and the Russian Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann. Most importantly, it was in Chicago that my interest in Bonhoeffer began in earnest.

Two things accounted for this interest: Firstly, on the boat from Durban to Southampton, I read Honest to God (a media sensation at the time) by John Robinson, the Anglican bishop of Woolwich. Robinson, who years later visited us in Cape Town, drew somewhat randomly on Bonhoeffer’s theological ideas in his letters from prison. I had read these before as part of a ministers’ study group in Durban, but only now did I begin to glimpse their possible implications. Robinson visited Chicago while we were there, and I heard him lecture, as well as give a seminar on Honest to God. At the latter, Tillich made the comment that, while Robinson might not have fully understood Barth, Bultmann and Bonhoeffer, he had certainly understood him and his books were now selling better than ever before.

The second and most important reason for my interest in Bonhoeffer, was the fact that Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer’s close friend and biographer, had given the Alden-Tuthill lectures on “The Challenge of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life and Theology” at the seminary in 1961. I soon devoured these, and discovered what I really wanted to do. There were no courses on Bonhoeffer, but I made a special study of his doctoral dissertation, Sanctorum Communio, which became a major source for writing my own dissertation under the supervision of Ross Snyder. Ross (as he insisted on us calling him) and I were not on the same page theologically, but he was a gifted teacher who encouraged me to do independent study. I soon learnt that he had no time for any theological humbug.

Although our ability to explore the rich cultural offerings available in Chicago was limited by lack of money and looking after Steve, Isobel and I met many interesting people, and on occasion I preached in churches in other parts of the Midwest. We attended various churches in Hyde Park on Sundays and always felt welcome, but while usually impressed by their social concern and Christian education programmes, we were not particularly taken by the standard of preaching.

A weekend we spent at Reba Place Fellowship in Evanston stands out in our memory, because it was our first experience of Mennonites and their pacifist commitment. During our short visit, I had a heated exchange with a militant pacifist about Bonhoeffer’s role in the plot to assassinate Hitler. This challenged me to think more deeply about the Christian peace witness and non-violent resistance. That was a timely development, because in the same year President John Kennedy was assassinated, and the Civil Rights Movement reached its climax. Protest marches and the murders of social activists down south were daily news, and the campus community was abuzz with heated debate. For light relief, we watched The Danny Kaye show on TV each week, saw news clips of the Beatles arriving for their first American tour, and ate hamburgers at the very first McDonald’s, not far from where we lived.

Most of my time and energy, however, went into writing my dissertation on The Local Church and the Race Problem in South Africa. In writing it, I was undoubtedly influenced by what was happening in the US, but I also drew on my course work and wider reading, and was greatly stimulated by weekly sessions with Ross Snyder. Using insights from my course in Cultural Anthropology, I began the dissertation with a case study of my congregation in Sea View. I then examined the relationship between theological and racial/cultural identity, followed by a study of the problem of white racial prejudice, using Gordon Allport’s masterly The Nature of Prejudice as a guide. Then followed a chapter on racial anxiety, based on Paul Tillich’s book The Courage to Be, in which I examined how change in patterns of behaviour and attitude are inhibited by a deep-seated, irrational anxiety. Using Bonhoeffer’s Sanctorum Communio, I concluded by developing an ecclesiology of personal and social transformation. The manuscript was longer than required, and I had to work late into the night on my manual typewriter to meet the deadline and provide additional carbon copies. I was awarded a summa cum laude for my efforts.

Towards the end of our stay in Chicago, Isobel and I discussed whether or not we should return to the United States in a year or two so that I could do a PhD. Ross offered to arrange for an assistantship and to help in whatever way he could to make this possible. The prospect was tantalising, but we could not postpone our return to Sea View. In any case, three months of summer lay ahead of us in which to explore America and widen our experience. I also had the great fortune of being invited to be the summer supply pastor of the First Congregational Church (UCC) in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

After a long overnight ride on Greyhound buses, we arrived in Albany, New York, where we were met by the minister of the church and taken through the beautiful countryside to one of the loveliest places we had ever seen. Stockbridge is the quintessential New England rural town, located in the Berkshires, an area renowned for its fall colours in the autumn, and for being transformed into a fairyland when the snow covers the landscape in midwinter. We had no idea what to expect, but our eyes opened wide as we were driven up the long road, then still lined by elm trees, which led to the red-bricked church with its white steeple and stone bell tower nearby, and to the large manse adjacent to the church where we would live for the summer.

In his reflections on his first visit to America, Bonhoeffer observed that “American Christianity remains concealed from those who do not know from the beginning of the Congregationalists in New England, the Baptists in Rhode Island, or the revival movement led by Jonathan Edwards.”10 Edwards, so we discovered, was the second of a series of distinguished ministers in Stockbridge when the church was founded in the eighteenth century. Without knowing it, we had arrived in the heartland of historic American Protestant Christianity and Congregationalism. And being a Congregational minister in New England, where the Congregational Church had once been the established church, I had certain privileges. Among them was a free family pass to Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and membership to the golf club. I relished these, despite my nonconformist conscience.

Stockbridge was full of notable personalities, both past and present. The painter Norman Rockwell was one of the town’s most celebrated citizens, and our family doctor, while there, was depicted in one of Rockwell’s most famous paintings. Then there was Daniel Chester French, who carved the nineteen-foot-high marble figure of President Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. The Austin Riggs psychiatric centre, established by Erik Erikson whose book on identity and the life-cycle I had read in Chicago, was a short walk from the manse, close to the iconic Red Lion Inn in the centre of town. And the distinguished theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, along with his wife, Ursula, and son, Christopher, were all members of the Stockbridge congregation. I visited Reinnie (as his students at Union Theological Seminary knew him) several times. Although he was recovering from a stroke, we had lively discussions about South Africa, apartheid and the Civil Rights Movement.

After concluding our enchanted stay in Stockbridge, we drove south to Georgia, to visit Koinonia Farm, a multi-racial Christian community. We went all the way in a borrowed VW Beetle, staying en route in Washington DC with a Mennonite scholar, Paul Peachey, and his family. When we eventually arrived at the farm, well known for its pecan nuts, we found out that it had been attacked by the Ku Klux Klan the week before. My recollection is that a burnt-out cross was still standing near the gate. This was the Deep South about which we had heard so much. Racism in Chicago’s South Side was real; here it was raw.

The second day we were there, I went to the bank in Americus, the nearest town, to cash a cheque. The teller, immediately suspicious when I opened my mouth, refused my request because, she said, the cheque was from a bank in Massachusetts. I asked to see the bank manager, who told me that he had noted my car’s Yankee number plates, so what was I doing down south and why did I not speak like “one of them northerners”?

I explained that I was visiting and came from South Africa.

“Okay,” he replied. “You people know how to treat N. . . . .s, so we’ll give you the cash.”

I took the money and fled, cowardly reasoning that that was not the time to take a stand.

Back at the farm, we gathered each evening in the kitchen with those who had remained after the Klan’s attack. After the meal, Clarence Jordan, the leader of the community and a New Testament scholar, would read from the Cotton Patch New Testament he was busy translating at the time. The Jordans visited us years later when we lived in Johannesburg, and told us about their new initiative called Habitat for Humanity. Sadly, Clarence died shortly after his visit, but I suspect not before he had encouraged Habitat for Humanity to consider working in South Africa at some time in the future.

The time came for us to return to South Africa and the Sea View Church. It had been a good year, but we were ready to go home. By this time, it was cheaper to fly than travel by sea, so late in August we boarded a new Pan Am Boeing 707 from New York to London. Isobel and Stephen then went on to Johannesburg, while I made a detour of several weeks visiting Paris, the WCC and Calvin sites in Geneva, the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, and the Taizé Community near Cluny in France. Taizé made a lasting impression on me, as it did on Steve many years later, for it was there that he decided to go into the ministry. Having lugged my suitcases up from the train station in this seemingly isolated rural community, I arrived at the monastery door and rang the bell.

A Dutch monk bade me welcome, sat me under a nearby tree and asked, “Why have you come here?”

“I was interested to see the place,” was all I could think of saying in reply.

“That’s not good enough!” he replied. “You shall go on a five-day silent retreat, and I shall be your leader. You will worship with the community three times a day. I shall give you some reading for reflection. And on the fourth day you will make your confession. There is no talking over meals.” With that he led me to my room.

A week later, suitably chastened by that monastic experience, I arrived in Rome, eager to visit St. Peter’s Basilica for the first time. But the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) was in session and St. Peter’s was closed to visitors. Despite that, I fell in love with the city and, casting a few coins into the Trevi Fountain, vowed to return.

It was time to end my year of travelling abroad, but I don’t think I fully grasped how different a person I was now from the one I had been just a year before.