2010 – 2011 the year in review€¦ · engagement in this review. victoria espley, who started as...
TRANSCRIPT
C A M B R I D G E T H E O L O G I C A L F E D E R AT I O N
2 0 1 0 – 2 0 1 1T H E Y E A R I N R E V I E W
Contents
Foreword from the Bishop of Leicester 3
Principal’s Welcome 4
Bishop Peter Walker 8
Highlights of the YearApologetics Conference 13
Midsummer Garden Party 14
Newmarket Open Door Project 15
Marking Twenty years of the
Manchester Project 16
Missions, Placements and Exchanges 19
Easter missions and pilgrimages 2011 19
Study leave in Japan 20
Church of the Holy Apostles, New York 22
Yale Exchange 23Westcott House Conferences 2012 23
Theological Conversations‘Rev’ actor and creator visit Westcott 24
Women in Priesthood 26
Dean of St Edmundsbury 26
Theology lived out – Rosalind Lane 27
Debating Fresh Expressions 29
Templeton Prizewinners 31
New DevelopmentsWestcott’s Key Priorities 33
Remembering Westcott 35
Westcott House Gifts and Mementos 36
Ember List 2011 37
Staff Contacts 38
Members of the Governing Council2010 - 2011 39
Page
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“It remains a great privilege to be associated with Westcott
House as the Chair of the Council. The challenges facing
higher education generally and training for ordained ministry
in the Church of England in particular are complex. And yet
Westcott House has remained an adventurous, courageous,
innovative and ambitious institution continually seeking out
new opportunities to face the changes of each passing year
while continuing to be outward looking. At the heart of the
life of Westcott remains a deep commitment to disciplines of
prayer and the Eucharistic life which has shaped the House
from the beginning. Centred on these unchanging essentials,
the whole community is set free to explore difference, diversity
and indeed Anglican identity in a global setting. Increasingly
Westcott House has become the focus for conferences and
conversations about church and society as well as for
explorations of some of the most challenging theological
questions. But above all to experience Westcott is to know
something of the joy and the liberation of the gospel.
Westcott House appears to have discovered how to set people
free to become the very best of themselves. As you read this
year’s Review I hope you will catch a flavour of what that means
for so many people who share the life of this rich and varied
community.”
The Rt Revd Tim Stevens is Bishop of Leicester and has beenChair of the Council of Westcott House since 2007
Foreword from the Bishop of Leicester
2010 – 2011 THE YEAR IN REVIEW
Each year the Westcott community is different, and
this past one has been influenced both by the new
ordinands and the large number of new staff.
Ordinand year groups seem to develop a character
of their own, and this past year’s intake of thirty-
three men and women has engaged in the life of the
House from the start, with new initiatives in the
realms of sport, social celebrations, and community
service emerging as part of our community life.
The community also seems to have been even more
diverse than ever this year, challenging us to engage
creatively with differences, and to learn and grow
together.
New DirectionsA number of staff changes have resulted in fresh
ideas and new directions. Will Lamb, the Vice-
Principal and Tutor in New Testament, immediately
made a huge difference to the life of the House, in
particular through his teaching and organisational
expertise, and a calm wisdom that is very welcome.
Andrew Davison, the new Tutor in Doctrine and
Assistant Director of Studies, has made a great
contribution to teaching in the Federation, and also
in-house, where he has teamed up with Jeff Phillips
for an introductory course in philosophy. Andrew
has had a number of books published this year,
including the controversial and acclaimed
For the Parish. With Dave Male on the staff as our
Tutor in Pioneer Ministry, we have had another
opportunity to engage with differences! Of course,
we discover that they agree more than they
disagree, and you can see some fruits of their
engagement in this Review.
Victoria Espley, who started as Finance and
Operations Manager (now Bursar) in October 2010,
has immediately made an impact both on the
financial management of the House and the
organisation of the administrative operations.
Heather Kilpatrick has served for a year already as
College Administrator, Communications Officer
and my PA. She has reshaped our internal
communications, and many aspects of our external
communications, including our new e-Newsletter.
If you are not currently on the mailing list for this
and would like to be, contact Heather on
[email protected]. Andy Griffiths took up a new
post as Chef at Gretton School in Girton and
Adrian Savin has been promoted to Chef Manager.
I am enormously grateful to all the staff, new and
continuing, for their devotion and commitment to
the work and mission of the House.
Principal’s Welcome
The Revd Canon Martin SeeleyPrincipal
2010 – 2011 THE YEAR IN REVIEW
4
On 29 April the House celebrated the royal wedding, starting with a champagne breakfast and the chance towatch the ceremony on a big screen, followed by Pimm’s, cream teas, croquet and an evening barbecue
Loss of FriendsAlongside the good news and exciting developments, this year has
also been marked by sadness. Bishop Peter Walker, Principal from
1962 to 1972, died in December aged 91. In this issue of the
Review we celebrate Bishop Peter – husband and family man,
scholar, priest – through the reflections of four of the Westcottians
whose lives he touched. You will also find here
the address given by the Archdeacon of
Cambridge at his funeral. We hold Jean in our
prayers. Then in April Frances Mant, who
joined us as a tutor in September, died within
a few short weeks of being diagnosed with
cancer, and just before her 50th birthday. She
had quickly earned the trust and affection of
ordinands and staff, and her death was a
profound shock to the community. We
continue to hold Frances’ husband Jonathan
and children William and Alice in our prayers.
Fee Funding ChallengeThe year has also been dominated by the dramatic changes facing
higher education, and in particular the increase in university fees
taking effect in 2012. We are delighted that the Bishop of
Sheffield’s report on the future of funding for theological education
recognises the continuing importance for a number of ordinands to
study on university taught Theology degrees, including the
Theological and Religious Studies Tripos (Cambridge BA) and the
part-university taught BTh. However, central church funds cannot
support the whole cost, and we need to raise additional funds to
enable access to these important and demanding routes for
candidates who will most benefit from them. For the Tripos,
Church funding will pay for half the £9,000 fee, with us needing to
find the other £4,500 per student per year. For the BTh we will
expect to need an additional £1,500 per ordinand each year. I have
been very grateful that some Cambridge colleges have agreed to
direct historic funds for ordination training to provide bursaries for
some of these ordinands, but we need to find more sources of
funding. We admit about five ordinands a year on Tripos, and
about ten on the BTh. This year, as last, half of those taking Tripos
gained firsts, including one starred first. It is quite clear that the
pressure is on for Westcott, for which
the relationship with the University of
Cambridge is foundational, to secure a
range of resources to continue to
provide the very high quality of
theological learning that is central to
what we offer the Church. There is
information about ways to help this
effort in this Review.
CelebrationsThere has of course been much to
celebrate during the year. In October it was announced that
Donna Lazenby, a final year ordinand and now curate in the
Diocese of Southwark, and Ben King, an alumnus and now
Assistant Professor of Church History at the University of the
South, Tennessee had both been awarded Templeton Foundation
Awards for Theological Promise. Donna organised a highly
successful Apologetics Conference at Westcott in December, a
review of which is included in this publication. Ben King has been
instrumental in building connections between Westcott and the
School of Theology at the University of the South (Sewanee).
One result of that is a preaching conference to be held 2-5 July
2012 at Westcott in partnership with Bill Brosend, Professor of
Homiletics at Sewanee, and Program Director of the Episcopal
Preaching Foundation. We have also started another new
2010 – 2011 THE YEAR IN REVIEW
5
Wittenberg
Mick Ellis and Gillian Trinder in Wittenberg
international connection with the Predigerseminar at Wittenberg;
my family and I visited in February and a group of Westcott
ordinands also visited in June. Their model of theological training
has some interesting possibilities for us to explore, especially in
terms of continuing ministerial development.
Among our many and varied guests this past year we welcomed the
Rt Revd Stephen Conway as the new Bishop of Ely, and witnessed
the consecration of Nick Holtam as the new Bishop of Salisbury.
Both have made, and are continuing to make, significant
contributions to the life and future of the House and we are very
grateful. Most recently Bishop Stephen addressed a London alumni
dinner, held on the feast day for Bishop Westcott, in the Jerusalem
Chamber in Westminster Abbey. In the course of his challenging
and inspiring address he remarked that “What counts at Westcott is
not whether it is a high church or a low church college. It is not
altitude but attitude which matters. In a Church with tribal
tendencies, it seeks not to define itself over against anything except
unfaithfulness, injustice, plain stupidity and the fallacy that one can
save people by cruelty”. We are very thankful to Stephen Stavrou
and Richard Bastable for organising this and other London alumni
events. New alumni groups are in the offing too, in Oxford,
Manchester and Lincoln; please be in touch if you want
information about these or want to set one up in your region.
On 14 May, sixty of us gathered at St Luke’s Longsight to celebrate
the 20th anniversary of the Manchester Project. The Bishop of
Middleton presided and Bishop Rupert Hoare preached at a
wonderful occasion of thanksgiving for a project that has gone
from strength to strength, giving Westcott ordinands a vital and
rich immersion in urban parish life. Much of the current success is
down to the skill and commitment of Simon Gatenby, rector of
Brunswick Church and the Westcott tutor in Manchester. We are
delighted that a number of married ordinands, alongside the single
ordinands who have been in the past, are taking advantage of this
formational opportunity.
2010 – 2011 THE YEAR IN REVIEW
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The Revd Canon Dr Gideon Byamugisha, the first practising religious leader inAfrica to publicly declare himself HIV-positive, gave the 2011 Bray Lecture at Westcott on 18 May entitled ‘Communities confronting AIDS: is Missio Deithe missing paradigm to end HIV- and AIDS-related stigma?’
Bishop Stephen at Westcott Ascension Day 2011
2010 – 2011 THE YEAR IN REVIEW
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A New ConfidenceThe celebrations in Manchester stand alongside the evident
increase in commitment to social transformation among ordinands.
Taken with the negative and positive responses by Christians to
some of the current Government’s policies, this leads me to hope
that the Church’s self-absorption and long retreat from its position
in the public square is starting to reverse. As part of our
developing involvement in serving the wider church, we hosted a
significant colloquium in February looking at faith and the ‘Good
Neighbourhood’, engaging with aspects of the Government’s ‘Big
Society’ agenda. The day brought together faith leaders, policy
makers and practitioners, and demonstrated something of a
recovery of nerve and the necessity for the churches to re-connect
with the fundamental questions about our public life. There are
other examples of confident involvement like this around the
country, which is a good sign that we are beginning to recognise
the harm that has been done by conflating ‘mission’ with ‘growth’.
Mission is what matters; growth may follow but faithfulness has
priority.
Of course clergy and laity in parishes up and down the land have
never forgotten this. My own experience of parish life suggests
that growth is often a consequence of mission, but cannot be its
goal. In ten years in the Isle of Dogs, the congregation grew
significantly, and faster than the population. But that was not our
aim, which was rather to worship God and witness to God’s love in
the community; that was what being faithful meant to us. The
growth was a by-product, by which God helped us be and do what
we believed we were there for. The Eucharist was at the centre,
and the self-giving of the Eucharist fed and inspired self-giving in
the neighbourhood and wider community, in works of generosity
and justice.
Dare we imagine that now, across the Church, we are recovering
enough confidence, and letting go of enough anxiety about
numbers and money, to have the courage to get on with the joyful
and terrifying task of proclaiming God’s kingdom? I am delighted
that at Westcott I think we can take the risk, because we have
indeed already glimpsed God’s glory and goodness.
Good Neighbourhood Colloquium in February
2010 – 2011 THE YEAR IN REVIEW
Bishop Peter Walker
It was with great sadness that we learnt ofthe death of Peter Walker, Principal ofWestcott House from 1962-72, on28 December 2010 after a brief illness andin his 92nd year. His funeral service tookplace on Tuesday 11 January 2011 at2.30pm in Grantchester Parish Church.
The address delivered on that occasion by the Archdeaconof Cambridge, John Beer, is reproduced here.
We come, each of us, first to say ‘thank you’ to God for Peter, for
that divine shaping of his life which made him so unforgettable, and
then to acknowledge his particular influence upon our life’s journey.
Of course, any dying confronts us as a kind of larceny, as we take in
what RS Thomas calls in another context ‘the aggression of fact’,
the reality of death and separation, but we also understand the
seemliness of a long life that has drawn to its natural close. And we
come here, to this beautiful place, in the context of the resurrection
hope that death can never be the last word on the meaning of this
life. The words of the service today say, explain, everything that
counts, and yet we must, of course, speak of this remarkable man,
Peter Knight Walker.
His obituaries have said, and will say, something of Peter’s wide-
ranging life, and of his ministry in the Church of England he loved,
and a more studied, detailed assessment awaits the memorial service
in February, but the ground-bass of all else that there’s time to say
today was the God in whom Peter trusted, and the contemplative
life of prayer which fed his ministry of care. On that ground-bass,
all the counterpoint, in Bonhoeffer’s phrase, the polyphony in
Peter’s life, was enabled to flourish in all its wholeness.
Peter was born in Leeds, the twin of Peggy, whose children, Bridget
and Henry, later on, in their childhood, remembered their uncle as
kindly and attentive. He was a clever, scholarship boy who went
from Leeds Grammar School in due course to Oxford to read
Greats, the Classics course, but who, mid way, was ‘called up’ as a
naval cadet. For much of the war he served in destroyers defending
convoys in the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Indian
Ocean. Towards the end, stationed in Madras, he acquired a taste
for really hot Indian food, and in his last years of life he had such
fun when my wife and I took him and Jean to our local ‘Indian’,
where he always ordered the hottest curry in the house.
After a short curacy, he was first Fellow and Dean of Corpus Christi
College here in Cambridge, and then Principal of Westcott House
where, for ten years, he exercised a remarkable influence on large
numbers of ordinands, at a time of turmoil and rapid change in
Church and society. Peter’s vocational wisdom, often larded with
humour, helped to nudge minds, to inspire, to encourage crucial
resolve, or to prevent too hasty a decision to give up. And, he
managed as well to write the odd letter! In this, of course, his
output was prodigious, and many of us will still have our own
precious collection of PKW’s letters. He wrote to keep
remembrance alive, and the words on the page were the product of
an interceding prayerfulness. Peter loved to talk to those who came
into his life, whoever they were, and his attentiveness strangely
energised them, endowed them with value, as it were. I still meet
Peter & Jean Walker
8
people who once met Peter years ago on a retreat, in a parish, at
supper, or some other context, and who’d remembered the
encounter as crucial, or simply with great affection. And for many it
was the beginning of a longer-term friendship. And friendships old
and new, for so long, sustained him in life.
In 1972, Peter left Westcott to go to Oxford to be Suffragan Bishop
of Dorchester, but behind the scenes a different sort of friendship
was blossoming, and so we come, of course, to dear Jean. In Peter’s
Westcott days, one or two of the braver ordinands had gently urged
on the bachelor Principal in this regard, and we rejoice that in due
time, out of this deep friendship of love, came so much good. We
all of us love other people uniquely, of course, but Peter loved Jean
as only he could, he depended on her, even more so towards the
end, and those of us who’ve had the privilege to know and love
Peter, owe to Jean our profound gratitude for her wonderful
generosity and love in being willing to share him with us.
When Peter and Jean left Oxford to come ‘home’ to Ely as our
Bishop, we knew that his ministry would be marked as much by his
quality of pastoral care as by his strategic vision. Peter was
intuitive, not one perhaps for too much ‘process’, as we’ve learnt to
call it, but he often ‘sniffed the wind’, and had the courage and
insight to resource those with new ideas for mission and ministerial
training, to grasp nettles about finance and giving, and to improve
the Church’s communication with the secular world. He trusted
people in ordinary parishes across the Fens, or in the cities, was
strenuously attentive in visiting them, knowing them as best he
could, and he was remembered for being, not the same as them, but
a man deeply devout, caring, worthy of their loyalty and friendship.
Though he possessed a steeliness when crises arose, (and some
decisions and responsibilities came at great cost) he retained a
generous optimism about God and people, which allowed him to
trust them in faith, and so to sit light to distinctions about who was
in the Faith and who wasn’t.
In due course, after some years’ retirement in Oxford, Peter and
Jean came here to Grantchester, where he loved the stones and
wood of this building, whose patina seemed to have been formed in
part by the relentless prayers of centuries-worth of those who’d
found Godly meaning here, solace and a home. He loved the
rhythms of the early Sunday service and assisted here liturgically,
until more recently when he became too frail. Then, and before
retirement, we shall remember with gratitude his preaching. Peter’s
style in his latter years often centred simply upon a single word or
phrase about God or the world, as he gently prised apart meaning,
and slowly squeezed words dry for the last drop of sustenance or
encouragement. And he had a great gift and reputation as a
Memorial Service preacher, able to discern the real essence of the
people he’d known. At Westcott, we’d remembered, I think, a
different register, the quality of his reasoning, his sharp focus upon
the heart of the matter, often in response to some part of the
Church’s life which had provoked the college community at the
time. When he was our Bishop here in Ely, and no doubt in Oxford
too, our ears became attuned to a rather denser style from time to
time, as parenthetical clauses formed an orderly queue, in patient
expectation of finding their honoured place in the sentence, as it
came to its appointed end; every word precious, relevant, but the
meaning demanded of us work, attentiveness. Yet Peter’s scholarly
learning was never used simply to bully or bluster. The words, like
the God he believed in, could look after themselves; and so they
were spoken as an offering, not as a prelude to confrontation.
Peter had a remarkable gift for encouragement of those who, by
design or accidentally, came into view. It was a generosity of spirit
which matched the generous quality of his theological thinking.
He liked to seek out all sorts and conditions of talented people –
anyone who might shine new light on the great religious enterprise,
and whose goodness, beauty and truth might thereby enrich the
world’s store of Godly understanding. And so, he encouraged
artists, writers, poets, politicians. Yet, in doing this, he wasn’t
patronising such people by implying that their insights were
religious. Rather, he saw opportunity in their work to encourage an
often reluctant Church to extend its own limited boundaries of
truth, wisdom or beauty.
And, as with his ordinands, years before, so many became friends,
not because he lacked self-containment and was predatory of their
artistic enthusiasm, or their ability to energise him, but because he
regarded their humanity. And here, I feel a Peter Walker-ism
coming on, for the word ‘regarded’, in all its senses, involved his
attention to them, his quality of noticing or looking, his penetrative
regard.
In being such a person, such a priest, ‘a people person’, Peter would,
and could, talk to anyone, though he wasn’t of course a back-
slapping extrovert who saw little, and heard even less. He simply
wanted to listen, and you’d remember him when you’d met him, and
in his prime, he’d remember you the next time, usually by name.
His personally quiet manner was all of a piece with his theological
understanding of a God whose mysterious being was only in part to
be discerned, explained, even by the precious words through which,
down the centuries, the Church had found agreement. He urged a
healthy respect for the provisionality of doctrine, he knew the
2010 – 2011 THE YEAR IN REVIEW
9
2010 – 2011 THE YEAR IN REVIEW
power of moth and rust to corrupt certainty, and, in such a brash
and noisy world, he urged the wisdom of reticence. And although
he was always concerned for good order and protocol, he was
sometimes courageous in defending those who were rather cross-
grained, or who, at the time, seemed to many to be urging the
Church down dangerous roads towards truth. And he did it because
he knew his God was immense, and generous enough to keep faith
with a Church that was often in danger of mislaying God’s kind of
faithfulness.
And so, as we think of dear Jean, Henry, and Sue Holgate who’d
served Peter so faithfully during the Ely years and since, we
commend Peter to his calling God who is faithful, and who speaks
bespoke to each of us. There was always in the Peter I knew,
lurking behind the absolutely proper concern for gravitas, an impish
twinkle in the eye, that relishing of a certain spirit of undermining,
which I suspect had a complex hinterland, but which made him
chuckle, and which must claim a non-negotiable place in the Peter
Walker story. That’s why I finish with a bit of his beloved Auden, in
which a human soul pleads with its body for a quick death
when the time comes – words which Peter loved to quote,
but which delicate ears must forgive for the in-delicacy
of its last line :
Time, we both know, will decay You, and already
I’m scared of our divorce: I’ve seen some horrid ones.
Remember: when Le bon Dieu says to You Leave him!,
Please, please, for His sake and mine, pay no attention
To my piteous Don’ts, but bugger off quickly.
In our love for Peter, we thank God that, in Auden’s words again,
when the time came for God to ‘abrupt his earthly function’, a
‘speedy, painless dormition’ was possible. Deo gratias for PKW,
then, and for every life which, by the grace of God, he was able to
touch for good.
10
PKW – Reflections
Brian Hebblethwaite
Westcott 1962
I moved into Westcott in
September 1962, the same year
Peter Walker took over as
Principal. We all soon realised
how lucky we were to have such
a gentle and sympathetic, yet
astute, spiritual director as Peter.
Those of us doing the Tripos
that year were given a pretty
free reign, but by the second
year, when we had to tackle
GOE [General Ordination
Exam] and all the in-house stuff,
we learned much from Peter’s wise and practical direction. By then I
thought of him as a friend. Often I would go and collect a packet of
chips from the King Street chippy and take them up to Peter’s room
for a late night chat. He was very tolerant of our occasional
waywardness, as when I left a Quiet Day in outrage at the
Franciscan Director and went to the theatre instead. I don’t think I
ever helped myself to Peter’s whisky as Rupert Hoare did, but I
drank quite a lot of it. He was very patient with us. I remember
when he invited Jean Ferguson, then of the University Counselling
Service, to introduce us to the methods of group dynamics. It was
very non-directive. We sat round in silence and Jean waited for
someone to say something to get the discussion going. We all
refused to say a word. I can’t remember how long this went on.
None of us of course knew that one day Jean would become Peter’s
dear wife.
Chapel was very much the centre of our life at Westcott. One of
things I recall was how much laughter there was in Chapel, not
least on the occasion Peter read an unprepared Old Testament
lesson full of the most unpronounceable names and got completely
tongue-tied. When I was Archivist I included a spoof answer of
Peter’s to the question, ‘What’s the minimum number of services we
have to attend?’
Peter: ‘Well, can we look at it this way: none of them is
actually compulsory, except those which we ought to
feel obliged to attend – that is, we ought to give serious
consideration to the possibility of always making a
point of being in Chapel when anyone else is there,
as the corporate spirit of the House depends on us all
looking at the question from each other’s point of view,
so that, without sitting lightly to the matter, one ought to
think in terms of meeting together in Chapel not
less than 32 times a week including meditations, unless
you want to get a clout over the lug-hole from me.’
Peter remained a much loved friend over the years. He was the first
person I turned to on the two occasions when my life story hit rock
bottom. His wise, quiet counsel kept me on the rails. The last time
I saw him was at the Honorary Degree ceremony last year, when he
and Jean were in the Senate House for Peter’s favourite poet
Geoffrey Hill’s award of an Honorary DLitt. I think of Peter nearly
every day when I sit watching cricket on TV and glance up at the
Piper print of Dorchester Abbey he gave me that hangs on my
sitting room wall.
Mike Law
Westcott 1965
In my first term at Westcott in
1965, I spent an hour with PK
– there was a long silence and
I began to speak and PK
listened and when I left I felt
understood. It was my first
pastoral encounter.
A year later I approached him
about getting married. Our
respective families and
Diocesan Bishop were opposed
to the idea. PK said, “Go
ahead, and I will support you”.
He conducted the nuptial eucharist at St Edward’s Church in
Cambridge in 1966. Over the years we remained in touch. When
he became Bishop of Ely, knowing he was there (especially when
the going was tough) was a solace and support. He was a true
Father in God.
2010 – 2011 THE YEAR IN REVIEW
11
Owen Spencer-Thomas
Westcott 1970
I was a student at Westcott House
in Peter Walker’s time (1970-72),
and one Sunday morning I
remember being woken up by a
frantic knocking on my bedroom
door. It was Peter. He explained
that the previous evening, he had
started to run his bath. However,
the Water Board had chosen that
very moment to turn off the mains
outside for a couple of hours.
Peter abandoned the idea of
having a bath and went to bed. The next morning he woke up to
find water pouring out from underneath the bathroom door,
cascading down the main staircase, through the dining hall, into
the kitchen, and down into the cellar below.
His simple request was could I assist with the clearing up as he was
rostered to celebrate the Eucharist? I happily obliged and got to
work. When he got back from the service, I’d cleared up most of
the mess, but Peter was terribly ill at ease all day. The rest of us
thought it was the biggest joke of the term.
But a big problem remained – how to diffuse the matter and put
Peter’s mind at rest. I got out my Concordance, and after much
thought came up with Psalm 42, 7: ‘Deep calls to deep at the roar of
your waterfalls; all your waves and billows have swept over me’.
I wrote the quote on a piece of paper and pinned it to his door.
Within minutes, I heard some shuffling outside my room and
opened the door to find the following quotation pinned to it: ‘The
Lord sitteth above the water floods; yea, the Lord remains King for
ever. Ps 20, 10. Thanks to OS-T.’
Maggie and I have a son who has severe autism and can neither
speak, nor read, nor write and he is unable to communicate his
feelings properly. In 1988, the local authority strongly advised us
to place nine-year-old Huw in a specialist boarding school on the
other side of the country, in Devon. Before he left we felt strongly
that he should be confirmed to give him a link with his local
church.
However, that raised a major question. With no language, could
Huw really understand what was happening and take responsibility
as a confirmed Christian? I explained our circumstances to Peter
and asked if he would be prepared to confirm Huw. He agreed.
We were delighted. It was in Peter’s character to risk being wrong
rather than to exclude someone from reaching their potential within
the Church.
What followed was the most beautiful and informal confirmation
service I have ever attended. The congregation sang the hymn ‘Just
as I am’. Huw giggled. It was a familiar tune. After the singing, he
had to renew the vows made for him when he was baptised.
Without speech he could say nothing, so I answered on his behalf.
Like most people with autism, Huw tends to avoid people and finds
close proximity very threatening. On this occasion he seemed to
sense the importance of the service, and did something completely
out of character. He put an arm forward and clasped Peter’s hand.
Yes, he ‘turns to Christ’, he ‘renounces evil’ and he ‘believes in God,
the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.’ Without any fuss, Huw then
allowed Peter to lay his hands on his head. He received the gift of
the Holy Spirit and became a confirmed member of the Church.
Since that memorable day, Peter would regularly ask me how Huw
was getting on.
It was instances like these which made Peter so different and so
lovable.
David Reindorp
Westcott 1981
29 years ago I was at Westcott. Because
I had been in business and then trained
as a social worker the feeling was it
would be a good idea to read theology,
which I did at Trinity.
As finals hoved into view, years of
unresolved ‘stuff’ came to the surface and
I had a breakdown. Bishop Peter took all
that in his stride when ordaining me. I realise now what a risk it
was. One of Bishop Peter’s astonishing strengths was dealing with
all of us who didn’t ‘fit’ moulds. I have never known another priest
who had such a diversity of disciples (he took Mark Thatcher’s
wedding!).
Suzy and I never forgot his coming to dinner when I was a curate
on the Arbury estate – and he taught my eldest son how to make a
point with his glasses! His humour was a joy. Then he appointed
me vicar of Waterbeach. At my induction, knowing one third of
the parish were army, he wore his medals. Five of them! That was
another side to him.
He was holy in an enormously attractive sense, he and Jean cared
and loved. I have his letters where he wrote round the edges! I am
in a parish that has nearly 800 on the electoral roll. It averages 105
children and 210 adults every Sunday. We have a baptism, a
wedding, funeral/memorial service every week. I write this not to
boast (Bishop Peter would hate that) but because Bishop Peter made
it possible for me to do this. Not a week goes by when I do not
think of him.
2010 – 2011 THE YEAR IN REVIEW
12
A Christian apologetics conference was held in Westcott House
7-8 December 2010. The event was organised by Donna Lazenby
(Westcott House ordinand) and speakers included Alister McGrath
(Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Education, and Head of the
Centre for Theology, Religion, and Culture at King’s College
London), Bishop Nick Baines (then Bishop of Croydon, now
Bishop of Bradford), Ruth Gledhill (The Times religion
correspondent), Alison Milbank (Associate Professor of Literature
and Theology at the University of Nottingham and Priest Vicar at
Southwell Minster), Graham Ward (Samuel Fergusson Professor of
Philosophical Theology and Ethics at the University of
Manchester, and Head of the School of Arts, Histories and
Cultures), and Andrew Davison (Tutor in Doctrine at Westcott
House). The conference was well attended by clergy from a
variety of Dioceses, academic staff, and ordinands from across the
Theological Federation. The conference recognised that the
relationship between the Christian Church and secular society in
the West today is defined as much by opportunities for innovation
and renewal as by challenge. The six speakers shared their views
of how the Church and wider society can engage meaningfully and
effectively in our world. Representing perspectives from within
the ministry of the Church, across Press and Internet media
platforms, and the theological Academy, the speakers offered their
reflections on what they identify to be the challenges for present
day Church-world relations, and their practical insights concerning
how these challenges might be recognised, met and overcome.
A lively question-and-answer session followed each speaker’s paper,
creating diverse and visionary debate, and allowing the many
valuable perspectives of the audience members to be expressed,
as a fuller picture was built of how the Church can communicate
its message in our times. Emerging themes included the need to be
confident in the power of the gospel to convey its own truth; the
need for Christians, and ministers, to be visibly present in our
communities, by encouraging public festival and ‘beating the
bounds’ of the parish; and the value of paying attention to how the
contemporary imagination (in literature and film) and popular
culture engage with religious ideas.
Those who attended the conference reflected warmly on the
opportunity to gather with fellow ministers and theologians, and
thanked Westcott House for facilitating an event that brought
them into direct contact with professionals working in these
stimulating fields. This conference was an expression of Westcott
House’s ongoing commitment to being a centre for theological
education and excellence, serving ordinands, clergy, and all those
committed to exploring the Church’s life and work.
Donna Lazenby
Curate, Springfield Church, Wallington; with St Michael’s
and All Angels, South Beddington, and St Paul’s, Roundshaw,
Diocese of Southwark
Highlights of the Year
Apologetics Conference
How does today’s Churchengage with today’s world?
Bishop Nick Baines The Revd Dr Andrew Davison The Revd Dr Donna Lazenby Professor Alister McGrath
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR
13
The now annual Summer Garden Party took place
this year on Midsummer’s Day. Around 100
ordinands, staff, alumni and friends gathered on the
terrace in the warm sunshine before moving to the
Chapel for a talk and lively discussion on the
subject of ‘Seeking the common good’. The speaker
was Professor Philip Sheldrake, formerly a member
of Westcott’s staff in the 1990s and now Senior
Research Fellow. Tea and cakes in the garden
followed, with lively conversation between old and
new acquaintances, and the day ended with
Evensong and supper.
Midsummer Garden Party
SAVE THE DATEThe garden party in 2012will be on Tuesday 19 June
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR
14
An exciting new initiative at Westcott House this year has been to
set up formal links with Newmarket Open Door, a Churches
Together Project.
Newmarket Open Door came out of a Lent course almost fifteen
years ago. What began as a small idea has flourished into housing
for people aged 16-30 who have previously lived in care or foster
homes, or who have been living on the streets. As part of the
Open Door charity there is also a food bank facility and a furniture
project. Local people on benefits can buy donated household
goods including large items of furniture at cheap rates and have
them delivered by the volunteer delivery drivers. Supermarkets
and churches donate food that is then sold from the dedicated
shop or distributed to local people and Jimmy’s Night Shelter in
Cambridge.
Westcott students are involved in several areas of the Open Door
charity. A designated sitting room has been furnished for the twice
weekly film night. Residents choose the film schedule and
contribute to the topics for discussion afterwards. A small group
regularly travel into Cambridge on a Wednesday night to join our
community for Evening Prayer and a meal in the dining hall,
followed by a trip to the ADC Theatre or the cinema. For the
summer, we have planned a visit to the Cambridge Botanic Garden
and a punting trip with a picnic on the riverbank. We hope to
develop this social link into an informal mentor scheme where
residents can meet individually with an ordinand.
One of the Westcott tutor groups has committed to giving their
time a morning each term to help sort the food deliveries that
arrive in the warehouse. This has been an excellent team building
activity for us and we have felt much rewarded by how much
difference those few hours make to the Foodbank warehouse.
The Westcott Café, run by a small team of dedicated students,
provides home-baked cakes and fresh coffee for members of the
Westcott community. This year, the Café has raised £400 for the
Open Door Project. These funds, and more than £200 raised by
the Christmas raffle, have been set aside for literacy and numeracy
materials and for a proposed new Cookery School Scheme where
residents will learn to ‘Cook for a Quid’.
An awareness raising event took place on 15 June: Newmarket
Open Door at Westcott House – a garden party that was attended
by trustees of the charity and current volunteers, as well as past and
present residents who talked about how the project has helped
them. We were delighted that their President, Terry Waite, joined
us for the evening.
Details of Newmarket Open Door
(Registered Charity No. 1070554) can be found on-line
at www.newmarketopendoor.org.uk.
Colette Annesley-Gamester
Newmarket Open Door Project
Listen, I am standing at the door,knocking; if you hear my voiceand open the door, I will come into you and eat with you, and youwith me. Revelation 3:20
David Smith, Joel Love, Colette Annesley-Gamester
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR
15
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR
Marking twenty years of the Manchester Project
On Saturday 14 May, former ordinands, placement supervisors
and congregation members from participating parishes met
together to give God thanks for 20 years of the Cambridge-
Manchester Project.
Held at St Luke’s, Longsight in East Manchester, the celebration
included a eucharist at which the Bishop of Middleton presided,
and Bishop Rupert Hoare (former Principal at Westcott House)
preached.
In the 20 years that this partnership between Westcott House and
the Diocese of Manchester has existed, over 200 ordinands have
experienced and enjoyed an extended placement in parishes in
Manchester – originally in the east of the city, but more recently
taking advantage of the breadth of experiences that are available
throughout the whole. Housed in a diocesan property, groups of up
to five students live together in community for between six and
eight weeks, appreciating the different contexts of both where they
are living, as well as experiencing the rhythm of parish life wherever
they are placed.
Rupert Hoare was intimately involved in the inception and
development of the Project, and writes of that time: ‘In the 1980s
Westcott was somewhat slow off the mark in making proper
provision in urban training for its ordinands. Ripon College,
Cuddesdon had already established its presence in Sheffield, the
Durham colleges were committed to Gateshead. Following the
impact made by the ‘Faith in the City’ report on urban deprivation
in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, it was imperative our ordinands had
direct hands-on experience of the urban world. There was as much
learning to be done there as in the lecture rooms of Cambridge.
Having worked in East Manchester I was very aware of the contrast
between Jesus Lane, Cambridge and the Ashton New Road,
Manchester. I was also convinced that a nation was (and still is) to
be judged by how it relates to its most deprived communities,
within which students would find themselves learning from people
who were pure gold.’
Comments from those who have been part of the Project clearly
illustrate the value to both ordinand and parish of the undertaking.
As Stephen Edwards (Wt 1993) reflects: ‘It is the importance of
social aspects of parish ministry that remain my strongest memory;
weekly luncheon clubs, bingo, drinking, eating, and every Sunday
singing karaoke with the local funeral director in the pub. All these
things were not distractions from church but integral strands of
pastoral care.
Celebratory eucharist held at St Luke’sBishops Rupert (left) and Mark (right) with Martin Seeley
16
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR
James Stewart, a Westcott ordinand who was deaconed this summer,
wrote of his time in Manchester: ‘I remember my time at St Agnes,
Longsight with great fondness. As an ordinand from the rural
Diocese of Norwich it was useful to spend time in a multicultural
parish with one of the largest Islamic populations in the diocese.
In being involved in a wide range of activities – from meeting
parents preparing for the baptism of their children to helping with
the annual celebration of Corpus Christi – it was possible to see
how community and faith groups integrated, thereby creating a
greater sense of unity in the neighbourhood. Yet pastoral
relationships with individual parishioners were particularly valuable.
Making connections and talking about faith whilst driving one of
the parishioners home from daily Evening Prayer made for happy
times. As an ardent Manchester City fan it soon became very clear
that she did not approve of my choice of red jumper, which I had
naively chosen to wear in the parish – it was soon replaced with a
pale blue one.’
‘At a time when many training colleges are in retreat, both the
Diocese’s and Westcott House’s commitment to this ongoing
partnership is a great encouragement,’ writes the Revd Simon
Gatenby, the current tutor for the Project. ‘To my knowledge the
only training opportunity which links the Northern and Southern
provinces, the project has enabled many current clergy, wherever
they have been called, to also gain a deeper understanding and
appreciation of the urban context. As a window into the
Manchester Diocese in particular, encouraged by their placement
experience, a good number of former students find their way back
to serving here after ordination too. In football parlance (perhaps
appropriate when the celebration was held on Cup final day), it
really is win, win.’
Westcott staff and ordinands with Rector of St Luke’s Peter Clark
Bishop Mark with ordinand Catherine Staziker
17
40
Holy week at Canterbury Cathedral
18
Missions, Placements and Exchanges
Easter missions and pilgrimages 2011
A number of Westcott ordinands were involved in a widerange of activities during their Easter vacation.
Catherine Tucker and Gillian Trinder joined the JesusCollege Chaplaincy Easter pilgrimage trip to the Sinaidesert. The trip included a visit to St Catherine’s Monastery– the site of the burning bush – and a climb of Mount Sinaiin the footsteps of Moses.
A group spent Holy Week in residence at CanterburyCathedral gaining insight into the ministry of a cathedral incomparison with a parish church. A particular highlight washaving tea in the garden of the Old Palace with ArchbishopRowan Williams on Holy Saturday, when he told them thata priest has to have the patience to hold diversity and toextend the welcome of God to all people.
A further five students and the Vice-Principal, Will Lamb,joined parishioners in Winchmore Hill for a series of eventsincluding worship, outreach and children’s activities.On Maundy Thursday, complete with their ‘Trainee vicar’t-shirts, the ordinands shined shoes for commuters arrivingat Winchmore Hill station in an echo of the story of Jesuswashing his disciples feet as an act of loving service at theLast Supper.
Another eleven Westcottians joined the Parish of Mirfieldfor Holy Week. Their programme included giving out hotcross buns on the high street, also wearing ‘’Trainee vicar’t-shirts, and leading a holiday club for 35 children using avariety of activities including storytelling, games, crafts,action songs and godly play.
19
Tea with Archbishop Rowan Williams
Winchmore HillSinai
Study leave in JapanThanks to a generous scholarship from the Spalding Trust, I was
able to spend Michaelmas Term of 2010 in Japan. Lest this seem
something of a strange place to send an Anglican ordinand, I
should point out that my PhD research comprises a comparison
between Pseudo-Dionysius’ doctrine of God and the doctrine of
Buddha of the Japanese patriarch Shinran Shonin. My supervisor
and I felt that it would be worth spending a term consolidating
my Japanese language skills on an intensive course, and Nihon
University in Tokyo was offering just that.
I was met at the airport with customary Japanese hospitality and
taken to the block of flats in Setagaya Ward which I would share
with my fellow students, a mixture of recent Cambridge graduates
and undergraduates from Sweden, Germany and Finland. As the
oldest and most experienced in the ways of Japan, having first lived
there some eight years ago, I ended up as surrogate uncle to our
little community. The non-Cambridge students in particular were
rather surprised to find themselves living with a seminarian, and we
ended up having interesting and often quite deep conversations.
On Sundays, a few fellow students joined me in exploring various
Anglican churches in the city. It may interest the higher
churchmen among us to know that the Japanese Anglican Church
is properly called the Nihon Seikokai, ‘the Holy Catholic Church
of Japan.’ We were welcomed by the English speaking
congregation at St Alban’s, at St Andrew’s Cathedral and by
Fr Kevin of the beautiful St Luke’s International Hospital Chapel,
among others. I was pleased to stumble upon a meticulously
celebrated High Mass at St Stephen’s and the following week to
see the Bishop consecrate with due ceremonial their new state-of-
the-art church building. Theirs was an especially thriving church,
packed full of young and old. Their activities including running a
soup kitchen for the homeless, putting on jumble sales redolent of
English country parish life, and keeping up a very presentable
youth choir. This last was recruited in part from their attached
Anglican girls’ school next door. Suffice it to say that the Church
in Tokyo seemed alive and well.
When I was not cramming Japanese characters, training at the
Aikido dojo or exploring churches, I spent time making contact
with Buddhist scholars and faithful from Shinran’s True Pure Land
sect. Academics from the Pure Land Buddhist Ryukoku and Otani
universities in Kyoto received me warmly and seemed genuinely
interested in my research. So did the Revd Professor Michael Pye,
latterly of Clare College and Tübingen, but now ordained deacon
and running the Christian Institute for the Study of Japanese
Religions in Kyoto. He kindly introduced me to a young American
scholar just completing his PhD at Otani before returning to the
States to practise as a Buddhist minister. It was good to compare
notes with someone from another tradition striving, like me, to
work out how to combine academic and pastoral ministry.
The earthquake in March rather overshadowed the fond memories
of the term I spent there, but I am glad to say that none of the
friends I made in Tokyo were directly affected. In response to those
events, we organised a service in Selwyn College Chapel in both
English and Japanese, also inviting contributions from local
Buddhist ministers. Some 120 people, mostly Japanese, attended.
At that point, I understood how my time learning Japanese and
exploring Japanese Buddhism can contribute to my Christian
ministry. Obscure though my studies may seem, I am most grateful
for being given the chance to pursue them.
Tom Plant
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR
Tom Plant at Kamakura
20
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR
21
Shrine steps at Kamakura
Church of the Holy Apostles,New YorkDuring the Michaelmas Term of 2010 I spent seven weeks on
placement at the Church of the Holy Apostles, Chelsea, New
York. During this period I was resident at General Theological
Seminary (a few blocks away from the church).
Holy Apostles centres itself on the Parish Eucharist
and social outreach is a fundamental part of its
mission. The church has a number of groups
carrying this work out. However, the most
significant project is the Holy Apostles Soup
Kitchen. The soup kitchen is the largest in New
York and serves over 1,200 meals at lunchtime every
weekday. Other services are also provided to
complement the soup kitchen such as referrals for
free haircuts, free legal advice, free healthcare and a
range of other voluntary services.
I spent several mornings a week volunteering in the
soup kitchen. The volunteers’ coordinator ensured that I
experienced a range of different jobs through the placement, which
included welcoming guests, serving drinks, clearing trays, cleaning
tables, and acting as a runner for the people serving food. Being
involved with the soup kitchen and witnessing its work was an
invaluable experience. My other primary involvement with guests
of the soup kitchen was attending a Bible study group on
Wednesday mornings run specifically for them. The group
averaged about ten people and was a good opportunity for Bible
study and fellowship. It could sometimes be a bit of a struggle to
keep the group focused; however, it was moving to see just how
strongly they wished to talk about their faith.
The life of the parish also gave me the opportunity to learn about
another part of the Anglican Communion as well as parish life in
the Episcopal Church. I attended a number of parish activities and
also spent much time in conversation with members of the church.
I was fortunate enough to visit some other churches whilst in
America and meet with other clergy and seminarians. Visits to
other Episcopal churches included St Mary the
Virgin, Times Square; St Ignatius of Antioch on
the Upper West Side; St James’ Church, Madison
Avenue (where the Revd Ryan Fleenor, who was
at Westcott in 2008 on exchange from Yale, is
now curate); and St Thomas, Fifth Avenue. I was
also able to attend worship in the chapel at the
General Theological Seminary and some
lectures.
As well as the exposure to the Episcopal Church
I was able to spend time experiencing and
enjoying the vibrant New York culture.
Highlights included visits to the Metropolitan Opera, Broadway,
Central Park, the New York Botanical Garden and a number of art
galleries.
The whole experience of a different culture and another part of the
Anglican Communion was particularly interesting and enjoyable.
I will certainly look back on my trip to New York as a highlight of
my time at Westcott House.
Ben Eadon
Curate, St Chad’s, Sunderland, Diocese of Durham
Ben Eadon and the Revd Suzanne Toro (Priest Associate, Church of the Holy Apostles)
Queuing outside Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen
Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen
22
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR
Yale ExchangeI didn’t have much of an idea what I was getting myself into when I
applied for the exchange program at Yale Divinity School. I’m deeply
interested in the Anglican Communion and I knew I wanted to learn
more about the Church of England, the ‘mother ship’, so to speak, of
Anglicanism. I had heard good things about Yale’s exchange with
Westcott House so I sent off
my application and hoped for
the best.
Several months later, after too
many long plane flights,
I ended up in Westcott for the
Michaelmas Term. Any doubts
I may have had about the
decision were immediately
laid to rest by the welcome
I received and the way in
which I was warmly made a
part of the community.
There were many memorable
moments for me in the term.
I attended lectures on the
English Reformation in the Faculty of Divinity and then walked back to
Westcott for lunch past some of the very same sights that had been
mentioned in the lecture.
I was on attachment to Christ’s College and learned about the way in
which college life in Cambridge is soaked in Anglicanism. I had terrific
supervisions with tutors across the Cambridge Theological Federation,
who encouraged me to pursue my interests.
But I think what will stay with me the most – and what I hope to take
back to Yale – is the strength of the community at Westcott. Because
everyone lives, eats, prays and works together it’s not easy to get away
from one other. Naturally, there are difficult moments and points of
tension in the community but I was repeatedly impressed by the way in
which the students and staff are committed to living in healthy and life-
giving relationships with each other. The Gospel affirms the relatedness
of all human beings and at Westcott that relatedness is truly lived. The
Thursday night community evenings were my weekly highlight and I will
really miss those, along with a whole new group of terrific friends and
fellow members of the Body of Christ.
Jesse Zink
Jesse performing a comic song at the WestcottChristmas Review 2010
Announcing two Westcott HouseConferences for 2012
Preaching Conference2-5 July 2012With Bill Brosend, Mark Oakley, Ellen Wakeham and
Martin Seeley
Westcott House is organising this in conjunction withthe Episcopal Preaching Foundation and the Schoolof Theology, University of the South (Sewanee).This will be a chance to refresh your preachingthrough exploring different approaches and styles,with opportunities to practice with peers. We willparticularly consider what it is that makes Anglicanpreaching distinctive. The conference will be limitedto 24 participants, plus twelve from the SewaneeD.Min. preaching programme.
A Vision of Priesthood forthe Church of England4-6 September 2012
The 20th anniversary of the ordination of women to the
priesthood provides us with an ideal opportunity to think
more deeply and constructively about the nature of
priesthood in the Church of England, which is not simply
a recipient of the ecclesiology of others, but also has
significant insights to offer. We also believe it is important
to re-envisage priesthood as not only for the church but also
for the world. Therefore we hope this conference will provide
a long overdue opportunity to offer a renewed articulation
of the vision of priesthood that is not captive to recent
ecclesial controversies and that takes into account the
challenges of the present moment in our world.
For further information contact:[email protected]
or visit our website at www.westcott.cam.ac.uk23
THEOLOGICAL CONVERSATIONS
Theological Conversations
Rev actor and writer visit WestcottOn 21 January, actor Tom Hollander and writer James Wood
were the guest speakers at a session for ordinands about the
BBC2 television series Rev. The talk was part of the ‘Life and
Service’ course for Lent Term on preaching and communication.
In conversation with Martin Seeley, Tom and James spoke about
creating the Rev series and the character of Adam, and how their
involvement with the project has broadened their experience of,
and opened their eyes to, the role of the church in today’s
society.
James began by explaining that in order to ensure that the
character of Adam was authentic they started to spend time with a
lot of vicars, hearing about their day-to-day life. This led them to
realise that the show could be about the joys, frustrations,
dilemmas and realities of running an urban, inner city parish. In
Tom’s words, it could tackle the question of “how to square one’s
faith and calling with the realities of the place of the Church of
England in today’s world”. Tom went on to say that “As we
researched, it became clear that even in today’s ‘secular society’ the
vicar is still at the centre of our communities and is therefore a
useful prism through which to view British society as a whole …
particularly the modern, urban, multi-cultural, multi-faith context.
Adam is a traditional Englishman in a changed world.”
Tom emphasised that they were keen to avoid jokes that were at
the expense of the idea of believing in God, or of vicars
themselves, but rather the jokes are at the expense of the world and
the predicament of a vicar in the world. He explained that the
creative process involves coming up with the scenario of a plot and
then having “authenticity conversations” with advisers, from which
most of the best anecdotes emerge.
Tom talked with candour about his reflections on his own life
whilst involved with the series. “I do find I’ve gone to church
much more because of it and I realise that this has also coincided
with a sort of juncture in my life. I found a lot of the people that I
was very close to, and relationships that I was having, were going
quite dark. This is partly why I always try to go ‘no, we can’t just
be funny’. The principles of taking yourself out of things and
putting those in more need than you first, looking after the sick
and the needy and the poor and the disenfranchised, and putting
them first as a means to your own salvation, have been knocking
around in my head. So the vicar who is beset with the daily issues
that we all confront of anger, frustration, lust, whatever they are …
has to come to terms with them publically and has to know how to
talk about them for others and how to help other people, but of
course is also helping himself or herself in doing so.”
James talked about what he has noticed about the attitudes of the
wider public to the church. He sees a prevailing assumption that it
will be there for people when they want it: for a wedding or
christening, for example. He sees that it is a huge part of our
cultural history: that very deep inside the culture are yearnings
beyond scientific explanations to the mysterious; and that these
powerful feelings are instincts with which the media in general, and
television in particular, rarely engage. Summing up the ingredients
that make Rev successful, he said, “I think the simple trick of our
show is we’ve tried to do an authentic and sincere programme
about an authentic and sincere character, and actually everyone out
there is engaging with those big questions of faith, whatever faith
it may be, and we’ve done it in nice half-hour chunks that are
funny.”
James felt that key to the success of the show has been that it
addresses the kind of questions of faith that everyone is asking, but
in a way that is more accessible than a lot of conventional religious
and philosophical broadcasting. He also reflected that the show is
arguably at its best when it takes a current church or social issue
and deals with it through the characters. He observed that when
big current church issues become the main plot drivers they have
resonances far beyond the church and are indicative of culture as a
whole, saying, “Episode one was about pushy parents using the
church to get their kids a free education. That’s a church story but
that’s a social and cultural story as well.”
He commented that there was no deliberate intention to do PR for
the church, but because in Adam they have created a credible,
rounded character, they have “done the human side of what it is to
24
be a vicar” and this means that they are presenting what he feels
lots of viewers, the public, or even congregations, have not seen.
“They see the role, they’ve seen the outfit, but we’re not afraid to
show a man who has all the weaknesses that humans have. He can
be proud and lazy and slothful and bored and lustful and all these
things, but at heart he’s a good man trying to do a good job in
difficult circumstances. I think that probably does have, for the
people who see the show, a positive impact on the church, but it’s
certainly not something we intend to do.”
Tom added, “I think something about not doing the comedy
stereotype means people key into it, because the idea that even the
priest himself is unsure humanises the idea of going to church.
Someone said, “It’s so good because it makes vicars look like normal
people”.”
James highlighted what he saw as a contradiction between people’s
desires and what he described as “big Victoria buildings that are
imposing and designed so that people feel a bit of awe from their
religion and a sense of ritual, all of which remove the human from
the process.” He went on to say, “I think a lot of people are
therefore cautious of going to church because they feel intimidated
by it, despite the attempts to make the language more familiar.
Our programme says, ‘Look, here’s the actual person doing that’.”
James confessed to being puzzled that the church as an institution
appears so uninterested in, or poor at, bridging the gap between
services and ritual and the humans involved, and it is clear that he
thinks there are lessons in communication for the church to learn.
“It is a gap that the programme has perhaps slightly bridged by
mistake, in saying ‘Don’t be scared by these buildings, they’re just
run by someone like him’.”
James spoke of sensing a crisis in the church about how it should
be representing itself to a 21st century public, and commented that
the modes of communication he sees appear “out of date and old
and wrong and alienating often”, but things are different, he says,
when you talk to the individuals: “So in a strange way, because
we’re a show that goes out to however many millions of people, on
BBC2, I can see why, the vicars who like it (and not all do, let’s be
clear) feel we’ve done a really useful job for them because they’re
doing it one by one.”
Highlights taken from a recording of the ‘Life and Service’
session. With grateful thanks to Andrew Whitehead, Tim
Hupfield and Samantha Stayte.
THEOLOGICAL CONVERSATIONS
25
Tom Hollander and James Wood visiting Westcott to speak to ordinands
Women in Priesthood
As we approach the twentieth anniversary of the ordination of
women to the priesthood in the Church of England, here we
profile two Westcott alumnae and the paths their ministries have
taken.
Dean of St Edmundsbury
The Very Revd Canon Dr Frances Ward trained for the
priesthood at Westcott House from 1987 to 1989 and was
installed as the first female dean of St Edmundsbury Cathedral,
and the Church of England’s fourth female dean, in October
2010. Heather Kilpatrick, Communications Officer, interviewed
her in February about her life and work.
Frances was born in Australia and grew up in Ely, where her father
was the Head Teacher of the King’s School. She studied Theology
at St Andrew’s University, swapping from her first choice of a Fine
Arts & History degree. She then went on to nursing training at the
Royal London Hospital, but says “At that stage I was already
thinking about priesthood. I knew Norry McCurry, a member of
the Council at Westcott House, and talked to him about my
calling. He recommended that I apply to train at Westcott. I was
there when Rupert Hoare was Principal, and have good memories
and friends from those days. I clearly remember sitting at the back
of Chapel with my six-month-old daughter Matilda playing on the
carpet in front of me.”
Since her ordination in 1989, Frances has worked in parishes and as
a theological educator. This has included teaching for the United
Reformed Church at the Northern College in Manchester and
doing a PhD, as well as writing on a variety of subjects. She is
currently editing a series of essays with the Revd Professor Sarah
Coakley entitled Fear and Friendship, a sequel to Praying for England on
the subject of Anglicanism engaging with Islam. She is also writing
a book entitled Brittle Britain, looking at the role of the Church of
England in society. “We are living in so many different Britains –
in Bradford, for example, the population will soon be 50% Muslim.
I believe in a Catholic approach – the Church is a means of God’s
grace, and Eucharist is at the heart of what it means to be Church,
so we can be more confident and bold about what Church offers
society. The Church needs to be on the front foot, not the
back foot.”
Prior to moving to Bury St Edmunds, Frances was a Residentiary
Canon and Canon Theologian at Bradford Cathedral, where she
was responsible for liturgy and worship. Does Frances find Bury St
Edmunds a great change from Bradford? “I am reeling from the
differences – Bradford is complex, edgy and lacking in money.
There I was very involved in developing dialogue between the
Church and the Muslim communities, for example, but diversity is
a less pressing issue in Suffolk. God has called me to places of
immense contrast, but people are the same and you can preach, live
the Gospel and make friends anywhere. Such variety is a benefit of
the priesthood. Bury is vibrant, beautiful and lifts the spirits, and
one of the things I hope to establish is a centre for the arts and
theology, running modules and having artists in residence. I would
like to encourage theological reflections in art. There are some big
questions to be explored – does beauty have a purpose, for
example?”
Frances says that important to her being able to combine the role
of priest and mother has been the support of her husband Peter,
who is a consultant paediatrician. Together they have four
children, Matilda, Jonty, Theo and Hugh. “The older three
children have now left home for jobs and university, but Hugh is
still living with us and has adjusted well to the move to Bury from
Lancashire.”
On the subject of being a woman with a senior Church position
she has previously been quoted as saying, “I know the other three
women deans and they are all good friends ... There are a number
of really capable women around who lead in different ways and
bring different perspectives to key jobs like this.” When asked to
reflect further on this, she says “Sometimes I feel watched, whether
I am or not, as there are so few women in this role. I do feel a
pressure not to make mistakes, but I believe other women are
empowered to see a woman in my position. I am not a strident
feminist; I am more likely to say that my presence in this context is
important, and to do it well – and as ‘me’ – is crucial. I care that
women are in leadership roles, and feel they bring different things
to leadership. There are questions of confidence and emotional
intelligence. My style of leadership is to create a culture that
engenders trust, and enables people to feel safe and trusted to get
on with their work.”
Frances Ward’s installation
THEOLOGICAL CONVERSATIONS
26
Theology lived out
Rosalind (Ros) Lane was an ordinand at Westcott from 1993-95
and since 1997 has largely worked as a prison chaplain. Ros met
with Heather Kilpatrick in March to talk about her time at
Westcott and her work.
Ros’s call to ministry came out of her time as an undergraduate.
She did voluntary work at a high security prison while studying
Theology at Durham. Through this
experience she came to realise that
“Theology is not just to be studied,
but to be lived out.” Ros began
ordination training in 1993,
following the decision by the
Church of England in 1992 to
accept women in training for
priestly ministry, and was therefore
in the first cohort of women
ordained to priesthood.
Ros spent two years at Westcott, where she studied for the CTM
(Certificate in Theology for Ministry). While at Westcott, Ros had
a significant opportunity which influenced the direction of her
ministry.
“My time at Westcott was a very important part of my discernment
process to move into chaplaincy work. I had the chance to go on
placement at Fulbourn Hospital – a psychiatric hospital near
Cambridge – for three months. Canon Mike Law [retired Senior
Chaplain at Fulbourn Hospital, and now Westcott’s gardener]
encouraged me to enroll for psychotherapy training as part of my
priestly formation.” This enhanced Ros’s skills and ministry in the
areas of spiritual and pastoral care of some of the more vulnerable
members of the Church. “Westcott gave me the opportunity to
discover the reactions within me towards disability on all kinds of
physical, spiritual and emotional levels. It allowed me the freedom
to explore what I could learn from other faiths, to deepen my
spirituality and to practice pastoral care outside of the conventional
parish system.”
Ros’s first chaplaincy position after priesting was at Wakefield New
Hall Women’s Prison, and she has since worked at Doncaster,
Wymott, Kirkham and Whitemoor. She is currently Chaplain at
HM Prison Ashwell, which houses just over 200 prisoners at
Oakham in Rutland. Ashwell is a closed ‘Category C’ prison
holding a mixture of life sentenced, long- and short-term sentenced
prisoners.
In addition to her chaplaincy work, Ros has set up a private
counselling practice in Ely with a colleague, and is also studying
for a professional doctorate in Practical Theology. “My research
focuses upon the distinct ministry of prison chaplains. This
includes being the guardian of sacred space within the prison
environment as a place of hospitality and homecoming, and a
ministry of walking alongside those who feel disenfranchised due
to living within a loss environment. I have written course materials
for chaplains in all the different categories of prison upon how to
assist prisoners living with loss experiences and in particular those
Little Acorns: Ros’s church is based at Ely Cathedral centre on Sunday mornings where she worships with her two young children, other parents, grandparents and carers.Ros first initiated this in her last parish as a way to encourage children from a young age to have fun and share the gospel at the same time.
Ros Lane
Theology is not justto be studied, but tobe lived out.
27
with traumatic and complicated loss. My role as a chaplain has
been to create a spiritual community which prisoners can belong
to in order that they might experience the opportunity to
enfranchise themselves to a faith community, family life and to the
prison community. The chaplaincy centre has been at the heart of
this and has been an oasis of peace and welcome. This decreases
their sense of isolation, anxiety and lack of self worth, and can
bring hope, purpose and meaning to their lives. My research
approach has been unique within the prison service as prisoners
have assisted me and have been the co-creators of the research
findings, and this has led to the transformation of the work done
by chaplains and has transformed prisoners through giving them a
liberating voice and platform from where they can speak about
profound eternal truths in their lives.”
Ros says that through a combination of action research,
collaborative enquiry and theological reflection the research group
have found that a combination of education about loss through
group process, follow-up support group work and one-to-one
pastoral counselling and development of faith rituals, the spiritual
needs of prisoners have been addressed in a more individual way.
The methodology used has been a hallmark of the distinctive
nature of the research as much as the application of theories of
loss within the prison environment.
When asked how the prisoners can reach a resolution, she
explained “It is important that the prisoners design their own
rituals, using a chapel or world faith room as a focus. The ritual
would not be Christian so much as spiritual; prisoners can go to
their priest, rabbi, imam or appropriate spiritual leader in order to
devise a ritual personal to their faith experience. Part of the
process is also dealing with issues of guilt, grief and forgiveness
around the victim who, in some instances, can be inside their own
family. These issues can be very complex when the prisoner is
grieving the loss of a parent at their own hands, for example.
There are also quality of life issues which arise in prison, as some
prisoners will die in prison and this causes them to reflect on their
own mortality. Others will be reaching the end of their sentence
and grieving the loss of the prison when they move out.”
Ros is making recommendations and sharing best practice with
other chaplains so that they can use the process she has devised in
order to support prisoners and their families.
When asked about the role of chaplaincy, Ros is very positive.
“As a member of staff, I am paid by the prison but work for God.
You can contain fears and anxieties in a safe, confidential space.
I can offer a route to spiritual freedom and peace from all demands.
I can provide an oasis so men and women don’t feel ‘in prison’,
physically or emotionally. I treat prisoners and staff with decency,
dignity and respect, as I would expect to be treated. Much of my
work involves supporting staff who are returning to work following
a difficult incident like suicide, disturbance, workplace bullying or
challenging family circumstances.”
Ros recalls a particular highlight, saying “I remember a very badly
damaged high risk prisoner, who I had prepared for baptism and
confirmation.
He wrote a rap which he read out at the service that told his
journey of faith. He listened to rap music to give him a sense of
peace from the inner disturbances and voices and was able to find
his own voice in tune with the scriptures through his composition.”
Since giving this interview, Ros has moved from HM Prison Ashwell and is now
working within the NHS as a part-time mental health chaplain in Harlow,
Essex, while building up her private psychotherapy practice.
THEOLOGICAL CONVERSATIONS
Ros with the ‘rap’ prisoner
28
THEOLOGICAL CONVERSATIONS
Debating Fresh ExpressionsFor this issue of the Review, we invited Westcott tutors Andrew
Davison and Dave Male to talk about the church, mission and
fresh expressions. Dave is Tutor in Pioneer Ministry; Andrew has
been critical of the ecclesiology behind fresh expressions writing
– but they are good friends and never fail to have a productive
theological conversation.
AD We get on because of our enthusiasm
for the Christian theological tradition. I’m
glad that a thoroughgoing interest in
ecclesiology is picking up, although it may
be a little late. There will be a new report
soon on ‘emerging church’ which promises to
be a very theological follow up to Mission-
shaped Church. That will put us where we
should have been six years ago. I hope that
we are not closing the stable door after the
horse has bolted.
DM I agree with you that sometimes there
has not been enough theological thinking
and reflection, but often simply a pragmatic
attempt to find the next ‘thing’ to avert
decline. This isn’t only related to fresh
expressions but exists across the church.
Fresh expressions are all very new and, to
quote Alister McGrath, ‘theological
reflection on the identity of and calling of
the church follows on from its existence as a
community of faith.’ I am not so sure the
horse has bolted but more that we are now in
a place to reflect. Historically, we’ve had
various distillations of the nature of the
church. The problem is that they were
produced for a particular time and may be
answering questions we are no longer asking.
There is also a danger in defining church too narrowly. The
Archbishop of Canterbury leaves plenty of room for local detail in
his definition of church using Ignatius’ famous maxim ‘so from the
start where Jesus is, there is the church… the church is what
happens when people encounter the risen Jesus and commit
themselves to sustaining and deepening that encounter in their
encounter with each other.’
AD Those words of the Archbishop are wonderfully and properly
Christocentric but they are also open to more than one
interpretation – almost dangerously so. ‘The church is what
happens when people encounter the risen Jesus’ – that’s true, but it’s
a necessary rather than sufficient condition for what constitutes a
local church. This is where I differ from most of the fresh
expressions theorists I know. Clearly, the encounter of people with
Jesus is at the heart of the church, and the church is what came to
birth from that encounter, but there is more to the church than
this. We need not, and cannot, strip the church back to some
notional first-century state (although that is a
perennial Protestant impulse). All mainstream
churches have practices of prayer, doctrine,
leadership, and so on. They go beyond the
encounter with Jesus, but only so as to enable it to
happen. There is an illustrative parallel in the
relation of doctrine to the Bible: it is necessary but
not sufficient for Christian doctrine to be Biblical.
Without tradition, there would be no doctrine of the
Incarnation, or of the Trinity, and the sort of
eschatology that gets read out of the Bible without
doctrinal tutelage is often worrying or dangerous.
The urge to discount everything but the Bible within
doctrine is fundamentalist – to use an impolite word
– and I wouldn’t want to see the parallel take hold in
ecclesiology. It would surely be a mistake to take the
Archbishop’s comments as endorsing those ‘emerging
church’ writers who see the very notion of the
church as a bad idea – I am thinking of Viola and
Barna in Pagan Christianity.
DM I know that you agree with me in wanting to
stress the importance of the Body of Christ as a key
Biblical image. It sums up the incarnational impulses
of continuity and change. In Christ there is
something both unchanging about the nature of the
Son of God but also something highly contextual, as
he is born into a particular time, place and culture.
This reflects something about what it means to be
the body. Images from the New Testament also remind us of the
incredible variety of the church: Paul Minear in his seminal work
on this issue suggests there are 96 different images for the church
in the New Testament. And it is important to think about the
church in terms of mission.
AD We are both enthusiasts for church and mission. Perhaps we
differ in that I see mission, theologically, in terms of the church,
whereas fresh expressions people think of the church in terms of
mission. George Carey did us no favours with his statement that
Andrew Davison
Dave Male
29
‘ecclesiology is a sub-discipline of missiology’. One day, our
mission will cease but the church will not pass away. What we treat
as a sub-discipline of what matters: I wouldn’t be happy if I had to
visit a surgeon and he told me that orthopaedic surgery is a sub-
discipline of homeopathy.
DM That relationship between ecclesiology and missiology is
really important. Quite often missiology is dismissed as not a
‘proper’ avenue of theology. We may disagree here but I side with
Kahler: ‘Mission is the mother of theology’. As Jenson and Wilhite
conclude in their book The Church: A Guide for the Perplexed, ‘mission is
the mother of the church’.
AD Moving on to discipleship or formation, here we find what
promises most for a fruitful collaboration between fresh expressions
and the ‘inherited church’ – but that is not such a new dynamic. It
reminds me of a comment once made to me by a priest at St
Aldate’s in Oxford: ‘we are good at making converts, but the more
traditional parts of the church are better at keeping them’. That
might look like a haughty point from someone like me, coming
from the ‘traditional’ side, but it is a reproach to my side too. Being
evangelistic (the ‘making converts’ part) has to be part of the
discipleship of every Christian. If the ‘inherited church’ has things to
teach about spiritual disciplines and – I’d say – attitudes towards
time and place, and the service of the whole community, then the
new initiatives often set an enviable standard at old-fashioned out-
and-out evangelism. I know that I annoy fresh expressions people
when I say that not every initiative or gathering of Christians can
count as a local church (and I stand by that) – I would call many of
them ‘mission initiatives’ rather than local churches. Still,
evangelism being so important, it would be good for all of us from
the parishes to be in a mission initiative, not just everyone from a
mission initiative to be in a parish.
DM As we were both former members of St Aldate’s it is not
surprising that we agree around these issues of discipleship, even
though I am one of those not happy with your designation about
mission initiatives. (On this I think Roman Catholic theologians
may help us greatly with their idea of the ‘stretched notion of
church’.) Every type of church is faced with the issue of how we
form people in the image of Christ, especially when they often
have very little Christian background or teaching, and the culture
militates against Christian teaching. The danger is that much of our
formation is merely socialisation into the church, which will not
sustain us in our missionary situation where the majority of people
are not looking towards the church in any meaningful way. I think
also that our biggest challenge, both for new converts and those
who have been in the pews for years, is how to help people live out
the gospel within a dominantly consumerist society. Moving on,
what’s the role for some critical evaluation in all of this?
AD Seeing things clearly is always helpful. Christians should be
happy to look the truth of the situation in the face. My worry over
empirical measurement is with interpretation (and even deciding
what to measure involves interpretation). We might learn from the
‘secular’ social sciences about means of measurement, but I wouldn’t
want so easily to learn from them over what makes a good or bad
outcome. That needs a theological assessment. A small parish or
mission initiative is not necessarily a failed one: there are parishes in
largely non-Christian areas that bear an excellent witness to the
faith. And initiatives can be successful in ways they were not
supposed to be: I know of fresh expressions that have not made
many new converts but are ‘successful’ in having provided a place
for people to remain attached to the church who were teetering on
the edge.
DM My main worry isn’t about interpretation of the statistics but
the lack of research into whether we are really connecting with
those who are far outside the church (what Mission-shaped
Church calls the ‘unchurched’). We don’t know the answer for newer
churches but neither do we really know the answer for some of the
larger churches that are held up as ‘successes’. Are they simply
taking people from other churches or bringing them in
from beyond our fringe? I agree totally that context should give
the main clues as to what we should be expecting from local
churches. But with limited resources some key decisions are needed
about how we are a national church and how that is expressed
across the nation.
AD You always bring me back to the unchurched. Thank you
for that.
DM And you’re always a good doctrinal compass.
AD and DM This discussion will run and run…
Dave Male’s new book
Pioneers 4 Life was released
in August.
Andrew’s Imaginative Apologetics was
published in May, and his For the
Parish (with Alison Milbank) came
out in September 2010.
THEOLOGICAL CONVERSATIONS
30
31
Templeton Prizewinners
Westcott alumni have received two of this year’s twelve
Templeton Foundation Awards for Theological Promise, having
been chosen from an international field of applicants. The Revd
Dr Benjamin King and the Revd Dr Donna Lazenby received
their awards at a ceremony held in Heidelberg, Germany, in May.
The John Templeton Foundation is known for its support of
research on the overlap between theology and science, not least
with the annual Templeton Prize. The Templeton Awards for
Theological Promise, instituted in 2006, extend beyond science
and religion into the wider remit of the Foundation, which is
investigation of ‘the Big Questions of human purpose and ultimate
reality’. They are given each year to young post-doctoral scholars
for work in theology and spirituality.
Ben King studied at Westcott from 1997-2000. He was ordained in
the Diocese of Chichester but served his curacy at the Church of
the Advent, Boston, an Anglo-Catholic flagship parish in the city
centre. He stayed in Boston, becoming the Anglican Chaplain to
Harvard University. A Brit married to an American, Leyla, who is
also a priest, Ben was appointed as Assistant Professor of Church
History in the School of Theology at the University of the South,
Sewanee, Tennessee, in 2009. The University of the South is the
only Anglican university in the United States, and has close links
with the Church of England.
Ben’s award recognises his groundbreaking work on the role
Alexandrian patristic tradition played in Victorian England. He
began his theological studies at Westcott, so it would be pleasing
to think that this interest grew up in the context of daily worship
in the Chapel, dedicated as it is to the most significant of all the
Alexandrians, St Athanasius. Ben began this work as his PhD thesis,
studying with Andrew Louth at Durham part-time over three
summers. It was later developed as a book for Oxford University
Press and published in 2009 to great acclaim as Newman and the
Alexandrian Fathers: Shaping Doctrine in Nineteenth-Century England. ‘Read,
and be amazed’, wrote Aidan Nichols in his New Blackfriars review.
The book chronicles the writings on the Church Fathers by John
Henry Cardinal Newman. Interest in Newman grows at an
extraordinary pace following his beatification in September of last
year. Dr King’s book shows the scope of his intellect, but is not
entirely easy reading for those inclined to greet Newman with
adulation: we might praise the thinker who wrote that ‘to be
perfect is to have changed often’ for reinterpreting church history
throughout his life, but it also becomes clear that one instinct in
reshaping his understanding of the Fathers and their doctrine was a
desire to please the Pope.
Ben’s current work takes in both a general interest in what it means
to pursue theological truth from a particularly Anglican
perspective, and the more specific question of the place of
‘reception’ in the development of doctrine.
THEOLOGICAL CONVERSATIONS
The Revd Dr Benjamin King
THEOLOGICAL CONVERSATIONS
Donna Lazenby has recently been ordained deacon in the Diocese
of Southwark after two years of study at Westcott. She is serving a
multifaceted curacy in the Diocese of Southwark at Springfield
Church, Wallington with St Michael’s and All Angels, South
Beddington, and St Paul’s, Roundshaw. This post combines both
Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical congregations, and parish ministry
alongside a Fresh Expression. Donna was recently married to a fellow-
priest, Chris Thomson.
Donna’s award recognises the value of her ongoing work on
Christian mysticism, literature and apologetics, as demonstrated by
her doctoral thesis on ‘Christian Mysticism and Virginia Woolf’, for
which she received her PhD from Cambridge in 2009. Of
particular interest were the points of contact between the language
and metaphysics of Christian mysticism and Woolf’s literary
aesthetics. During these studies Donna was supervised by Dr
Catherine Pickstock (Cambridge), Professor Ben Quash (then at
Peterhouse, Cambridge and now King’s College London – and
himself a Westcott alumnus) and Dr Pamela Sue Anderson
(Oxford). Donna’s PhD research is to be elaborated into a book for
the publisher I.B.Tauris entitled A Mystical Philosophy: Transcendence
and Immanence in the Works of Virginia Woolf and Iris Murdoch. It shows
how these two women philosopher-novelists each appraised the
dry and reductive philosophical setting in which they found
themselves – characterised by the assertion that ‘what I can point at
is all that exists’ – and moved beyond it. Woolf focused on
aesthetic considerations, Murdoch on morality, but both see works
of art as a privileged place to explore the richest dimensions of
human experience. A Mystical Philosophy will be important not only
for bringing the novels of Iris Murdoch into dialogue with her
philosophy, but also for paying attention to Virginia Woolf as a
metaphysician of considerable consequence.
Before her PhD, Donna read Tripos in theology and philosophy
and an MPhil in philosophical theology at Queens’ College,
Cambridge. Between her PhD and coming to Westcott she was a
lay pastoral assistant in a parish in South East London. She
organised last December’s highly successful conference in
apologetics at Westcott, with Alister McGrath, Graham Ward and
Bishop Nick Baines among the speakers. In May, an essay of
Donna’s was published on the implicit worldview to be found in
the writings of novelists associated with the New Atheism (among
them Martin Amis and Ian McEwan). It appeared in a collection,
Imaginative Apologetics, edited by Westcott’s Tutor in Doctrine,
Andrew Davison. The volume is quite a Westcott anthology, with
six Westcott-trained writers contributing: alongside Donna and
Andrew there are essays from Graham Ward, John Milbank, Alister
McGrath and John Hughes. Next year we can look forward to the
publication of a monograph from Donna with Cascade books (an
imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers) on Christian apologetics and
spiritual themes in the contemporary secular imagination.
The Revd Dr Donna Lazenby
We congratulate Ben and Donna ontheir awards, which further associateWestcott with theological study at thehighest level, and on their ongoing workat the service of the Church, which theseawards acknowledge.
32
New Developments
NEW DEVELOPMENTS
33
Westcott’s Key Priorities
In last year’s Review I outlined the three key prioritiesfor Westcott over the coming years:
• maintaining theological excellence;• providing facilities fit for the 21st century;• developing our outreach to the wider Church.
Over the past twelve months we have been workingtowards making all three a reality. In this piece, Iwould like to take the opportunity to update you onour progress so far.
Maintaining Theological Excellence
A high proportion of Westcott House ordinands train on
Cambridge University theology degrees. We usually admit about
five ordinands for the Tripos and about ten for the BTh each year.
This year and last, half of those taking the Tripos in Theology at
Westcott gained first class honours including one starred first in
both years. The increase in university fees means that Westcott
House, after the Church of England have paid a proportion, will
still need to raise £4,500 per Tripos student per year and £1,500
per BTh student per year.
We are in negotiation at local and national level, including with
senior figures in both the political and church arenas, to ensure
that our predicament is understood. In addition, we are actively
fundraising for bursaries and a number of Cambridge colleges are
already kindly offering to use existing funds to support our
students. Already, a number of alumni and friends have pledged
donations. Please will you join in lending your support to this
pressing need, and consider whether you, your parish or others
whom you know could help by making a donation.
NEW DEVELOPMENTS
Facilities fit for the 21st century
Westcott Council has agreed to indicative proposals for building
development on the existing Westcott site which would have a
number of benefits for the House. The development would
elegantly address our need to increase student accommodation and
the facilities available for teaching and learning. It would enable us
to expand the accommodation available in G block by providing
additional rooms and en suite facilities, as well as creating a larger
library, dedicated office space and an attractive new entrance to the
College on Manor Street. The expansion of our library, with the
addition of teaching space for small group teaching and
appropriate IT facilities, will enable us to create learning resource
facilities fit for the 21st century. It will create the kind of flexibility
we will need in the future for residential and part-residential
training pathways, as well as continuing ministerial development.
We are now actively engaged in seeking substantial funding for
these plans.
Developing our outreach to the widerChurch
In recent years we have been engaging with the wider Church
through activities largely focused on two areas: first, the continuing
ministerial development of clergy, and secondly, the exploration of
public issues of concern to those engaged in church leadership.
The Westcott Council has agreed that we should investigate the
feasibility of developing this engagement further in the form of an
institute, offering not just conferences but also study days, retreats
and sabbaticals. Through our research over recent months we have
come to realise that there is a clear need for such opportunities
within the Church on a regional and national level. Once again,
to develop this initiative to its full potential we will need to raise
funds, particularly so that we can improve our website to make it a
more effective means of communication, and in order that we can
attract the best speakers to our conferences and seminars.
Without additional income such plans will be hard to make a
reality, and I hope that you will be inspired by the vision for
Westcott’s future outlined here and consider making a gift.
A donation form is included with this mailing, along with
information on the following page about how you can make
a gift to Westcott in your Will.
34
Westcott House showing the location of the proposed development, on the south sideof G staircase and including a glass atrium adjoining the chapel
Remembering Westcott
If and when the time is right, we hope that you willconsider naming Westcott House as a recipient of atleast part of your Will. You may choose to help as anexpression of affection for the College, or out of gratitudefor the education and preparation for ministry youreceived. You may wish to give a gift in your Willbecause circumstances have not permitted you tohelp during your lifetime.
Westcott, as a registered charity (no. 311445), pays no taxon gifts of money or property made in this way. In addition,the gift may have benefits for your estate by reducing theamount liable to Inheritance Tax.
Your existing Will may be amended by simply adding acodicil. Alternatively, the gift can be included in anyrevision of your Will that may become necessary from timeto time. In either case, if you do amend your Will you arestrongly recommended to obtain the assistance of yoursolicitor.
The following wording for a Will or codicil may be used:
I give to WESTCOTT HOUSE, JESUS LANE,CAMBRIDGE (Registered Charity Number 311445) theresidue / [a proportion] of the residue of my estate / the sumof £[amount] free of tax for the general purposes of theHouse AND I DECLARE that the receipt of the Principal orother authorised officer for the time being of the House shallbe a good and sufficient discharge to my executors.
We would encourage you to leave money for ‘general purposes’, as needs vary over time and this willallow the College to use the money wherever it ismost needed. However, if you prefer, you canindicate that you have a particular interest in certainareas such as bursaries, teaching, or the Collegebuildings and grounds.
If you would like to speak to someone aboutmaking a gift of this kind, please contact:
The Revd Canon Martin Seeley (Principal)Westcott HouseJesus LaneCAMBRIDGECB5 8BP
Tel: +44 (0)1223 741000Fax: +44 (0)1223 741002e-mail: [email protected]
35
Westcott House Gifts and Mementos
We are very pleased to offer an assortment of Westcott House gift and memento items.
To order any of these items please write to the Development Office, Westcott House,Jesus Lane, Cambridge CB5 8BP or email [email protected].
Westcott House Cuff Links
With either chain link(as pictured) for£20 or swivelfitting £18+£2.50 p&p
Westcott House Photo Postcards
Postcards featuring photos of Westcott House,All Saints’ Church, The WestcottIcon, and Hort30p eachor a set of allfour for £1
+50p p&pfor up to4 cards
Westcott House Greeting Cards
Greeting card with whiteenvelope, blankinside for yourmessage.
£1.00 each+40p p&p,or 5 for £4+£1 p&p
The WestcottHouse Icon
A 14x19cm printof the icon on2mm thick card.£3.50
+£1.50 p&p forup to 3+£2.00 p&p for 4-5
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Ember List 2011Deacons Diocese
Joyce Addison CanterburyKate Blake London, Willesden AreaGemma Burnett-Chetwynd RochesterSam Dennis SouthwarkJanet Durrans RochesterBen Eadon DurhamPhilip Elliott SalisburyAlun Ford NewcastleMargaret Gallagher Southwell & NottinghamJustin Gau London, Stepney areaJames Grant ManchesterHannah Hupfield St Edmundbury & IpswichElliot James St AlbansJulie Khovaks CanterburyDonna Lazenby SouthwarkThomas Lilley NorwichJoel Love BlackburnMatthew McMurray BlackburnPhilip Payne St Edmundbury & IpswichJudith Pollard Southwell & NottinghamGareth Powell BirminghamRod Reid ChelmsfordTom Sander St AlbansJames Stewart NorwichLisa Temperley-Barnes LeicesterGillian Trinder Ripon and LeedsCatherine Tucker SouthwarkSteve Vincent LichfieldKarin Voth Harman PeterboroughJulie Watson Worcester
Priests
Helen Bailey Ripon & LeedsCharlotte Ballinger St AlbansGillian Barrow LincolnJames Blackstone SouthwarkPhil Bradford WorcesterKat Campion-Spall SouthwarkJulia Candy DurhamRebekah Cannon ChichesterSuzanne Cooke NorwichTony Curtis NewcastleOwen Dobson LondonJonathan Elcock ManchesterThomas Glover DurhamSandra Hall ChichesterSally Kimmis NorwichPatrick King SalisburyDouglas Machiridza BirminghamCatherine Macpherson WakefieldFiona Mayer-Jones YorkRosemary Morton ChelmsfordJohn Pares NorwichRuth Patten ChelmsfordSusannah Rudge BirminghamAnthony Searle St AlbansNeil Shave ManchesterCatherine Shelley ManchesterPriscilla Slusar LichfieldPhilip Smith DurhamAndrew Thomas OxfordEdward Thornley NorwichFaith Wakeling ChelmsfordMichael Womack St Edmundsbury & Ipswich
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Staff Contacts
PrincipalMartin SeeleyDirect line: 01223 741010email: [email protected]
Vice-PrincipalWill LambTutor in New TestamentDirect line: 01223 741013email: [email protected]
Tutors
James BuxtonTutoremail: [email protected]
Tiffany ConlinDirector of Pastoral Studiesemail: [email protected]
Andrew DavisonTutor in Doctrine, Assistant Director of StudiesDirect line: 01223 741007email: [email protected]
Simon GatenbyTutor for the Manchester ProjectDirect line: 0161 273 2470email: [email protected]
Andrew MeinTutor in Old Testamentemail: [email protected]
Elizabeth PhillipsTutor in Theology and Ethics Direct line: 01223 740952email: [email protected]
Jeff PhillipsTutor in Philosophy and TheologyDirect line: 01223 741102email: [email protected]
Victoria RaymerDirector of Studies, Tutor in LiturgyDirect line: 01223 741011email: [email protected]
ChaplainLindsay YatesDirect line: 01223 741012email: [email protected]
Acting ChaplainChristopher WoodsDirect line: 01223 741012email: [email protected]
Associate Tutors
Will AdamExternal Tutor in Applied EcclesiologyDirect line: 020 8886 3545email: [email protected]
Jeff BaileyTutor in Public TheologyDirect line: 01223 741102email: [email protected]
Louise Codrington-MarshallExternal Tutor for Parish Ministryand Minority Ethnic ConcernsDirect line: 020 8876 7162email: [email protected]
Dave MaleTutor in Pioneer MinistryDirect line: 01223 746585email: [email protected]
Philip SheldrakeSenior Research FellowDirect line: 01223 740052email: [email protected]
Support Staff
Marie BullAdmissions OfficerDirect line: 01223 741001email: [email protected]
Victoria EspleyBursarDirect line: 01223 741003email: [email protected]
Liz GordonHouse and Conference ManagerDirect line: 01223 741004email: [email protected]
Heather KilpatrickCollege Administrator, Communications OfficerDirect line: 01223 741005email: [email protected]
Adrian SavinChef ManagerDirect line: 01223 741008email: [email protected]
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Members of the Governing Council 2010 – 2011
The Rt Revd Tim Stevens, Chair
The Revd Canon Martin Seeley, Principal
The Revd Dr Will Lamb, Vice-Principal
Mr David Gill, Honorary Treasurer
Mrs Morag Bushell
The Rt Revd Stephen Conway
The Revd Dr Andrew Davison
The Revd Duncan Dormor
The Rt Revd Christopher Foster
Miss Elizabeth Foy
The Revd Canon Vanessa Herrick
The Revd Dr Philip Luscombe
The Revd Dr Jeremy Morris
Mr David Scott
Mrs Denise Thorpe
The Revd Canon Dr Fraser Watts
The Revd Lindsay Yates
Observers:
Mrs Victoria Espley
The Revd Simon Gatenby
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EMAIL: [email protected]
www.westcott.cam.ac.uk
MEMBER OF THE CAMBRIDGE THEOLOGICAL FEDERATION
REGISTERED CHARITY NO: 311445
JESUS LANE • CAMBRIDGE • CB5 8BPUNITED KINGDOM
TEL: +44 (0)1223 741000FAX: +44 (0)1223 741002