After a few rather negative formative moments, here's a more positive one. Students in Oxford have to belong to one of its constituent colleges: these are self-regulating communities which at first sight seem something like a dorm or hall of residence elsewhere. They do function as genuine communities, though, and for historical reasons, some of that corporate existence is focussed upon the college chapel, which, also for historical reasons, is almost invariably part of the Anglican (Episcopalian) expression of Christianity.
I joined the college chapel choir, and learned much about a liturgical, contemplative approach to faith. I learned that the right-hand candle on the altar represents the gospel, and the gospel never stands alone, and so is lit second and extinguished first (unfortunately I never found out what the left-hand - north - candle represents). On the day that I was stand-in sacristan, I found out the full extent of the Doctrine of the Real Presence: my role having to include rinsing the chaplain's figures after the communion, first with unconsecrated wine, and then with water (all of which he then consumed) - I had perhaps over-filled the chalice in the first place, and since the chaplain was obliged to consume all the wine he had consecrated, I doubt that his blood-alcohol level was within legal limits on the drive home. I failed to grasp the importance of a conundrum set me by a stand-in chaplain over wine at a black-tie dinner: one one occasion, he had been due to preside at communion, but was unable to open the college silver safe, and so had to use a common plate and cup from the kitchen. After the service, should he have destroyed the vessels, or returned them to the kitchen? I even read the daily office once, when the chaplain was absent, for a congregation of two.
You might gather that all this and more served to open wide the eyes of an 18-year-old schooled in fairly (but not extreme) evangelical norms. The chaplain was a wise pastor who respected the broad range of background of those participating in the life of the chapel, and, within the set liturgical framework, worked to incorporate people a best he could. One of the Fellows of the college was an Orthodox Bishop, whose sermons were always sublimely different from anything else I encountered - but very spiritual.
Above all, I think, I learned first-hand that there were people out there who would describe their faith in a profoundly different way from me, and yet evidently and totally followed Christ, trusting in his death and resurrection.
Of course it wasn't all bathed in a rosy glow. Some of the chapel preachers seemed to want to spout academic nonsense, suffused with lots of doubt and scepticism. I used to go to chapel wondering whether this week would be the time that I decided I had to walk out part-way through because the sermon was just too much beyond the pale (and how awkward that would be, given the narrow pews and small chapel). I never did walk out, but I was struck recently by the irony of the fact that about the closest I've ever actually come to doing so wasn't in that chapel, but in a certain evangelical-cum-fundamentalist church in North America.
2 comments:
Wait whats wrong with spouting nonsense? Isn't that the point of 'conversations'?
Ha! You sceptic :-).
Part of my response is to say "that was then", and I would probably approach it differently now. But that's cheating.
My more consistent view would come from my ongoing concerns about academic theology: too readily it descends in to discussions which might as well be of the "counting angels on a pinhead" kind. People who came to preach in the chapel of an elite University, in particular, seemed to think that they had to talk about stuff that was far removed from everyday faith and practice.
I still remember fondly debating Christology with the Regius Professor of Divinity, over a glass of port after dinner, after the service. And me a callow Math major. Good times.
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