Arrival in Durham 1

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29. Sometime in early September 1993, I believe, I packed two large boxes along with carry-ons as large as I could pack onto a Virgin Atlantic flight across the Atlantic. I was young and able, almost 27. But some of those transitions were very stressful, leaving me drenched in sweat. Who said nerds don't have muscle? We have to have muscle to carry all those books!

I had my desktop in one box and as many books as possible in the other, with a small dolly. It would take the first year of back and forth to get my biblical studies books all over there. The weight limit at least kept things within reason.

It was Gatwick to Victoria to Kings Cross and then north to Durham. When I would travel for more than one day, I would take out a British Rail or Eurail pass, so many days in a month. The train from Kings Cross to Durham was about a three hour trip that went through York.

I had trouble sleeping on the plane overnight so I usually would sleep most of the train ride. I'd arrive sometime around 9 or 10am, I believe. I was always afraid I would sleep past Durham, but I usually awoke at the Darlington stop and managed to stay awake the rest of the way.

Durham has a spectacular train bridge coming into the station. Then it's down the hill and across the Weir (which rhymes with "beer") onto the peninsula where the castle and cathedral are. Then up the "Bailey" past Hatfield and Chads college to St. John's.

The old British universities are not structured like American universities. Over time, they have moved more and more toward centralized instruction, but in the old days each "college" within the university might have its own cross-disciplinary faculty. [1] St. Johns was one of two remaining colleges with some of its own faculty. Cranmer Hall was a theological training school within Johns that was separate from the theology department of the broader university.

It all worked well, although there was perhaps a small sense that the purely Cranmer students weren't quite as advanced as those also doing a Durham theology degree. When I was there, there were both Anglicans and Methodists training in Cranmer. A few years ago the Methodists took that possibility away, to centralize training in the face of declining numbers around Britain.

There were thirteen colleges as part of the University of Durham when I was there. I'm a little surprised to see that they have added three since I left, one of which is named, "John Snow"! I see that what used to be "Grad Soc" (the Graduate Society) has been renamed Ustinov college after Peter Ustinov, who used to be chancellor of the university and who shook my hand at my graduation. He was a famous actor.

It was so much better for me to be part of Johns rather than Grad Soc. I was part of a vibrant Christian community. If Jimmy hadn't gone to bat for me in Johns, my experience would have been so impoverished by comparison.

The university was founded in 1832, rather late in the game of European universities but the third in England, after Oxford and Cambridge. There are others older in Britain in general, such as Edinburgh in Scotland and Trinity College in Dublin. Within Durham, the oldest college is University College, whose students live in the Castle. I believe the university was founded when Bishop van Mildert didn't want to pay tax on the castle. So he donated it to found a university.

The bishops of Durham were once "prince-bishops," both political and spiritual rulers of the region. The funniest thing I remember about the castle is that the bishop got tired of having to bless every meal so he put a prayer over the window through which food came from the kitchen to the dining area. It was thus automatically blessed on its way out.

30. When I arrived, the students were not yet there. I was greeted by Neil Evans, a Welshman who would be my closest friend for the next three years. He was an Anglican priest and a man of noble character all around. He would become chaplain during my tenure there.

I was to be a "residential tutor," what they used to call a "moral tutor." It was a little like being an RA except there were far fewer rules to enforce. To be honest, it was mostly about being available. I used to call myself the "tea and biscuit tutor." If you want serious advice or help, better see Neil.

A second part of my job had to do with being a fire deputy of sorts. If the fire alarm went off, one of the tutors would need to go to the front office and see where the alarm had gone off. Then we ran to the spot to see if it was a real fire. It almost never was. Nevertheless, being a college and having students who sometimes drank too much, the alarm did go off fairly often, especially on a Friday night. If it was a false alarm, we would warn off them sending all the fire trucks. One always had to come to make sure.

There were only two real fires that I remember in my three years. The one was a kitchen on the top floor of Cruddas. They ran a hose from the Bailey back and had it right out. The other was when David Fox set his hair on fire.

In my final year near the end, we were cooking outside behind on the south lawn. The fire wasn't starting very quickly, so David--who was extremely clever--went to get some gasoline to speed things up. I seem to remember David Morton being involved as well. The flame shot up so quickly that his head caught on fire. He had the smarts to put it out with his shirt.

31. Neil and Helen Fox were the other two residential tutors. To get into where Helen was (if I am remembering where she and Neil were respectively), you had to go outside and north to come back inside. It was like 23 House on the Bailey. It was somewhat isolated from the rest of John's. If I remember, Neil moved down there my second year, and I don't think we replaced Helen.

Helen was an interesting person, from the Isle of Wight. I seem to remember her being one of those people who was somewhere around a hundredth in line to the throne. I could be making all that up. I found the bluntness of some of my friends surprising. Perhaps it was because I had lived in the south for the previous nine years. I myself had lived quite a sheltered life. I remember telling Helen once that she had helped me understand the French Revolution. :-)

She was quite a nice person and prompted some interest in Wittgenstein. I had encountered Wittgenstein briefly I think in my Philosophy of Theism class. There was a chapter on "Wittgensteinian Fideism" in the book by Tom Morris. Although Wittgenstein himself did not come up with the idea, people like D. Z. Phillips had championed the notion that language of God was not about a being "out there" but really a certain kind of language game. God was real in the sense that the language of God affected the way people lived in the world. For this group, God existed because language about God caused all sorts of things to happen. The concept of God in language gave rise to certain actions.

That wasn't Helen's interest. She was working on feminist views of God, as I recall. [2] It was however either her or Neil who told me about the "Sea of Faith" movement in England, led by people like Don Cupitt. The phrase comes from a poem by Matthew Arnold called, Dover Beach. In the poem, Arnold mourns the retreat of faith in modern society. Cupitt was a non-realist within the Church of England, He believed in God as an idea, not as a reality out there.

The Anglican Church was fascinating to me. It was held together by its common liturgy, not so much a common belief system. Unreflectively, I would have assumed that it is the belief system of a church that gave it an identity. But on reflection, it was really lifestyle standards that gave the holiness movement of the late twentieth century its identity. And it was more a common liturgy for Anglicans.

So the Anglican church had Anglo-Catholics like Neil and St. Chads. It had "evangelical Anglicans" like St. John's at that time. There were charismatic Anglicans, such as at Holy Trinity Brompton in London. The Toronto Blessing broke out while I was in England. Then there were non-realists like Cupitt. One church, one basic liturgy, lots of variation.

32. St. John's was "evangelical Anglican." That's not evangelical in the current American sense. It was evangelical in the sense of being Scripture focused, believing in justification by faith and the centrality of the cross. At the same time, it was evangelicalism in a different culture.

For example, moderate drinking was the norm. There was sherry served in the Senior Common Room before high table or key events, and there was port afterwards. I never saw any of the staff or administration drunk. I did see students drunk of course, often. The drinking age is 18 in England.

I might say that my England experience exploded to bits all the rhetoric about drinking I had heard in certain American circles. Neil was not one ounce spiritually inferior to any Christian I knew in the States. He drank moderately but I never saw him drunk. I do not have a problem with not drinking. But there is only a cultural argument against moderate drinking. There is no absolute argument and there certainly is no biblical argument for total abstinence. The British church can carry its alcohol.

The buildings were all co-ed. This is another difference with American evangelical colleges. Rachel Leonard, who would also become one of my closest friends, had her single room right next to mine. As I was moving in, she and David Fox appeared in my internal doorway to greet me. They were the president and vice president (I don't remember if those were the precise titles) of the Junior Common Room (JCR) of John's, the student association of the college.

I was in the bottom floor of Cruddas, on the south side corner. My flat stretched from the front to the back with a kitchenette and bath in front, room in back. Behind Cruddas was a path down to the boathouse. I did row for fun, by the way, while I was there.

St. John's expected common moral behavior of its students, but it did not expect specifically Christian behavior. The model was that the staff was Christian. Christian services took place every day in St. Mary the Less in the morning and evening (the chapel across the street). There was a worship service on Tuesday nights (I often cantored for it).

But the students were not required to be Christian. There were no sexual prohibitions other than those of society at large.

33. David and Rachel invited me to the pub that first night. I think I had a Ribena, a non-alcoholic blackcurrent drink. I was surely out of it because of the trip. I think I may have crashed for a few hours.

What I remember most about the night is that I didn't understand anything going on. They were speaking English, but I didn't understand what they were saying. I knew nothing about English Tele. I knew nothing about English "football" (soccer). Like Wittgenstein's lion, they were speaking but I didn't understand them. [2]

Welcome to England!

[1] In the US, there might be several colleges in a university, but they are usually distinguished by discipline ("The College of Medicine") or modality ("The College of Adult and Professional Studies").

[2] We were having a discussion, for some reason, about whether there could be such a thing as a private language. Wittgenstein of course would say no. What I meant, I think, was my own words, not my own meanings, but I could be misremembering. I didn't like to get caught out. I would have to learn about Wittgenstein so as not to be caught ignorant.

[3] "If a lion could speak, would we understand them?" Wittgenstein was pointing out that we might be able to define the words, but if we do not know the "language games" of a lion, we wouldn't get their meaning.