The following evening there was a special dinner in the gardens of the main quadrangle of Balliol College. It was a formal occasion and large tents had been set up to cover the affair in case of rain. The guest of honour and speaker for the event was the aging but vigorous former prime minister Sir Harold Macmillan. Everyone was given a glass of champagne at the entrance to the quad and with the former scholars and their partners all in tuxedos and black tie or lovely gowns, it was a highly colourful scene. Macmillan was at the top of his form—witty, provocative and wise. The wines were excellent and the fellowship over and after dinner were not soon to be forgotten.
When we finally arrived back at Oriel, where we were staying for three or four days until the reunion program ended, it was about ten-thirty, but we were still too “up” from the evening’s events to think of going to bed. Susan said she would love a cup of tea, so I changed into jeans and a sweater and took off up Oriel Lane and the High past historic St. Mary’s Church in search of a tea wagon.
The curving chief thoroughfare, graced on each side by some of the loveliest spires and towers of any avenue in the world, with its ancient colleges and famous churches, was strangely devoid of traffic. But in the distance, beyond All Souls, there sat a lone tea van. A couple of customers huddled under the lamplight. As I came up to them, it was clear that they too had been at the Balliol banquet— they were still in formal evening dress—and also that the man had lost something, because he was patting himself down like a pipe smoker in a frantic search for his matches. He and his wife appeared to be in their late thirties. He said to me, “I believe I saw you at the dinner tonight. This is a bit embarrassing, but I forgot to bring my wallet when we came out and we were hoping to get something to drink here.” I hastened to pay the small amount involved, and as I did so he said: “By the way, my name is Bill Clinton. I’m the governor of Arkansas, and this is my wife, Hillary.” I introduced myself and we had a friendly conversation for a few minutes before parting to our respective colleges.
As in the incident with the Queen, there was a postscript. A few years later, shortly after Clinton became president of the United States, I wrote to him at the White House as religion editor of the Toronto Star to register my protest at his firing of twenty-three Tomahawk missiles at intelligence facilities in Baghdad on June 26, 1993. The missiles, fired from American warships in the Red Sea, were a reprisal and “wake-up call” to Saddam Hussein for a thwarted plot to assassinate President George Bush Sr. during his “victory visit” to Kuwait in April of that year. Clinton had called the alleged plot “a particularly loathsome and cowardly” attempt. I began the brief missive on a friendly note, recalling the occasion, which I admitted he had probably long forgotten, when our paths had crossed in the High Street in Oxford in 1983. Then I put the letter totally out of my mind.
One day about four weeks later, a very official-looking parcel came by special delivery to my home. It bore the seal of the White House on the envelope and contained a personal letter, which addressed my comments. While I continued to disagree with his actions at that time, I respected his intentions and courtesy in replying to a critical response from somebody he didn’t really know and had met so briefly.
5
THE CURE
OF SOULS
AFTER the three intensive years at Oxford from 1951 to 1954, my parents and younger sister attended my graduation ceremony. In London afterwards, my father and I got into a bitter argument. He had decided that it was time for me to undertake two years at Wycliffe College, the University of Toronto’s evangelical seminary, to prepare for the Anglican priesthood through theological studies and practical training. I had wanted to take a couple of years off to go to Greenland and work on a fishing boat while exploring how the Danes had treated their Native peoples. All the reports I had ever read had shown that we had so much to learn from them on that, and this remains true today. However, once again I acquiesced to his wishes, and went back to school.
I was quite familiar with the college, having lived in its residence from 1947 to 1951 while taking the arts degree at University College. While seminary is usually pictured by outsiders as a dull or somewhat staid place, for good reason, the moments one seems to remember are the ones that were anything but pietistic or sedate. They appear ridiculously immature now; however, at that time these stunts served a role as sharp relief from the seriousness of studies. Looking back, it’s a wonder that any of us made it to ordination. There were water fights, usually following a “tubbing party” in which victims were rousted from bed in the middle of the night and unceremoniously dumped in a tub of icy water, often creating a cascade of water down the ancient college stairs. One night a student spied an enemy from Trinity College below his window. He dumped a pail of water on the unsuspecting foe, only to find that the innocent man was not a student at all but simply somebody waiting for a friend.
After the rigours of Oxford, the courses at Wycliffe were relatively easy. I was permitted to condense the three-year course into two because of the work I had already done in Greek, philosophy and the history of the ancient Greco-Roman world. Because learning Hellenistic Greek was a major hurdle for most young men entering the Anglican priesthood, I was made a tutor in Greek to most of them and so was able to cover the fees together with room and board. The bishop made me a deacon during my first term and so I was able to assist or stand in for clergy who were sick or otherwise unavailable on weekends. The Varsity rugger squad persuaded me to join in, and after a lengthy search for boots large enough— size 14 or 15, depending on the make—I played with considerable enjoyment. It’s a rough sport and I’m certain that some Sundays the various congregations must have wondered what I’d been doing the night before when I mounted the pulpit covered with bruises and Band-Aids. My preaching, which I would now describe as “evangelical-lite,” seemed popular enough, and overall I found the experience enjoyable and somehow managed to win the prize in Homiletics, or preaching, in my first year.
There are some risks associated with preaching, and I learned early on that communication is a tricky business. Not infrequently a person leaving the church afterwards would comment on how much they enjoyed the sermon and then say how they particularly liked some specific point that was made. The problem was that what they thought you said and what you knew (or believed) you had actually said were sometimes not the same at all. That’s why later on in the ministry I made a habit of stopping the sermon earlier than before and coming down from the pulpit to take questions from parishioners. The “I talk, you listen” version of communication still prevails in many churches today, although in our highly interactive culture that’s about the only place left where this is so. The Internet and the ubiquitous social media now carried in virtually everyone’s purse or pocket have changed the way we communicate forever.
The other danger associated with preaching is much more subtle: the way clergy are seduced by the praise into believing they really are as eloquent and wise or spiritual as their flock would have them believe. There is a great spiritual trap there, and nobody at the college warned about it. Often it’s only recognized after a fall or in some cases disgrace, as in the episodes we’ve witnessed in recent years with a few highly popular American evangelistic preachers.
What really interested me most during the two years of seminary was Biblical studies. Though Wycliffe’s approach to the Bible was ultra-conservative without being actually hard-core fundamentalist—the college motto was Verbum Domini Manet (“The Word of the Lord Remains,” or stands solid)—there was a large, up-to-date library and I knew how to use it to full advantage. So, for the first time I was able to research for myself what contemporary scholars were saying about the Scriptures, and what I discovered was quite a shock. It had already become very apparent from what some of our professors were teaching us that there was a considerable gap between what seminaries teach and what people in the pews are told (although