The principal of my college and I had not been on the very best of terms before this, but there was a further coolness suddenly emerging that was to mark our relationship from then until I left my post to become the religion editor of the Toronto Star in 1971. The news that I would be hosting a radio show was definitely not appreciated.
The program itself had a slow beginning. A country and western audience didn’t have a lot of use for professors of Greek and New Testament, especially one who knew next to nothing about them, their interests or their heroes, musical or otherwise. For some weeks I had to get family members and friends—even the Old Testament professor, my esteemed colleague, the late Reverend Dr. R.K. Harrison, a close friend who sounded a little like my mother on the phone—to call in and voice opinions or simply argue with me. Afraid to face an entire hour void of commercials on my own, I routinely had a guest to talk to when there was nothing but terrifyingly empty air.
Graham kept encouraging me to “lose the guests” and launch out unaccompanied into the deep. Gradually, I began to do this and surprisingly it worked—much better than I had hoped. I still had guests from time to time, including John Diefenbaker, our former prime minister, a stripper who had “found God,” and eventually the famous Beatle John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono, by a direct line (for an hour) into their room in the Montreal hotel where they were holding their 1968 Bed-In for Peace. John spoke eloquently about his front-page comments on how the Beatles were “better known and communicated with modern young people better than Jesus Christ.” Unfortunately, though the station supplied me with a recording of that encounter, the tape of it was lost in a move long ago.
A number of things began to happen as a result of the radio involvement. I discovered that I was communicating better with my students. I was using fewer technical, learned-sounding ecclesiastical terms (such as eschatology, epistemology, pneumatology, ecclesiology) and more contemporary illustrations. A recent study of seminary students in Britain had shown, according to a news story I kept pinned up at my desk in my office, that the men and women who were to be future clergy were far better able to communicate effectively with their fellow human beings before entering theological college than upon graduation! I was afraid of that happening at Wycliffe. The radio experience helped me to determine that this would no longer occur, at least on my watch, if I could help it.
At the same time, the other media began to notice. Allan Spraggett, then the Toronto Star’s religion editor, came to the college to do a major feature for his popular Saturday page. He said his readers would be intrigued to learn more about an Anglican cleric and professor who spent time on that kind of station instead of in a pulpit. More importantly, he issued an invitation for me to write occasional opinion pieces for the weekend paper’s religion page, and I was soon turning out articles with headlines such as THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JAMES BOND and BISHOPS—WHO NEEDS THEM? Would You Believe, a regular CBCTV Sunday morning religion show of that day, began using me as a member of their panel discussions, and Man Alive producers started calling upon me to write scripts for the prestigious TV religion program hosted every Monday night by broadcaster Roy Bonisteel.
One morning I woke up with the realization that what had begun as a very timid, tiny adventure had become my passion. When, in the early weeks of 1971, I learned that Spraggett would soon be quitting his post as religion editor of the Toronto Star to focus on writing a book, I immediately called him and we met for a long talk about the full nature of the job and what he thought I might bring to it if I applied.
After prayer and much thought, I knew it was time to make a move. I was going to be forty-two that April. There would be sacrifices to make. I had full tenure then as a professor at the college, with a residence in the college itself, over four months for reading, writing and vacation each summer, and, in spite of a typically Anglican low salary, many other perks besides. Working with the students had provided innumerable highs (along with some inevitable lows). Some things would be missed very much.
Among these was an important development that was ripe with promise for the future. Discussions had been going on for some time among the key institutions devoted to theological training in the Greater Toronto Area about the possibility of creating an ecumenical federation. In 1970, in a historic move, the Anglican colleges (Wycliffe and Trinity) joined with the Roman Catholics (St. Augustine’s, St. Basil’s and Regis), the Presbyterians (Knox College) and the United Church (Emmanuel) to form the Toronto School of Theology (TST). It was the first such school in Canada and remains the largest, although other centres have followed suit. Lutherans, Baptists, Mennonites and Christian Reformed now also have affiliated status in TST. What matters most about this change is that, for the first time, future clergy and other Christian educators are now sharing classes. What’s more, it means that Anglicans can learn about Catholics from Catholic professors. Catholics can grapple with Reformation theology under the leadership of Presbyterian or United Church professors and lecturers. Speaking personally, as one of the founding faculty members responsible for the setting up of TST, I found great pleasure in teaching students of other denominations. This was particularly the case with the Regis College participants. As Jesuits in training, they were characteristically very bright and, above all, eager to come to grips with my subject, the New Testament. The reforms of Vatican II (1962–65) had opened a fresh window on Biblical studies for the Church of Rome.
Nevertheless, overall, nothing essential had really changed at Wycliffe. I had a deep awareness that for me theological education itself had become a dead end. I used to think it was the place to begin to make a difference—to renew the Church. I had come to realize it was really a big part of the problem and not about to change much any time soon. From my sources I am aware that today’s theological students are, if anything, more conservative than when I was teaching almost forty years ago.
During my years as a journalist I had the privilege upon several occasions of interviewing in some depth Robertson Davies, the noted novelist and for many years Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto. One of these encounters was an hour-long conversation for the VisionTV series already mentioned above, Harpur’s Heaven and Hell, in the late 1980s. I remember at one point we were discussing the crucial turning points in his career, and particularly his decision to leave the newspaper business that he had inherited from his father to take up writing full-time. It was a huge decision, one with great significance not just for his own career but also for the future of Canadian literature as a whole. He said he had observed that very often in life the death of one’s father signalled the release of hitherto untapped creative powers. Since this intriguing insight gave rise to a strong sense of affirmation within me as he spoke, I pressed him to elaborate. He made it clear that he wasn’t speaking of instances where there had been a lack of filial love, respect or admiration for the departed parent. Simply put, the death of one’s father, he thought, very often left a son, however grieving, feeling a sense of much greater freedom to be true to his own inner allurement or genuine bent. In his own case, he said, it had led to whatever success he was enjoying in the world of fiction and beyond.
I was keenly interested in this observation. Without comparing callings or achievements, it was becoming increasingly clear to me that certain of my decisions, such as leaving academia to write first as a journalist and then as a columnist and author of books on ethical and spiritual themes, would not likely have been possible for me while my father was still living. His vision for me was as a bishop of the Church. It turned out it wasn’t mine. Whatever the reasons, my creative juices began to flow much more freely some time after my father made the transition in late 1968 to what I believe is a new and fuller state of being. Living my own life thus began for me, in a very real way, with the approach of what used to be called pejoratively middle age. A much larger world beckoned, and so I made the best decision of my life to that date.
7
“ST. PAUL,