Yesterday
and today in the afternoons we went to visit the church of St Marry the Virgin (photo) and then several sites central to the history of the
Christian faith. St Mary the Virgin has
been the central university chapel and is crucial to the history of
Christianity here. It was the pulpit
from which C.S. Lewis preached ‘The Weight of Glory’ last century. It was the church where John Henry Newman
served as Vicar and led the Anglo-Catholic revival known as the Oxford Movement
until he converted to Rome
in 1845.
Almost
a century earlier John Wesley preached his first (after his conversion) sermon
from St Mary’s, launching the evangelical revival, and two centuries before
that, Thomas Cranmer was examined at St Mary’s, where he famously retracted his
previous rejections of the biblical faith of the Reformation that he had helped
to establish. He was condemned and sent
straight from St Mary’s to his martyrdom on Broad Street. His pillar (photo) is pictured in this post;
you can see the notch in the pillar about waist high on the left that was cut to hold a
platform, upon which he was chained during his examination.
We went
up into the tower at St Mary’s, climbing (photo) around and around up a tight
spiral stone staircase, high above most of the city, giving us a spectacular
view (photo below) all around. After a stop
for refreshments, we went to sung Evensong at Christ Church Chapel (photo below) for
the second time.
The next
day I went on a walking tour marking some of the other significant developments
in the faith. We went into Keble College
Chapel (photo below), a large chapel built at the height of the Oxford Movement. The central altar, the side pulpit, the mosaics
of the patristic Fathers and medieval Doctors of the Faith, the side mosaic of
Christ crucified with Eucharistic Chalices under his wounds and other designs
all spoke to their spirituality.
From Keble College
we went to the Bodleian Library, laid out in a quadrangle. In its courtyard through the 1600’s books
were burned if they were heretical. The
front gate tower (photo below) has five
stories of architectural style, each representing a successive development in
architecture. The courtyard doors
represented successive academic disciplines, escalating in importance towards
the rear gate, for the study of Divinity.
The DivinitySchool (photo below) was one of the most beautiful
rooms I’ve been in. Clear glass all
around. Stunning low vaulted ceiling
with family crests of the families who helped to build it. Opposing pulpits where students would be
examined in the presence of their peers and their tutors. And it was here that the reformers were first
examined in their heresy trials. The seal of Oxford University
(photo below) has the open Bible with the words, “The Lord is my light”.
We
finished at the Lincoln College Chapel where John Wesley was a Fellow. The chapel (photo below) bears the marks of the
evangelical revival. Notice that the
upper panel of the Lord Jesus on the cross is off center, discouraging use of
the panel as a devotional focus while retaining stained glass to edify the
faithful. We were able to see Wesley’s
room, recently restored, where he lived as a Fellow at the
College.
What
impressions stay with me as we see Oxford
in some detail? Two, mostly. The first is the loss of faith in Great Britian. By the end of the 1870’s, and within sixty
years of the completion of the Keble College Chapel, Oxford went officially secular; no longer was
it possible to require professions of faith from the students or from the
faculty. The result is that the
Christian heritage of Oxford
is a fading memory of a world that seems ancient and fast disappearing.
This is symptomatic of deeper trends. In the 1980’s, church attendance in Great Britain
went down by 13%. In the 1990’s it went
down by a further 22%. Wales, on its
current course of membership loss, will close it’s last church in 2020. Even though there are signs that this trend
has bottomed out, it testifies to a devastating loss of faith in England, one mirrored across Europe, excepting,
perhaps, Ireland and Poland. Meanwhile Oxford is flooded with 10,000 students for
whom the Christian faith has little of no practical importance. I want to think about this more, but it is an
unavoidable fact all around us.
The
second impression I take with me is that our current struggles in world
Anglicanism are not new. The need today,
as it was from season to season over the years behind, is for courageous and
clear leadership that is willing to speak and live wholeheartedly for the Gospel. No matter what the cost. That is what it took to bring the gospel to
our own land and day, and that is what it will take to bring it to the
generation rising in our midst. May we
give all for him who gave all for us.
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