The Blackbird Leys Saga Part of the story

Geoffrey E. Beck

1 The Blackbird Leys Saga Preface

There are many different ways in which history can be told but the importance of a vivid and meticulous eye-witness report cannot be underestimated. When such a report is conjoined with breadth of vision and an awareness of the broader context it is of especial significance. On several counts, then, we must be grateful to Geoffrey Beck for his invaluable account of the early days of ecumenical endeavour in Oxford in which he personally had such an important role to play – and for the pioneering, often sacrificial vision which led most significantly to the dedication of the Church of the Holy Family as an ecumenical church at a time when this was indeed a daring innovation. Now a single congregation Local Ecumenical Partnership, sponsored by five Church traditions and serving the Anglican parish of Blackbird Leys, we face up to neuralgic Church-dividing issues together with integrity and continue to collaborate with the Church of the Sacred Heart, with local Black-led congregations and others, in our efforts to serve the community around, in so doing we honour the vision of our founders that saw the need for different Church traditions to work together to serve a new estate as sign and foretaste of the Kingdom of God. And we honour too that tenaciousness which is so distinctive a feature of Geoffrey’s account and without which these purposes would not have been achieved. It must have been around four years ago that I met Geoffrey in Mansfield College at a chapel event; it was shortly after my induction to the Church of the Holy Family and in no time at all he was pouring out into my ready ears an account of how all these things had come about. Realising the historical value of what he was saying, I encouraged him to write it all down. This could not happen immediately Geoffrey was very much involved at the time with the project to commemorate Adam von Trott. But he did not forget his promise. And so this year when we celebrate with joy the 40th anniversary of our Church building, Geoffrey rang me up to say that the account was written. We are greatly indebted to him.

Fleur Houston Blackbird Leys Oxford July 2005

2 The Blackbird Leys Saga Part Of The Story I have rediscovered a scribbled personal note “from the Chaplain - The Queen’s College, Oxford – 2.3.65” which ends: “I gathered from The Oxford Times that dedication is to be substituted for consecration at Blackbird Leys. If that is indeed so that is excellent as a sign of real new thinking in some quarters! As ever, David Jenkins.” At that time David Jenkins was Vice-Chairman of the Oxford Council of Churches, which at the annual meeting in November 1964 had unanimously agreed a significant resolution about Blackbird Leys. The Bishop of Oxford, President of the Oxford Council of Churches, had been in the chair. Since then David had presided at a well-attended public meeting on January 19th in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, at which two local laymen had been asked to speak – a Roman Catholic and a Congregationalist. The latter was Peter Spicer, Summertown Church Secretary, who “spoke frankly about the shocks and setbacks to which we were still subject in the pursuit of greater unity. He instanced the fact that the Church of England could not permit its consecrated churches to be used for worship conducted by anyone other than an episcopally ordained clergyman duly authorised to do so. This fact confronted the enterprise in Oxford for united use of a single building in Blackbird Leys, since that building was bound to be the Anglican one now under construction.” 1 Peter had notified the chairman of his intention to use this illustration, linking it with the O.C.C. resolution of 17th November, 1964. This had requested: “the Oxford Diocese (of the Church of England) and corresponding bodies of other member churches to designate Blackbird Leys as an area of experiment in ecumenical group ministries in the sharing of buildings and the development of mission.” As I recall, the resolution was proposed by John Betton, Vicar of St Luke’s, Cowley, (the parish in which Blackbird Leys was, legally, at that time) and eagerly seconded by Peter Malton, Priest Missioner in Blackbird Leys - before two Free Church voices could get in words of support. By hindsight I suspect that some of us were unduly euphoric at the time and so rather naïve in the detailed follow-up into what was fresh ecclesiastical territory. The resolution itself, as was made clear, was worded in the light of recommendations at the recent BCC Faith and Order Conference in Nottingham, which had included the possibility of ‘Areas of Ecumenical Experiment’.

1 St Columba’s Oxford quarterly newsletter No 59, March 1965.

3 Try to imagine the context. The Oxford Council of Churches was just four years old. As Peter Spicer had said to his own church, 1964 “has surely been a bumper year for the ecumenical movement” in Oxford. “Bible Week in March brought the movement home to many more of us in a new kind of way. Over 900 Oxford Christians enrolled, of whom the great majority attended at Wesley Memorial Church on four snowy nights and dedicated themselves finally at a united service on Palm Sunday in the Town Hall, at which an inspiring address was given by Dr Caird. We may have come away not knowing what precisely had been achieved, but we were all greatly exhilarated by the experience of meeting and discussing with our fellow Christians……”2 The repercussions were continuing all over the city. It was also a General Election year. As in 1959, there had been a crowded Churches’ meeting with the three city candidates in the Oxford Union Debating Hall. But more significantly in its repercussions, the OCC had taken up an initiative by two young laymen 3about world poverty. A carefully prepared document, in terms of economics, politics and theology, was not only used for our meeting, but also sent by us to every Council of Churches in the country for similar use. The responses were varied, inevitably. But most significantly, it led to the British Council of Churches setting up a weighty work party which produced the report World Poverty And British Responsibility in 1966. 4 And then we had had some stimulating public reporting back by local participants at both Nottingham 1964 and Vatican II. In this atmosphere, the Free Churches, who had been having their own ‘domestic problems’, saw the OCC Blackbird Leys resolution as a sign of hope for ecumenical progress by the time the Anglican buildings under construction would be ready. We must have learned that Mervyn Puleston was to succeed Peter Malton as Priest–in- charge before that event; and we understood that he welcomed the early possibility of a Free Church ministerial partner. But then, on the Sunday before the January Prayer for Unity meeting, Peter Spicer was told that the Bishop had ‘reminded’ Mervyn Puleston about the strict legal limitations on the worship possible in a consecrated Anglican church. And so Peter, being devoted to Blackbird Leys as an ecumenical cause, said what he did in his speech. The press were present, and to them this was news. Indeed, to quote St Columba’s Newsletter again, “reports gave many the impression that some sort of bombshell had been placed underneath the well-intentioned plans of the Blackbird Leys enthusiasts.”

2 from his 1964 Secretary’s Report quoted in the Summertown Newsletter 89 (Feb 1965).

3 one was a Mansfield college student, now well-known as a stimulating hymn-writer, Brian Wren.

4 In October 1964 the BCC agreed the proposal of its Joint International Department to set up a Working Party in co-operation with the Department of Christian Aid “to study Britain’s response to the growing problem of world poverty, with particular reference to policies in relation to trade, aid and world liquidity.” The Report was published in 1966 by SCM Press.

4 To us in the Free Churches it was, of course, a familiar difficulty which the Bishop had more than once explained to us. So he was a somewhat puzzled man when the press tracked him down in London to ask for explanation. For a day or two several of us were kept busy on the telephone. But it would be no exaggeration to say, that I found David Jenkins chortling to himself. (He was, actually, due to preach for us in Summertown the next Sunday.) We all needed to face facts. He explained that as Chaplain to the Queen’s College his legal obedience as an Anglican priest was not to the Bishop of Oxford but to the College Visitor, the Archbishop of York. And he sympathised with us that this familiar ‘difficulty’ was in fact an obstacle that needed to be overcome in the cause of Christian Unity. So he had encouraged Peter Spicer. In fact, as a theologian David had long been an active member of the Faith and Order Department of the British Council of Churches. As such he had been deeply involved in the September 1964 Nottingham Conference and its outcome. Nearly twenty years on, a Baptist theologian would describe Nottingham 1964 as “an occasion which has affected Church relations , certainly in England, ever since.”5 Looking back, I do not think he had in mind the much publicised call for “Union by Easter Day 1980”. Much more significant was the fifth section of the resolution, but less suitable for head-lines: ‘Since unity, mission and renewal are inseparable we invite the member churches to plan jointly so that all in each place may act together forthwith in common mission and service to the world.” In her report on the Conference, Katharine Ross of the University Church had added her belief, “so far as the local situation is concerned,” in the importance of “learning to do things together both as individuals and as congregations”. 6 She was always a good example – and a stimulator! But it is worth asking where we had come from. How had we got this far? As a 1942-46 product of Mansfield College I returned to Oxford in 1950 to be minister of Summertown Congregational Church. In the Merseyside area for four years, our Director of Education in St Helens was happy to discuss local schools and youth work so long as I did not want to include “the divisive subject of religion”. We had been able to celebrate the birth of the Church of South India in 1947. (The Church of England had said it was ‘an ecumenical experiment, to be monitored for thirty years’. The visiting Moderator of the CSI, by background a British Anglican, told us, “we are a fact, not an experiment”.) Anything nearer home was difficult. My friendly college principal, Dr Nathaniel Micklem, greeted me with the news: “We invite Principal Kenneth Riches of Cuddesdon College to Mansfield to teach us how to pray. And they invite me to them to teach them how to preach.” I pricked up my

5 “To be a Pilgrim” – a memoir of Ernest A. Payne (p.140) by W.M.S.West (Lutterworth 1983).

6 She quoted the so-called Lund Dictum: “ to act together in all matters, except those in which deep differences of conviction compel them to act separately”. ( The Third World Faith and Order Conference 1952 was held in Lund, Sweden; legend has it that the author of this ‘call’ was Oliver Tomkins, later Bishop of Bristol, who chaired Nottingham 1964.)

5 ears. In 1941, Kenneth Riches, a college chaplain in Cambridge, had lent his Suffolk cottage for a week-end retreat to us of the Student Christian Movement at LSE, then wartime evacuees in that university. (He had told me that the cottage had previously belonged to his mother, who was a Congregationalist.) He had since been secretary (1947- 49) of the Faith and Order Department of the young British Council of Churches. He was also friendly with my two closest Free Church colleagues – W.G. (Raymond) Bailey of St Columba’s (an Iona Community man) and Henry Starkey of Cowley Road (later Tyndale) Congregational Church. Each and all had bearing on the Blackbird Leys saga in due course! I had been forewarned to expect no Anglican ecumenical gestures, from either our Summertown Vicar or Bishop Kenneth Kirk of Oxford. On the other hand, I had long heard warm comments about the Oxford Free Church Federal Council’s endeavours. Indeed one of our Summertown members had just shared in a useful report by a group set up to examine the facts behind press reports about the high rate of illegitimacy in Oxford. (This significant bit of work was wrongly dated in a piece about the Oxford Council of Churches in the Oxford Baptist News, November 1960, page 1.) Nonetheless I got the impression of an undue air of deference in the attitude of Free Church ministers on the rare occasions of meeting with Anglican clergy – apart from Starkey and Bailey! When we heard in 1952 that Kenneth Riches was to become Bishop of Dorchester, suffragan to Bishop Kirk, Raymond Bailey asked him pointedly whether his commitment to ecumenism would still be as visible in his new office. His reply: “Give me a few months.” I had sent him a post-card asking: “How do I address you when you become a bishop?” Answering in similar style he wrote: “Dear Geoffrey, Christian names solve all problems. Yours, Kenneth.” (In those days we were so much more formal; many bishops, and some others, still wearing gaiters and frock coats – to ease their horsemanship around the diocese, of course!) In 1954, Bishop Kirk died. As Secretary of the Congregational District, I asked Kenneth Riches about the funeral arrangements. “Why, do you want to come? Tell your Free Church colleagues to put on their robes and present yourselves at the Cathedral.” We were met by E.L.Mascall, who turned to an undergraduate steward: “Take these four gentlemen to prominent seats in the choir!” After the service, standing in the afternoon sunshine alongside row upon row of white-surpliced clergy around Tom Quad as the episcopal cortège departed, we felt we were at the end of an era. He was rightly succeeded by another scholar, the Warden of Keble, Dr Harry Carpenter, after some time both colleague and friend – but by way of being a cautious learner. ------Looking back, one might say that the Holy Spirit was much busier with us in the Oxford churches than we were aware at the time. Or, put differently, wrestling in prayer as well as in thought and in action is, of course, part of the Blackbird Leys

6 saga, as it is of the whole Oxford ecumenical story - using rich Oxford resources for Bible Study, Lent courses and so on……. We could indeed describe 1954-64 as an ecumenically seminal decade for Oxford; the period between the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches in the USA and the first British Faith and Order Conference; Evanston ’54 to Nottingham ’64. So, something about prayer in our ecumenical story. Reporting on preparations for Evanston 1954, with its theme, Christ is the Hope of the World, the WCC Ecumenical Press Service said that Fr Charles Boyer,7 editor of the Roman Catholic review, Unitas had written: “We shall say the prayer which has received the blessing of the Church (R.C.) and which Athenagoras, Patriarch of Constantinople, loves so much: ‘O God, unite our minds in truth, and unite our hearts in love.’” And it was in February 1954 that Miss Marjorie Milne (10 Marston Street, Oxford)8, started Mid-Day (Monday-Saturday) Prayers for Christian Unity at Christ Church Cathedral. (She came to have many contacts in the UK and internationally.) In spring 1956 she wrote in her often undated circular letter: “I feel I must explain that I started keeping the THREE HOURS because I believe God has told me to do so, and I go on doing it for the same reason. If he told me to stop, I should. Those who join in the THREE HOURS each come from their own angles and do it in their own way. Where it will lead none of us can tell…..” Her call to prayer was central, and so she refused “to be tempted to go to conferences, or other gatherings for discussion, or to write notes for Unity periodicals”. But by September 1956 ‘events’ were pushing her to see “that it may be right to carry out the same life of prayer during January each year in other Cathedrals”. “I think it would not be difficult to replace me here in January, when many people in any case wish to give more time to prayer during the two great widespread Weeks at the beginning and end of the month.” And so in a 1957 letter she said: “It has been good in the last three years to know of the emergence of silent prayer for Christian Unity-weekly at Westminster Abbey (Wed. 1.15-1.45) and in various forms in several other Cathedrals…” (And she thought she herself was being led to seek a new base in one of the chapels under the ruins of Coventry Cathedral. In fact, one of these had been used as a

7 I think he was to be on the Press desk at Evanston, as some Catholics always have been from Amsterdam onwards.

8 The simple heading of her occasional duplicated newsletter.

7 Chapel of Unity since 1946, and by 1956 the building of the new Cathedral had started.)9 By ‘the two great widespread Weeks’ she meant, of course, the Universal Week of Prayer for World Evangelisation – and for the deepening of Christian Unity, started in 1846 by the World Evangelical Alliance (from the first to the second Sundays in January), and the January 18-25 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity associated more particularly with the name of the R.C. Abbé Paul Couturier from the 1930’s. (And Friends of Reunion had been founded with distinguished leadership in 1933.) By the 1950’s many Oxford Christians, including Orthodox and Roman Catholic, were coming annually to a large central meeting in the city every January. As I recall, at the end of each, we were ‘permitted’ to pray only two prayers, one for Unity and the Lord’s Prayer. At one such Town Hall meeting the story was told about a community who were suffering a severe drought. So they gathered in a church to pray for rain. On their way home, there was great complaint because they got very wet. None had taken umbrellas….! ------We return to the Evanston Assembly of the World Council of Churches which met in August 1954. From Oxford, Kenneth Riches and Dr John Marsh, (newly Principal of Mansfield College, and a member of our church) were to be there. A meeting of Christians in Summertown was proposed at which one of them would brief us before they went. The Bishop of Dorchester spoke in our church so interestingly, that when John Marsh offered afterwards to give us a report back, the Vicar of St Michael’s Summertown, Canon Burroughs, invited us to meet in the Parish Hall. (That in itself was a first!) Kenneth Riches asked if he might be allowed to come and listen. In the event, we were asked to make the report-back a central meeting in the Assembly Room of the Town Hall. John Marsh remained the main speaker, but two Bishops who had been at Evanston were also on the bill - Kenneth Riches and Geoffrey Allen. That was in October. But in November we still had our more local meeting because there was a move afoot to set up a ‘Summertown Christian Council’. It would be open to local Anglicans, Baptists, Congregationalists, and also to any members of Wesley Memorial or the University Church, living in our area. An additional encouragement in 1954 had been the arrival as Vicar of St Andrew’s, Linton Road, of the Rev’d F. John Taylor.10 (He and I had first met in a Theology Group in the Wirral during my St Helens days.) He was of keen ecumenical spirit and offered to be secretary of the new Summertown Council. A particular ecumenical stimulus in St Andrew’s was Mrs Mary Campbell, a scientist like her husband, one of whose initiatives was modernising the Oxford Moral Welfare Association. An ‘unmarried mothers’ hostel’ was transformed into a set of flats for

9 Also, she wrote in September 1956 –“We shall very much miss the Bishop of Dorchester whose complete understanding and sympathy from the beginning has meant much; but our loss is Lincoln’s gain.”

10 In 1956 he became Principal of Wycliffe Hall.

8 mothers and their babies, with a good social worker.11 (Local Authority Children’s Departments were a recent development and we were fortunate in both City and County Councils in the quality of our two Children’s Officers – both Miss (later Baroness) Lucy Faithful and Mrs Barbara Kahan were widely influential.) The Campbell Marston Ferry Road home was host to sundry ecumenical study groups and committees, and Mary was a great supporter of a succession of ecumenical vicars, John Taylor, Tom Croxall and Gordon Hewitt, all good friends to us. One of the first acts of the Summertown Christian Council was to seek a meeting with our local City Councillors. We first discussed the poor state of our local all-age range elderly Church schools, about which the councillors proved to be abysmally ignorant. Our long-term agitation eventually achieved, in 1963, the Cherwell School (secondary modern). The laboratories were so good that the nearby Oxford High School for Girls asked to share them! - Incidentally, a strong ally in our struggle to improve local schools was Mrs Libby Bullock, wife of the Master of St Catherine’s, Alan Bullock. As already mentioned, in 1956 Kenneth Riches became Bishop of Lincoln, a sad loss for many of us. And John Taylor moved to Wycliffe Hall, ‘down the road’, but he retained ecumenical links. Then in 1957 both Raymond Bailey and Henry Starkey moved on, but leaving a Free Church Federal Council that was ready to re-examine itself. What was more, other churches in Oxford had received a stimulus after Evanston, the Cowley area in particular. At this point, a fruitful relationship began when the Archdeacon of Oxford (Carl Witton Davies), the Master of Campion Hall (Tom Corbishley) and I started meeting regularly in the Archdeacon’s rooms in Christ Church. Our discussions ranged over many religious and social issues affecting Oxford and the wider world.12 One background factor may have been that the Oxford FCFC, in both the 1951 and 1955 General Elections, had managed to arrange public meetings with all three candidates, albeit that the Conservative would not appear on the same platform as his opponents. (It would be different in 1959.) And we had continued to meet with the elected M.P. There was a summer with trouble in Nottingham that seemed to be race riots. In Oxford the buses were beginning to be manned by West Indian immigrants, more often the conductors than drivers. From Cowley we were aware that when the factories stood their employees off for a time, or else put them on short time, they often sought the less well-paid transport jobs. In our Trio meetings we agreed that, if trouble occurred in Oxford when any of us were on holiday, whichever two or even one of us was at home would be trusted to speak in the name of all three. We also consulted over this with a Jewish leader. In this same period, with growing Cowley tensions, John Betton of St Luke’s convened a small group from both labour and

11 She had moreover succeeded two very enlightened Oxford High School teachers who had worked in tandem – Miss Davies and Miss Haig Brown.

12 By 1958 the Archdeacon became actively concerned about Blackbird Leys; - as described on p.10 of ‘Blackbird Leys – A thirty year history’.

9 management together with the worker-priest, Tony Williamson 13to discuss underlying issues and motives. I got drawn in, too, partly as a Free Church Council officer, but also (strange to say) because of links with the printing industry! We were meeting in the vicarage within reach of Blackbird Leys where development plans were afoot. However, sadly for our Trio, Tom Corbishley moved to Farm Street in London, and we tried to get a Jesuit parish priest in his place. When that did not work out, we turned to the recently arrived R.C. chaplain to the University. Michael Hollings was very glad to be invited and became a stimulating colleague who gave us insights into the stirrings in Rome.14 Three happenings in the mid-fifties were encouraging to me personally. One was a united service in Holy Week in St Andrew’s at which the preacher was, I think, the Rev’d Donald Lee of Wesley Memorial. It was the first occasion that Canon Burroughs of St Michael’s and I were praying together in the same church. (I had the task of leading intercessions for the ‘gifts and graces of each great division of Christendom’.) I had used a prayer that spoke of “the Anglican Church, its reverent and temperate ways, through its Catholic heritage and Protestant conscience”. As we left after the service the Vicar of Summertown said: “Mr Beck, I have a Catholic heritage, but not a Protestant conscience!” He retired soon after that, and the second happening was the Institution of the Rev’d Kenneth Martin as the next Vicar. I was invited to attend the service in St Michael’s and to wear my robes. Another first! The third happening was a personal letter early in 1957 from Donald Lee, a minister of strong ecumenical commitment. He wrote describing a dilemma in which Methodists like himself found themselves in balancing loyalty to “cumbersome Circuit machinery” with “pulling one’s weight in a Free Church Council”. The whole letter is in the first appendix. Sadly for us, Donald Lee was appointed later that year to be Chairman of the Worcester Methodist District. (Parallel to a Bishop, but probably with less ‘power’ than a Circuit Superintendent.) The Free Church Federal Council had been hearing from the Baptist minister in Cowley, Sidney Crowe, about possible development intentions by the city fathers in what he at first called the ‘Sewage Farm area’. As rumour turned to fact a more salubrious title was adopted, that of the neighbouring Blackbird Leys Farm.15 We were particularly concerned, as plans for a potential 10,000 population emerged, that it was likely to be virtually an island estate, separated by an eastern ring road from the rest of the city. It was expected that the planners would have to provide for three possible Church sites, Anglican, Catholic and Free Church. (It was in the R.C.

13 later a city councillor and Mayor of Oxford.

14 By 1965, when I was on the move, he both preached in our Summertown Church and asked to be invited to my Induction Service at Coventry Cathedral. – There is also a story that when later the Ampleforth monk, Basil Hume, became Archbishop of Westminster, Michael Hollings had been a ‘rival candidate’ – if there can be such a thing!

15 The 1940 Ordnance survey ONE INCH MAP shows the two farms (I have the map!).

10 Littlemore parish, but Cowley for Anglicans. - Or that was our firm information at the time, even though the Blackbird Leys ‘ thirty year history’ says otherwise!) It would seem that from 1957 our Council had launched itself into a detailed re- appraisal of resources – human, material, spiritual. To judge from our old Summertown newsletters, questions had been prepared to help member congregations examine themselves and their situations and to pool the answers. In our part of Oxford we had got involved in some interesting discussions with our neighbours which included aspects of Christian unity. In fact, in a twelve month period in which four of our ecumenical encouragers had left Oxford – Riches, Starkey, Bailey, Lee –it is fascinating to see a maturing concern of the churches, in partnership and in the world. First, the Free Churches. For example, I see that on 8th October 1957, the Oxford FCFC held an open meeting to discuss: “Why not a United Free Church?” Then, the following quite long letter from Summertown Congregational Church officers to “The Secretary, Oxford Free Church Federal Council” gives some of the progress in thought and action around the city. A year ago you passed a statement to the F.C.F.C. in London to the effect that the present divisions in the Free Churches hindered the Church’s redemptive work. Your initial questions to the Oxford Churches were taken by us as a challenge to find out just what we, as a Church, thought about Unity. We have had several Deacons’ Meetings, Church Meetings and a Brains Trust on the subject in the course of the past year, and at a Church Meeting a few days ago we were able to agree to the following resolution: “We share the conviction expressed in a resolution of the Oxford FCFC in October 1957 that: ‘the unity of Christ’s disciples necessary for the Church’s redemptive work is not sufficiently manifested, but is in fact hindered, through the present relationships of the Free Churches to one another.’ “We are therefore sure that it is sinful not to be actively concerned for closer Christian co-operation and more obvious demonstration of our Christian unity. “Our ultimate aim must be the conversion of those things which separate us into means of grace for the whole Church. “As first stages we believe that the Free Churches should come closer together in witness, work and fellowship in the Oxford FCFC; and we resolve that in our immediate locality we shall more whole-heartedly face both our differences and the need for co-operation in the Summertown Christian Council.” This is to be regarded as only an interim statement for after a further period of experience in practical co-operation at local level we shall examine our views again. Repeatedly we have found in our discussions that it is fruitless to start by discussing our differences; these occur at such different levels, and some seemed to us to be so much less fundamental than others, that it was necessary

11 to try to get behind them all and find out what we, as a Congregational Church, believed we stood for and what we could offer to Churches of other orders. In doing this we found that there were certain essentials in the Christian faith which we probably shared with all other Free Churches, and that the differences arose largely in their interpretation and application. A number of our Deacons submitted privately and independently their views on what we stand for, and these have been summarized in the scheme on the attached sheet; this scheme has been endorsed by the Church Meeting. It would be interesting to see whether a similar approach by other Free Churches would lead to somewhat similar conclusions. If it did it seems to us that this might well form the best possible basis for concrete proposals of unity, both at local and national levels. Finally, we have found, both in our discussions and, more obviously, in our experience of local co-operation, that it is impossible to leave out the Anglican Church. Indeed, we have found similar concern about unity among many of its members. Free Church unity, it would seem to us, is only a first step towards a greater unity. And now I find a tattered cutting from the religious press which reminds me that ours was but one facet of a growing ferment amongst many Free Churches around the country.16 The National Free Church Federal Council was to debate Free Church union at its autumn Assembly in London. I was authorised to attend and make a speech, as I happened to be an officer of the Oxfordshire Free Churches as well as of our city FCFC. In The Christian World of 9th October 1958, the three-column report is headed: THE TIME IS STILL ‘NOT RIPE’ Federal Council Debate on Union We are told that after a “quiet and dispassionate statement reiterating the fundamental reasons which make the course of Union one of practical politics and of wise planning,” there had been a long debate with some powerful speeches. One of these, by a well-known Methodist, “in a clearly temporising address” had claimed that because of “conversations going on” between Anglicans and Methodists this was “an inopportune moment to discuss any scheme for Free Church Union”. But this paragraph follows: “Earlier, however, a quite different kind of appeal had been made by Rev. Geoffrey Beck, a young Congregationalist from Oxford.17 “This was a strangely moving account of the actual difficulties facing village churches in Oxfordshire as they sought to combine the necessity to write with loyalty to their own denominational systems. He believed that union of our

16 Presbyterians and Congregationalists in England and Wales had been in covenant together since a joint Assembly in 1951. And most denominations had ‘renewal’ movements. It had been at an Anglican ‘Parish and People’ in Oxford that I first met Bishop Harry Carpenter.

17 I was 40!

12 churches could only be achieved if local efforts at integration had the encouragement and guidance of the central organisation. “There was no reason why a beginning should not be made immediately in certain localities. The whole purpose, surely, of increasing unity presupposes the final goal of union. The Council might as a first step seek to gain among our churches a mutual recognition of ministers and Church members. “It is clear that in Oxford much hard thinking about this issue is going on. If the spirit evinced by Mr Beck is shared by his group, some interesting experiments should emerge.”18 One might add, perhaps, hence Blackbird Leys! But then an unexpected item came up at our Council Meeting that autumn; indeed it was an intriguing surprise. It was after the 1958 Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion and some-one had seen the official report. It appeared that a section chaired by the Bishop of Oxford had said that Anglicans should co-operate in their local councils of churches. Might this provide an opening to create one in Oxford? The Council urged the President and Ministerial Secretary (Eric Sharpe of New Road Baptist and me) to go to see the Bishop. We had a friendly welcome, and then asked if he was aware that the only council of churches in the whole of the Oxford Diocese was in Faringdon. No; so what were we suggesting? Well, what about exploring the possibility of such a council for the Oxford city churches? To cut the story short, some consultation on both ‘sides’ led to the creation of a responsible group of six Anglicans and six Free Churchmen 19to work out what such a council would be like, and its purpose and possible activities. As none amongst us had any such experience we collected literature from the British Council of Churches and started to explore together. Bishop Harry Oxon agreed to chair all our meetings, so it was called the Bishop’s Group. We not only prayed, studied and talked, but gradually shaped detailed papers and consulted with all potential member congregations to get the benefit of their views. For one thing, a city – and University - of over 100,000 people had a lot of churches, so we should need to operate in quite small local areas as well as city-wide. At least we had something to build on in Cowley and Summertown. It became quite a detailed operation. The momentum was such that by late 1960 we were ready to launch the Oxford Council of Churches, and the BCC General Secretary, Kenneth Slack, came in November to share in the event. The Bishop presided, both then and at all following full Council meetings. A rich degree of mutual confidence had developed during these eighteen months.

18 Incidentally, this is the only occasion in my life that I recall being cheered on during a speech.

19 Sorry we were all male; but two of the Free Church reps were laymen, who became the first treasurer and one of the two secretaries of the future Council.

13 The programme of the new Council is no part of this story, but the care taken over its shape and pattern of worship contributed to the growth in shared vision and understanding in the churches. The full Council, representative of every member congregation, met three or four times a year in evenings. The executive, a balance of denominations, lay and ordained, included Lutheran, Orthodox and Roman Catholic observers (it was pre-Vatican II), and also any Oxford Christians (mostly academics) involved in departments of the British or World Council of Churches (such as David Jenkins, John Marsh, and economist Denis Munby). We met in alternate months, strictly from 6.00 – 7.30 pm, with the Bishop almost always present. There were few absentees. Reflecting our Trio, the Archdeacon was the Vice-chairman, I chaired and Michael Hollings was the very committed RC observer. We had Anglican and Baptist secretaries and a Methodist treasurer. To cope efficiently with the activities that emerged, the officers often met twice between each Executive over a sandwich lunch. These were hard-working but quite exciting days. As part of the Oxford FCFC review of resources in 1959 it had produced a brief memorandum about the lack of Free Church care in certain new or recent housing areas. This was in a letter I had in December 1959 from the current Methodist FCFC President, Ben Drewery, Donald Lee’s successor at Wesley Memorial. “Re Church extension. The Methodist Quarterly Meeting agreed a fortnight ago that Wood Farm is not really a case for action, but that if anything is done at all by any Free Church, it ought to be at Blackbird Leys. I cordially agree with this. Anyone who has lived in a London suburb, as I have, where Free Churches are quite normally two miles apart, is not going to lose much sleep over the half mile that separates our Lime Walk and Quarry. But Blackbird Leys is entirely different. As you know, our Rose Hill is doing something, but it is a mere drop in the bucket compared with the need. Wasn’t there something about the Free Church site at Blackbird Leys being reserved for the Baptists? Anyway I should be very glad to have a talk with you after Christmas about this.” (16.12.59) By 1960 the Church of England had decided to take the site offered by the City Council in Blackbird Leys and to plan a Church building. Before the end of the year, their first priest-missioner, Peter Malton, had moved into a council house on the estate, using a temporary hut for worship. The FCFC was thinking hard about shared, rather than separate denominational, buildings as part of our ecumenical view of mission, and early in 1960, I think, we Congregationalists had been charged with working it out. On the issue of shared buildings I took the opportunity of quite frequent meetings with the Bishop to talk about Blackbird Leys. He responded that whilst co-operation in mission on the new estate would be welcome, there were legal problems about shared buildings, because eventually Blackbird Leys would be an Anglican parish in its own right, separate from Cowley. There was no written record of this early conversation, apart from any minute of my report to the now established Blackbird Leys Group set up by the local

14 district of the Congregational Union. (Chairman, Vaughan Rees, a retired missionary, and secretary, David Goodall, bursar, organist etc of Mansfield College, son of an ecumenical statesman.) Out of the general review of Free Church resources, Henry Starkey’s successor at Tyndale Congregational Church in Cowley Road, Lloyd Jenkins, had been stimulating the church to review its future role. Their 1870 buildings were large and expensive, they were virtually opposite a Methodist Church and the interesting but declining congregation came from many parts of the city. Lloyd Jenkins was a minister who had asked unsettling questions about the ministry as well as the role of the local church. He was also very conscious of the growing need and opportunity of Blackbird Leys. After some enquiries, he presented the Tyndale Church Meeting on 24th February 1960 with some possible choices. As quoted by Henry Towers in his 1969 essay ‘An Experiment in Church Unity’20, they might: a. raise £5,000 to put the roof and buildings in order (at that cost we bought a fresh Summertown manse that year to house four children and granny); b. sell to a developer who would in return provide first-floor Church premises above ground-floor shops; c. seek to covenant with Cowley Road Methodists to worship and work together, thereby releasing the value of their own site for a church in Blackbird Leys.

During the following months enquiries and discussions were pursued both in and around Tyndale and also in the Congregational Northern District - with polite enquiries from the FCFC. Then came a historic Tyndale Church Meeting of which I heard more than one dramatic account from those present. I assume it was the one on 20th November 1961; but it’s not in my diary. I was told that the mind of the church seemed to be to negotiate the commercial offer and thereby to acquire adequate new premises above the shops without further cost. There having been much talk, the necessary formal resolution(s) would be tabled and decided upon. (This would not, of course, aid the Blackbird Leys concern ‘down the road’ – some distance away!) The Minister, as well as others, later described how, early in the meeting, ‘somebody’ rose at the back and asked, “Mr Chairman, are we doing the right thing?” ! Nobody claimed that chaos ensued; but there was a question of the Holy Spirit being busy in the lively debate. And at the end a quite different resolution was proposed, and agreed by a majority:

20 Experiments in Renewal (1971) pp.81-94. Edited by Anthony J. Wesson with A Theological Critique by David E. Jenkins.

15 “We are persuaded not to re-build on the present site but to sell and the money raised to be released for new Church building with special recommendation to Blackbird Leys.” (21 for – 13 against) Here I have to say tactfully that, good friend and stimulating colleague as Lloyd Jenkins was, the finer points of denominational rules and property law were not within his province, nor had he and the church officers been well advised. Quite apart from requiring a two-thirds majority for a formal resolution of closure, the Tyndale 1870 Trust Deeds set limitations on how the proceeds of sale could be used. In the university and market town of those days there were lots of country non- conformist chapels in the countryside around, including the village of Summertown to the north. And nobody dreamed of motor-cars and factories to make them a couple of miles away in the rural area of Cowley. So the Trust Deed apparently ruled that if the church and site should ever be sold, the resources could be used to rebuild within half a mile. Other than that, the money must go to the recently set-up (1864?) English Chapel Building Society (or some such name), to be used within the terms of its trust. And that more recently had come within the authority of the Congregational Union of England and Wales (Incorporated). And from there we, the churches, supported the responsibilities for Church extension, Church building and maintenance of the ministry. Well, yes! But clearly, it was thought locally, we had a moral right to this potential money, or its equivalent, in the Oxford area. So Tyndale could proceed to close, passing on their Blackbird Leys intention and the task of negotiations, to the Northern District of the Berks, South Bucks and South Oxon Congregational Union and the special Blackbird Leys group. Many of us shared in the closing service presided over by our Moderator, the Rev’d W.J.Coggan, who knew our District intimately. It was the evening of Sunday, 1st April 1962, Palm Sunday. Lloyd Jenkins, as he had always hoped, was able to work in Blackbird Leys for the next few months, until, later in the year, he was called to be the minister of Abington Avenue Congregational Church, Northampton. As part of the closure agreement, the Tyndale members joined other churches in the city. A number came to Summertown which was taking an increasingly active interest in the Blackbird Leys project. There was now a Blackbird Leys Council in which some Tyndale members were keen to take part. In due course we also had Presbyterian members, reflecting the active concern of St Columba’s. In fact, by the time the goal was coming into sight, all the Free Churches were represented, including Kathleen Dodd, of the Society of Friends. It proved to be a most resilient and determined group. But there was a lot to learn on the way to 1965, and still much to achieve after 1965 – in the spirit of Nottingham 1964 to come. It was quickly made clear from Memorial Hall, our Congregational Central Office, that ‘we’ could claim no legal or moral right to the eventual income from the 99 year lease on the Tyndale site. Nor could we expect an equivalent sum because we had

16 missionary, and (hopefully) ecumenical purposes in Blackbird Leys. It would be tedious to trawl through the minutes to describe all the avenues explored. During 1962, David Goodall wrote, on behalf of our Council, and officially as Minister-Secretary of our Northern District, to the Bishop of Oxford explaining our pastoral-mission intent of co-operation in Blackbird Leys and of hope for ecumenical partnership. What about sharing the future building for worship? In reply we now had in writing what the Bishop had told me in conversation in 1960. Blackbird Leys would eventually be a legal parish with a church that was a consecrated building. So it would be misleading to promise more than was permissible . . . . . But this group never took no for an answer. There were not yet many known ecumenical avenues to explore, apart from the odd Trust, and we found very little under all the denominational stones we turned – nor in the minds or bank accounts of our Church bureaucrats. But we did meet people face to face. Then Henry Towers (school-master) took over from David Goodall who in 1963 sadly had to move on from Oxford. Our Moderator, Jack Coggan, had always supported us – ever since we had taken him on ‘Coggan’s rural ride’ of our district when he began with us in the 1950’s. That was to include coming with Mrs Joy Moore and me to Memorial Hall when Howard Stanley handed over to John Huxtable as General Secretary of our Church. (We were starting towards the United Reformed Church….After all, Presbyterians were now on the Blackbird Leys Council too.) On the way, we found a very interested and interesting minister, David Stapleton (Mansfield). He had done intriguing things a few years back in the Cumnor area when working with me as a student pastor. We had ventured to hope that this would speed up some money; but it didn’t; and we lost him. But because live Blackbird Leys interest, if not restlessness, was now plain in St Columba’s and Summertown, I’ll turn to the newsletters again. You might say that they showed business by trying ways of securing money for the ministry! I happened to be doing a little teaching in Oxford Polytechnic, where I was a governor. It gave some of our members an idea. The following resolution was announced for debate at a Church Meeting in September 1964. The report of what happened follows. We, the members of this church, realising the urgent need of the Blackbird Leys estate for pastoral care from a resident free church minister, resolve that, failing the receipt of help from other sources, and subject to agreement with the Blackbird Leys council on the minister to be called and the terms of his call, we will, for an experimental period of three years, pay up to half the stipend of such a minister from 1 April 1965, and also that from that date we will pay Mr Beck half his present stipend on the understanding that he will be free to take paid employment for a maximum of 20 hours a week.. “The Church Meeting on 30th September showed a clear division of opinion about the scheme for part-time ministry, and no decision was taken. The

17 following is a summary of what was said:- “The case for the scheme rests on the urgent pastoral needs of Blackbird Leys, which are different in degree and kind from those of other housing estates. One member spoke of it as being ‘full of unhappy people’ who need more than the help given by social and welfare workers. Another minister living on the estate could make all the difference, although the success of his work would not be measurable by conventional yardsticks such as numbers of people wishing to attend services and build a church. It was argued by more than one speaker that we are strong enough to undertake this missionary work, that no other Oxford church is, and that we should be further strengthened by acceptance of such a challenge. “What are the prospects of other help? The Maintenance of the Ministry Committee have so far declined to help on the grounds that: 1) the County Union are not supporting the appeal, 2) there is no gathered church on the estate, 3) this is only one amongst many schemes submitted, and money is very scarce. There are good answers to these criticisms, and the Committee’s attitude could alter given a changing situation under the new General Secretary. The Presbyterians are investigating the possibility of help. “The Moderator’s views, as expressed in an informal meeting of the deacons are these:- 1 )This is a generous plan with big possibilities. 2) He can at present see no other way of helping Blackbird Leys. 3) It would be wrong to think we can do it without strain or suffering to our own people. In the long term Summertown needs a fulltime pastorate. 4) We should consider carefully whether we ought to bind our minister for three years, since it might be right for him to leave within that time. 5) We should be careful to insure both ministers against illness, unemployment, etc. “The Deacons have not yet reached a common mind, except in agreeing that Mr Beck should not be tied, and the scheme must be considered against the possibility of his wishing to leave at some future time. “The Case against seems to rest on two distinct points: 1) it would impose too much strain on both the ministers concerned. At least two speakers made this point, but another said that in his judgment ‘all the three ministers he had known in Summertown would have given their right arm for such a chance.’ Mr Beck, himself, when asked, said he was ‘ excited but frightened’. 2) We are not strong enough to do this job. Urgent though the needs of Blackbird Leys may be, we ought first to be putting our own house in order and attending to the needs of those nearer home, e.g. in Cutteslowe.

18 Point 2 was not developed fully at the September Church Meeting, although it is believed to be strongly held by a number of Church members. We seem to be divided about the true nature of the Church’s mission, and it seems right that we should discuss the Blackbird Leys problem further against this background at the October Church Meeting possibly without the Minister.” 21 But now remember, we were going through what Peter Spicer was soon to call “a bumper ecumenical year’, and the same newsletter that reported the Church Meeting also carried a long account of the Nottingham Faith and Order Conference. There is also announced a public ‘reporting-back’ by those present, to be chaired by David Jenkins in Headington School. And soon after that came the annual meeting of the Oxford Council of Churches – with the enthusiastic Blackbird Leys resolution. After the meeting, with this ‘fresh ecclesiastical territory’, we failed the etiquette of communication. Whereas care was taken to inform in writing the relevant authorities of the Free Churches, no letter was sent to the Oxford diocese (of the Church of England) because the Rural Deans and the Archdeacon were probably present, and the Bishop was in the Chair (but in his capacity as President of OCC). Naturally there had been happy Free Church letters of reply but nothing from any Diocesan authority. Our discourtesy became plain when the press storm blew up after the January 1965 Unity meeting, and three of us from the Blackbird Leys Council sought an appointment with the Bishop in the Palace at Cuddesdon. It was granted for February 13th. Meanwhile Summertown Church Annual Meeting heard Peter Spicer saying this, in his annual report that contained so much ecumenical enthusiasm. 22 “This brings me on to the problem of Blackbird Leys, which seems now to appear with monotonous regularity on every agenda. Members have had so much literature about this that I need not rehearse at length our steadily growing conviction that here is a missionary situation which must not be ignored, and the suggestion that to meet it we might release Mr Beck for half his time in order that with the money saved we could contribute half the stipend of a part-time Blackbird Leys minister. The discussion has taken up much of our time during the autumn, and has revealed undercurrents of very strong feelings on both sides. It has been of immense value to us in forcing us to think about the true nature both of mission and of ministry; yet we have much thinking on these subjects still to do. “I have myself for some time been convinced that it would not be right to sacrifice our minister on this particular altar, and I have been praying that the Lord would show us a ram caught in the thicket by way of alternative, because

21 from the newsletter of Summertown Congregational Church, Oxford. (Minister: The Revd G.E.Beck BSc Econ.) No 87, October 1964.

22 NL no. 89, February 1965 pp. 3-4, and 6

19 I am sure we must do something. The ram is not yet in sight, and meantime there has come the news of difficulties about allowing the Free Churches to make use of the Anglican church for worship. On the other side of the picture, the Presbyterians, burdened with a debt no smaller than ours, have undertaken to try and raise £1,000 towards the cost of providing and housing a Free Church minister. “I sometimes feel that a battle for the soul of the Church – the great Church- is going on in Blackbird Leys. In fighting it it is exhilarating to have the Presbyterians on our side and to feel that we are doing something practical with them.” But then on p.6: “Blackbird Leys It was reported that the financial position was: a) a bank balance of £220; b) an interest-free loan of £1,000 from a Presbyterian which would be repaid by gifts from members of St Columba’s; c) an interest-free loan of £1,500, of which £100 did not have to be repaid until 1973; d) the interest on about £3,000, the invested proceeds from the sale of the Tyndale manse, which is available towards the housing of any Oxford Congregational Minister. “An ecumenical deputation from Oxford, together with our Moderator, was shortly to meet Congregational authorities in London to discuss the possibilities of denominational support for “an experiment in ecumenical group ministries”; because of technical and legal difficulties, there might still be months of delay! But a similar approach was envisaged to Presbyterianism. “Nonetheless, our Moderator was prepared to interest a possible minister now, and it could cost……..Hence the need for local Oxford giving to repay the above loans. “After much discussion the church meeting authorised an approach to members for individual gifts to the fund which will pay the pastor at Blackbird Leys.”

20 That letter, BLACKBIRD LEYS APPEAL, signed by four Summertown members with an active interest in the cause, is in the second Appendix. It is dated 20th March, 1965, when a careful document from the Bishop of Oxford was finally clearing the immediate way.23 So we return to our appointment with the Bishop and preparation for it. My engagement diary shows two visits to Memorial Hall – January 22nd and February 4th. The former must have been the “ecumenical delegation,” for the note says “BL Deputation”. The second seems to be a more lively memory. Joy Moore and I – and somebody else? surely! – even the train time is noted. Certainly she and I had two days earlier been at a County Union meeting in Reading – a vital stage in Congregational decision making. We were meeting an old friend in John Huxtable, very recently become General Secretary of the Congregational Union.24 He brought in a senior colleague, Will Simpson, experienced in the mine-field of trusts, finance and denominational rules. It was business-like and wanting to make an ecumenical gesture. In sum: If the Bishop of Oxford will agree to Dedicate the new Blackbird Leys Church instead of Consecrating, so that it can be shared for worship, we will find the appropriate money to back a Congregational ministry. Nine days later John Thornton, Henry Towers and I drove to meet the Bishop at 5pm in his Palace. Henry, in particular, was impressed with the atmosphere of Anglican dignity and tradition. It took a while for the atmosphere to thaw. We needed to fill in some background about our long-term Free Churches’ concern about the Blackbird Leys situation. It seemed that possibly the Rural Dean, and perhaps the Archdeacon too, had not kept him fully in the picture? Anyway, the discussion became constructive. We explained our ecumenical purpose and the stage we had reached, and afterwards Henry Towers sent him a memorandum of our proposals. In particular, of course, we explained what we could be enabled to undertake if he were able to decide to Dedicate the new building instead of Consecrating it. The occasion was fast approaching.

23 It would be 1969 before the Rev’d R.M.C. Jeffery (BCC Mission and Unity Departmemt – ex Faith and Order) was able to gather a group of ‘ecumenical officers’ together to provide some guidance for the Churches on a procedure for Designating Local Ecumenical Experiments/Projects. This would include Sponsoring Bodies for pastoral care, support and oversight. Also in 1969 came the essential Sharing of Church Buildings Act.

In 1971 the BCC published “Ecumenical Experiments: A handbook” by R.M.C.Jeffery. On p.25 section iv, the report outlines “the design of Areas of Ecumenical Experiment”. The preface states that this publication supersedes the report “Areas of Ecumenical Experiment” which was presented to the BCC in 1968. See pp. 66 – 68 for reference to the “Blackbird Leys experiment in joint evangelism”. 24 He was later to be Secretary of the Churches’ Unity Commission.

21 Bishop Harry explained that he would naturally need to have some consultation before being able to reply. “How long can you give me?” I think we were momentarily silenced by the question. For he soon added: “I’ll give you a reply in a month!” And so it was, more or less. A hand-written note dated “March 19, 1965” ( in front of me as I write) says: My dear Beck, Here is the document I promised.. I am sending a copy to Thornton by the same post. (Friday afternoon) I hope that we shall now be able to go forward with complete understanding. Yours very sincerely, Harry Oxon Would you like another dozen copies or so? The attached three-page document is headed: “BLACKBIRD LEYS – experiment in joint evangelism”, and he marked it “Not for publication March 1965” (see Appendix three). (To judge by pencil comments on it, the version published in the summer may have been slightly amended.) I have a note of copies going to ten people, including John Huxtable and our Moderator, Jack Coggan. It may have been on the telephone that the Bishop added: “What about a Free Church Minister by Pentecost?!” Oh yes! On the first page were the words: “….would agree to dedicate (and not consecrate) the new church in order to avoid some legal difficulties which might otherwise stand in the way.” My diary goes on to remind me that as early as February 19th Joy Moore and I had a lunch meeting with Barry Jones, who came from Birmingham to learn something about Blackbird Leys. And before long I probably first met Mervyn Puleston. Certainly by the end of March there started more serious explorations between Barry and the Blackbird Leys Council. Then, of course, the actual dedication of the Church of the Holy Family took place on Sunday 10th April, the eve of Palm Sunday. It was in my diary but I fear I cannot remember whether I was there. There followed a crucial long week-end that Barry and Verina together spent in Oxford. On Friday 30th April it appears that Barry first met the Bishop. Sunday 2nd May, 10.30 am in Summertown Church, Barry and I shared in the communion service. At 6.30 pm, Barry was in Blackbird Leys. On Monday 3rd, Verina and Barry came to tea with us, and presumably we reviewed the whole visit and started to make plans. That Sunday morning service was announced on the back page of Summertown NL No. 91 – May 1965: “Sunday 2 10.30 The Minister and Rev. N.B.Jones (Carrs Lane, B’ham) Morning communion.”

22 And at the foot of the previous page 7: “Blackbird Leys The whole outlook has changed greatly for the better since last autumn. Financially, Congregationalism promises national support to the local money of Presbyterians and Congregationalists so that there can be an adequately housed minister as soon as possible.. “Ecclesiastically, the way has been opened for the sharing of the newly dedicated Church of the Holy Family, so that Free Church services can be held in it. The Bishop of Oxford, with his colleagues, has been most co- operative in drawing up an agreed statement about this ‘experiment in ecumenical group ministry and shared buildings.’ Steps are now being taken to call a Free Church Minister.” And in NL No 92 – June 1965: “Blackbird Leys will have a Free Church Minister by late September. Rev. Barry Jones comes, with his Italian wife, from being at Carrs Lane, Birmingham as ‘an assistant minister available as chaplain to large stores and professional groups in the centre of the city.” At Pentecost, at 6.30pm on June 6th, I was privileged to celebrate the first “Reformed Eucharist – in the Church of the Holy Family, Blackbird Leys, Oxford” – as it says on my Order of Service. That was a land-mark on our pilgrimage. 25But then started the next stage of the journey with: THE INDUCTION OF THE REVEREND NORMAN BARRY JONES, MA, AS THE FREE CHURCH MINISTER FOR BLACKBIRD LEYS WEDNESDAY 29TH SEPTEMBER, 1965 AT 7.30 PM

And finally a personal postscript with another ‘rediscovered’ letter, that links up with how I began this saga. It was an apt irony, that, in the midst of our final difficulties, I had been approached out of the blue about moving to the new Coventry Cathedral to become Warden of the Chapel of Unity, and General Secretary of the Coventry Council of Churches.

25 The Service Paper, in the Appendix, lists the participants in the service; in addition to the Bishop and Moderator, there were Baptist, Congregationalist, Quaker, Presbyterian – ordained and lay. I had the honour of preaching at Barry’s invitation.

23 As a matter of courtesy, I tried to inform the Bishop and David Jenkins before it reached them by other channels. The Bishop’s note, dated two days after David’s,26 has a different comment about Blackbird Leys. I quote part:

4 March 1965 from the Bishop of Oxford Cuddesdon, Oxford My dear Geoffrey, It was very good of you to send me a personal note to tell me of your new appointment at Coventry……………..It will, I suppose, be pioneering work with unlimited opportunities. I hope you will be able to testify that Coventry is not the only place in which some ecumenical advance is being made, though I expect the pace of Coventry will be faster than Oxford. I am pursuing the question of Blackbird Leys with various people in the Diocese, and I have a good hope that I shall be able to write to you within the next fortnight or so with something positive and definite……… With every good wish to you and your wife, Yours sincerely, Harry Oxon ------

Geoffrey E. Beck 21 iv 05 Merryweather’s Farm Herstmonceux BN27 4QH

© Geoffrey E. Beck

26 From which I quoted on p.1.

24 Appendix 1.

Letter from Donald Lee (1957)

WESLEY MEMORIAL CHURCH OXFORD AND CHAPLAINCY TO METHODISTS IN THE UNIVERSITY

Ministers: The Rev. DONALD R. LEE. M.B.E., B.D The Rev. DONALD G. L. CRAGG, B.A.

Residence: WESLEY MEMORIAL CHURCH 21 Lathbury Road NEW-INN-HALL STREET Oxford OXFORD Tel. Oxford 58103 Tel. Oxford 3216

21st February 1957 My Dear Geoffrey First of all, congratulations from all of us here on your election to the Presidency of the Free Church Council. I hope the Methodists will maintain the evident, if slight, improvement in their sense of loyalty to the Council. Your own idea of what tasks the Council might usefully foster in, for example, the review of the disposal of our man- power, may well make some of our people feel that there is point in the Free Church Council after all. The general attitudes of the Methodists to the Free Church Council are two: a) that we have no need of this organisation apart from the regrettable necessity of cooperating with others in the nomination of Hospital Chaplains and b) that both by reason of Methodism’s large representation in the National Council and because of Methodism's general indebtedness to the older Churches of the Dissent, local Free Church Councils must be efficient and properly representative organisations. Most of the men I know here and elsewhere fall into the second category, but (too) many of them are intimately and pastorally committed to the maintenance of the local organisation of several congregations, some of which may well be put outside the area covered by the (local) Free Church Council, and life already consists of an endless round of meetings of Church Courts and edifying organisations, to say nothing of (each man's) share in the maintenance of cumbersome Circuit machinery. What applies to the Ministers also applies to the Stewards (and other leading lay folk - of this type who represent us on the Council). With the best will in the world it is impossible some times to pull one's weight in a Free Church Council, and alas! when the Congregationalist, for example, complains of Methodist non-cooperation, it is all too easy for the Methodist to resent it as ill-informed and uncharitable. It so often comes (he thinks) from a man who is a Pastor of but one Church and even if his total membership be larger than that of his Methodist brother,

25 his undoubted busyness knows nothing of the frustration of the harassed Circuit rider. Such exchanges of uncharitable judgment bring no credit to the Council. As the Minister of a single pastorate I know more about the frustrations and demands of such a situation than many of my brethren. But there is no point in pretending that full cooperation of the Methodist can be accorded the priority that a keen Free Church Council man thinks it should have. However there have been certain changes since the day of Henry's* famous denunciation and I unload all this on your shoulders, because there seems so real an opportunity that the Council under your leadership can move forward. The subjects for the Bible Studies will be as follows: (The Way of Deliverance) By Thy Baptism, Fasting and Temptation (March 20) By Thy Cross and Passion (March 27) By Thy glorious Resurrection and Ascension (April 3) Good Lord, deliver us (April 10)

Yours, (affectionately and gratefully) (Donald)

*Henry Starkey, Congregational Minister, Cowley Road Church when President of Oxford FCFC and having been Secretary of Northern District of the Berks Bucks and Oxon Cong'l Union in which were many Methodist Chapels (more than Baptist and Congregational probably)

26 Appendix 2

Blackbird Leys Appeal (1965)

To all members and friends of Summertown Congregational Church 20th March 1965 BLACKBIRD LEYS APPEAL. Many of you will know that within the next few months it is hoped to establish a full- time Free Church Pastor on Blackbird Leys estate. He will live in a council house and will work in close conjunction with the Anglican priest. He will have the use of the Anglican buildings and in return for this it is hoped that the Free Churches will be able to help finance the ancillary buildings on the Anglican site. Our scheme has been given the full support of the support of the Oxford Council of Churches who unanimously passed a resolution requesting “the Oxford Diocese and corresponding bodies of other member churches to designate Blackbird Leys as an area of experiment in ecumenical group ministeries in the sharing of building and the development of mission". We believe that Blackbird Leys offers a unique opportunity in sharing Christian work amongst all denominations. It is a new, isolated estate which will eventually house 10,000 Oxford people. The need for pastoral care in such an area is, we believe, very great. The scheme will receive considerable help from the Congregational Union who have pledged their support in financing the pastor on condition that the scheme be truly ecumenical. They have asked us to raise £170 in the first year. It will still be necessary to finance the ancillary buildings. The Presbyterians in Oxford have already promised to raise £1000 over three years. We feel that Oxford Congregationalists should also raise £1000. Some churches have already appealed to their members. In asking for your financial support of the Blackbird Leys work we are fully conscious of the heavy financial responsibilities which our church already carries. Nevertheless, we believe that the work of Blackbird Leys is of vital importance and a challenge to our work in Oxford. We feel we can rightly call for your support in this, which may also become the pattern for similar enterprises in different parts of the country. If you would like to support our work on Blackbird Leys, please fill in the details below and send the slip, with your gift, to Mr. R. Wiggins. (Donations may also be given to the Church Treasurer.) (signed) JOY MOORE, TOM BANHAM. HENRY TOWERS, NORA DEVESON.

27 Appendix 3

Experiment in joint evangelism (1965)

BLACKBIRD LEYS Experiment in Joint Evangelism

On 13th February, 1965 I met the Reverend G.E. Beck and the Reverend J. Thornton, with Mr. Towers, and discussed with them the possibilities of ecumenical co-operation on the Blackbird Leys estate. I learned from them that it was hoped that the Congregational Church, with the support of other Free Churches, might soon be in a position to appoint a Minister on the estate and to house him. It was hoped that, if this proved possible, it might also be possible for the Minister to use the new Church of the Holy Fami1y for his services and to co-operate with the Priest-Missioner in evangelistic work on the estate. Mr. Towers afterward sent me a revised copy of a memorandum embodying the proposals of the Free Church Committee dealing with the project. Reference was also made to a resolution of the Oxford Council of Churches on 17th November, 1964, in favour of making Blackbird Leys an area of ecumenical experiment. At the meeting on 13th February I pointed out (1) that the Church of England had been at work on the estate for more than 4 years, (2) that in1962 I had told Mr.Beck and Mr. Goodall, who had then approached me, that I and others would welcome the appointment of a Free Church Minister to work on the estate, but that the joint use of the church would present difficulties and (3) that the recent resolution of the Oxford Council of Churches must be regarded as a recommendation to the Churches concerned and not a decision binding on them. I went on to say, however, that I was quite prepared to consider the definite propositions put before me in the Free Church Committee's memorandum, and would agree to dedicate (and not consecrate) the new church in order to avoid some legal difficulties which might otherwise stand in the way. I did, however, make it quite clear that the joint use of the church and the co-operation between the two ministers would have to be subject to certain conditions and limitations which must be understood by all concerned from, the beginning, thus preventing misunderstanding and frustration at a later stage. I promised to consult my own colleagues and. others concerned and to give a reply to the proposals as early as possible in March. I now set out the lines on which such an ecumenical experiment might be possible.

28 THE PROJECT Blackbird Leys is a large estate likely to have a population of 10,000 or so when complete. There is an almost unlimited need for evangelization in the widest sense, for the strongest possible witness of Church, and for elementary instruction in the Christian faith, with the result, as we hope, that many will come in to the regular corporate life of the Christian community. I believe it is important that we should think of this project first of all in terms of a joint effort at evangelization. In the course of this, the two Churches at work may make discoveries about their own distinctive life as Churches, but this, however important, will be a by-product and not the main purpose. Let me now set out first the conditions under which the Church of England would enter into this experiment. 1. Neither I nor the Priest-Missioner can abdicate our pastoral responsibility for the work of the Church of England on the estate, or hand it over to any Committee. The Priest-Missioner will remain responsible to me and presumably the Congregational (Free Church) Minister will remain responsible to whatever authority he would normally be under or to any special authority set up for this purpose. I would suggest an Advisory Committee composed of the Priest-Missioner, the Archdeacon, the Rural Dean and some of our lay people, with a corresponding representation on the Free Church side. (In its advisory capacity) This Committee could from time to time review the progress of the work and make suggestions and recommendations. 2. With regard to the services to be held in the church, they must be either Anglican or Congregational services and must be advertised as such. Sometimes, however, on Sunday evenings, a joint service, perhaps often having the character of a mission service, could be held, but at least once a month there should be an Anglican Evensong. I regard it as absolutely essential that every Sunday morning there should be a Church of England Parish Communion at which confirmed Anglicans would communicate and others, adults or children, might be present. In no circumstances could this service be displaced. There will be ample time for a Congregational service in the latter part of the morning, if desired. 3. If any question of inter-communion arises, it must (naturally) be (in terms of) (governed by) the regulations in force at the time in the Church of England. (The present rules are under review). Any assumption that this experiment must inevitably lead sooner or later to free and unrestricted inter-communion in the Church of the Holy Family would be such a grave misunderstanding that I must ask everyone concerned to note and remember particularly what I have said on this point. 4. People who come into the corporate life of the Church must, after their intention becomes clear, become members of either the Church of England or the Congregational Church. It will otherwise be impossible for them to be

29 trained in the worship and discipline of the Church: for example, the Priest- Missioner will wish to train his people in the eucharistic worship of the Church of England and where necessary, to prepare them for (Baptism and) Confirmation. It will be impossible to do this if they can move to and fro between the worship of the two Churches. 5. In the course of time, we should hope that some contribution towards the running expenses of the Church of the Holy Family would be made from Free Church sources. 6. When a new Priest-Missioner or a new Free Church Minister is appointed, there should be adequate inter-Church consultations so as to ensure that the person appointed is likely to co-operate with the other minister without difficulty. I have set out these points, I hope very clearly, because frustration and disappointment rather than understanding and unity are likely to result if they are not brought to the attention of all concerned from the first. Given these fundamental conditions, I warmly welcome the appointment of a Free Church Minister to work closely with our Priest-Missioner, and to have freedom by arrangement with the Priest-Missioner to hold his own services in the Church of the Holy Family. I can envisage a large and fruitful field of co-operation in all forms of evangelistic work, in visiting, youth work, social gatherings, Bible classes, instruction and discussion groups, and in mission services such as I have mentioned above. The Priest-Missioner and Minister will be a great support to one another and the impact of the Christian Faith on the people of Blackbird Leys will be strengthened by this united effort. I hope that in some aspects of Christian work on the estate they may find it possible to secure the co-operation of the Roman Catholic clergy and people.

Harry Oxon

30 Appendix 4

Induction of Barry Jones (1965)

THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY FAMILY Blackbird Leys Oxford.

THE INDUCTION of THE REVEREND NORMAN BARRY JONES, M.A. as THE FREE CHURCH MINISTER FOR BLACKBIRD LEYS Wednesday, 29th September 1965 at 7.30 p.m. THE ORDER OF SERVICE The congregation stands when the procession of ministers. clergy and other participants in the service, enters the church. Then the priest-in-charge of the Church of the Holy Family, the Reverend Mervyn Puleston, speaks the following words of welcome: Friends in Christ Jesus, In the name of the Church of the Holy Family in Blackbird Leys, I greet you, and bid you welcome. Grace to you, and peace, from God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Presiding Minister, the Reverend W.J. Coggan, replies: We gladly accept your welcome.

31 THE PREPARATION The Presiding Minister shall say: Christ exists before everything, and all things are held together in him. He is, moreover; the head of the body, the church. He is its origin, the first to return from the dead, to be in all things alone supreme. For in him the complete being of god, by God's own choice, came to dwell. Through him God chose to reconcile the whole universe to himself, making peace through the shedding of his blood upon the cross - to reconcile all things, whether on earth or in heaven through him alone. The hymn "All people that on earth do dwell" is sung.

1. All people that on earth do dwell, 3. O enter then his gates with praise, Sing to the Lord with cheerful Approach with joy his courts unto; voice, Praise laud and bless his name Him serve with mirth, his praise always, forth tell; For it is seemly so to do. Come ye before him and rejoice. 4. His mercy is for ever sure; 2. Know that the Lord is God indeed; For why, the Lord our God is good, Without our aid he did us make His truth at all times firmly stood, We are his folk, he doth us feed; And shall from age to age endure. And for his sheep he doth us take. The Lord Bishop of Oxford will lead the congregation in prayer. Most gracious God, to know and love whose will is righteousness, enlighten our souls with the brightness of thy presence, that we may both know thy will and be enabled to perform it; through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN 0 God, whose love we cannot measure, nor ever number all thy blessings, we bless and praise thee who in weakness art our strength, in darkness our light. Goodness and mercy have followed us all our days, and we are promised that things to come shall not separate us from thy love. For these and for all thy gifts we praise and thank thee, in the name of him who is thy greatest gift to men, even Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN. The Bishop and congregation will then say together: Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we confess before thee that our lives fail to reveal thy glory: we have broken faith with thee and have scorned thy grace, we have fallen into despair and have turned away from the victory of the cross, we have exploited others and our hopes and concerns have been trivial and selfish.

32 Have mercy, 0 Lord, and grant unto us thy; pardon and peace, for the sake of him who died for us, Jesus Christ our Lord. After a short silence, the Bishop will say: Now let us be comforted and be g1ad, and hear what St. John says: If we confess our sins, he is just, and may be trusted to forgive our sins and cleanse us from every kind of wrong. Hear also from St. Matthew's gospel: Seeing their faith Jesus said to the man, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven”. AMEN

THE WORD OF GOD The Old Testament Lesson: Isaiah 52 7 –10 Read by Mrs. Kathleen Dodd The New Testament Lesson Luke 4: 14 – 21 Read by the Reverend J S Strong

After the lessons have been read, the congregation will stand to sing a metrical form of Psalm 93.

The Lord doth reign, and clothed is he The floods, 0 Lord, have lifted up, With majesty most bright; They lifted up their voice; His works do show him clothed to be, The floods have lifted up their waves And girt about with -might. And made a mighty noise. The world is also stablished, But yet the Lord, that is on high, That it cannot depart; Is more of might by far Thy throne is fixed of old, and thou Than noise of many waters is, From everlasting art. Or great sea-billows are. Thy testimonies, every one, In faithfulness excel; And holiness for ever, Lord, Thine house becometh well.

The Sermon: Preacher, the Reverend Geoffrey Beck.

33 THE INTERCESSIONS The Lord Bishop of Oxford will lead the congregation in prayers of intercession for the Church and for the world. THE INDUCTION The congregation will stand to sing the hymn "0 thou who camest from above".

0 thou who camest from above, Jesus, confirm my heart's desire The pure celestial fire to impart, To work and speak and think for thee; Kindle a flame of sacred love Still let me guard the holy fire, On the mean altar of my heart. And still stir up thy gift in me: There let it for thy glory burn Ready for all thy perfect will, With inextinguishable blaze; My acts of faith and love repeat, And trembling to its source return, Till death thine endless mercies seal, In humble prayer and fervent praise. And make my sacrifice complete.

The Presiding Minister, the Moderator of the West Midland Province of the Congregational Union, will say: Each of us has been given his gift, his due portion of Christ's bounty. And these were his gifts: some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip God's people for work in his service, to the building up of the body of Christ. So shall we all at last attain to the unity inherent in our faith and our knowledge of the Son of God - to mature manhood, measured by nothing less than the full stature of Christ. The members of the Blackbird Leys Council, in Christian concern for the furtherance of the ministry of Jesus Christ on this estate, having accepted the invitation of the Church of the Holy Family and having sought the guidance of the Holy Spirit, have called Norman Barry Jones to labour in, the fellowship of the gospel here, and have invited us to come together with them that we may induct him to this shared ministry in this church and district. Let us therefore hear from the Council how it has been led to call Barry ;Jones to this ministry, and then we shall hear from him of his assurance that God has called him to this charge, of the faith he holds, and of his purpose under God to be a faithful pastor amongst this people. A statement on behalf of the Council will be made by Mr. Henry Towers; this will be followed by a statement from the Reverend Barry Jones, after which the Presiding Minister will put the following questions to him. Seeing that God of his grace has called you to be his minister, I ask you in his name and in the presence of the company here assembled Do you believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and do you confess anew the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour and Lord?

34 Answer: I do. Believing in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ of which you have been made a minister by God's gift', will you strive, with the help of God, to exercise your ministry in accordance with the solemn promises made at your ordination. Do you promise to execute your charge with all fidelity, to preach the Word of God, to administer the Sacraments, and in all things to adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour ? Answer: By the help of God, I do so promise. Believing that it is in accordance with the will of God for you to minister in this place, will you seek to serve the whole Blackbird Leys community, wherever there is need? Answer: By the help of God, I will. Believing that God, through Christ, 'reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation', will you seek to break down the barriers of fear, hatred and prejudice, which divide men from each other; and will you labour to show forth the unity of Christ's Church through your ministry ? Answer: By the help of God, I will. The Presiding Minister addresses the congregation: As an act of fellowship, I invite the whole congregation to stand, In token of your acceptance of Norman Barry Jones in this special ministry, and of your promise to pray for him and support him in this the ministry of Jesus Christ, in which we are all called to share, I now invite you who are residents of Blackbird Leys and you who are members of the churches of Oxford to raise your right hand, The Lord bless your ministry and fellowship together. Let us pray The Reverend J. G. Thornton will offer the PRAYE.R OF INDUCTION which will be followed by the Lord's Prayer. The Presiding Minister shall then say: IN THE NAME OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, THE ONLY HEAD OF THE CHURCH, AND IN THE NAME OF THE CHURCHES OF THE CONGREGATIONAL FAITH AND ORDER, ACTING UPON THE AUTHORITY OF THE BLACKBIRD LEYS COUNCIL, I HEREBY DECLARE YOU, NORMAN BARRY JONES, INDUCTED AS THE FREE CHURCH MINISTER FOR THE BLACKBIRD LEYS ESTATE.

35 We commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to make you perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works, and in token of your induction we give you the right hand of fellowship. The right hand of fellowship is then offered by The Bishop of Oxford, the .Reverend S. C Crowe (representing the Oxford Council of Churches), Mr. Henry Towers (representing the Blackbird Leys Council), Mr. Jack Argent (representing the Church of the Holy Family), and the Reverend W. J.Coggan (representing the Congregational Union of England and Wales) The Presiding Minister then says: Barry, I invite you to lead us in the conclusion of our worship.

The hymn “Let all the world in every corner sing” is sung

Let all the world in every corner sing Let all the world in every corner sing My God and King! My God and King! The heavens are not too high The Church with psalms must shout, His praise may thither fly No door can keep them out: The earth is not too low, But above all, the heart His praises there may grow Must bear the longest part Let all the world in every corner sing. Let all the world in every corner sing My God and King! My God and King!

Let us pray: Christ, our Saviour, come thou to dwell within us, that we may go forth with the light of thy hope in our eyes, and thy faith and love in our hearts. AMEN The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all. AMEN. ------PARTICIPANTS IN TIIE SERVICE The Reverend J. S. Strong, Priest Worker The Reverend Mervyn Puleston, B.D., A.K.C., Priest-in-charge of the Church of the Holy Family. The Reverend W.J. Coggan, M.A., Moderator of the West Midland Province of the Congregational Union. The Lord Bishop of Oxford, the Right Reverend H. J. Carpenter, D.D.

36 Mrs. Kathleen Dodd, Member of the Society of Friends. The Reverend Geoffrey Beck, B.Sc., Warden of the Chapel of Unity of Coventry Cathedral and General Secretary of the Coventry Council of Churches. Formerly minister of Summertown Congregational Church, Oxford. Mr. Henry Towers, M.A., Secretary of the Blackbird Leys Council. The Reverend J.G. Thornton, M.A., B.D., Minister of St. Columba's Presbyterian Church, Oxford. The Reverend S.C. Crowe, Joint Chairman of the Oxford Council of Churches and Minister of Cowley Baptist Church. Mr. Jack Argent, Church Warden of the Church of the Holy Family.

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