[Principal Richard] Turnbull’s supporters ”“ off the record, of course ”“ suggest that it is he, not the saintly Storkey, who is the real victim of a witch-hunt. “This charge that he is a fundamentalist is baloney,” says one well-placed Anglican academic and writer. “He was brought in as a new broom and Wycliffe badly needed one if it was going to survive. Its administration was hopeless and, although it was doing well in teaching theology, its training for ministry was well below the standards needed. The irony in the three former principals attacking Richard is that he wouldn’t need to do what he is doing if they had grasped the nettle of modernisation when they were there.”
In a church famed for its moderation, neither side in the dispute seems willing to turn the other cheek. What seems clear, though, is that most students there are heartily sick of the whole matter and see it largely as a personality clash that is threatening to distract them from the serious business of studying the Bible.
Whether Wycliffe can ever get back on an even keel when, as Turnbull and his supporters hope, the wave of bad publicity has ebbed away, may depend ultimately on a review of the status of the private permanent halls at Oxford currently being carried out by a working group led by Oxford’s former vice-chancellor Sir Colin Lucas, now Warden of Rhodes House. This, it should be stressed, is a regular check-up of their health, but the activities of the Lucas group has taken on a new significance because of the crisis at Wycliffe. Its report is expected in the summer.
I’m a student at Wycliffe, and although I don’t want to go into details where I simply don’t have the full picture, there are a couple of things that should be said.
Wycliffe has [b]not[/b] threatened its students with a “latter-day Inquisition if they breathe a word of what is going on within its walls to the press”. We have been asked not to comment as individual students for the simple reason that press interaction, certainly in a situation as confusing and sensitive as this, is an art in itself. The student body has a voice through the president of the Common Room, who has in fact commented to the press. I am not aware of threatened reprisals should individual students comment. Richard also does not stop us making our voice heard on blogs and the like, in fact, he encouraged it.
There is no “latter-day Inquisition”. There is no “reign of terror”.
An unfortunate number of staff are indeed leaving the college. Like most newspapers, the Independent seems to have concluded that this is “apparently in protest” at the changes at Wycliffe. I am not convinced that this conclusion is warranted for all of them.
Richard Turnbull never said that “95 per cent of current Anglicans [are] facing eternal damnation”. See [url=http://www.reform.org.uk/viewvideo.php?video=conf06/turnbull_&quality=high]a video of the speech itself[/url] or [url=http://www.change.freeuk.com/learning/relthink/turnbull.html]this transcript[/url] and also [url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,2092903,00.html]his comment on the media hubbub about this[/url], and make up your own mind.
Although I personally don’t share Simon Vibert’s theology on the position of women in church, it is a good thing that at Wycliffe his position is evaluated in terms of fidelity to scripture and not in terms of accommodation to our secular context. His reading is different from mine, but it is a position held with true integrity and I’m glad that there is room for it among staff and students. The college as a whole is and remains supportive of the leadership and ordination of women in the church.
Just my UKP 0.05. I hope it is helpful.
Thanks PeterdH. These attacks keep coming up including some half veiled questions from some quarters in Synod.
Closing this comment thread while I figure out what comments I will keep or delete or whether I will just delete them all.
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Update: For now I’ve removed the 7 most recent comments on this thread. (They’re in moderation, so not necessarily gone forever). I need to read the article (Kendall posted it, not us elves, so I haven’t read it) and figure out what comments are responding to the article and which merely were opportunities to attack various individuals.
I’ve left #1 stand since he is a student at Wycliffe. I may or may not re-open this thread and may or may not re-post some of the original comments that are now removed. Stay tuned. It depends on what I discover and how much time or energy I have. With Kendall offline most of the time and my fellow elf travelling, I have very little time to follow such matters.