We left Australia in February 1981 to undertake postgraduate study in Britain. We flew on a version of what was called the Qantas ‘kangaroo route’: hopping from Australia to Singapore, then Bahrain to London. Singapore was hot and steamy, but at Bahrain when we walked out of the plane we were confronted by men carrying machine guns. This was our first encounter of a culture where security was so ‘in your face’. I had never seen a machine gun before then.
We arrived in London to 3 degrees—a dramatic change from home, where it was 39 degrees when we left, and had been like that for several weeks. As tourists in London for a few days, we visited all the places on the Monopoly board, and the cathedrals and so on. Then it was time to take the train to Manchester, where we were going to live. We took a cab to Euston Station, with our huge amount of luggage.
We had with us also a very large bottle of malt whiskey, given to us on the plane when Merilyn had assisted an ill patient. The flight staff sought her out as a doctor and at the end of the flight gave her the whiskey as their only way of saying thanks. Frankly we didn’t want it and thought we could ‘tip’ the cab driver. He was duly astonished and we imagined the stories he told his mates about these naïve Aussies …
Arriving at our residence, in a small block of apartments for international students, I was disappointed to see our main room faced south. Later I realised that this meant we’d get some sunshine: we were in a very different part of the world now. South is good!
Later that evening we found the lights went out without notice. No one had told us we needed coins for a meter, for light and power.
Here was the first thing about this whole experience: people presume you know what’s what, where things are, how it’s done. And they don’t want to interfere.
Later on I learned from a student worker that students for Australia and New Zealand often find it hardest to settle in the UK because so much is similar, they assume and others assume that they are ‘at home’. But it’s similar, in language and such things as road usage, but then you continually trip up on things that are not the same at all. Outside the university, I found the local accent very difficult.
In the student residence, I met a man from India who was packing up to go home, having completed his PhD. I was at the very beginning and he noticed my concern that I may not be up to the standard. He assured me: ‘Frank, you don’t have to be particularly bright to get a PhD: you just have to be stubborn. Keep at it, and when you’ve done enough work they give it to you.’
We were surrounded by students from all over the world and soon made friends with many from former British colonies, all of whom enjoyed cricket, and (we found) all supported whoever was playing against England! At the residence, we had a monthly dinner when foods from many cultures were shared. It was such an eye-opener, and so amusing when we noticed people piling sweet desserts onto the same plate as curries and savoury courses.
We had a number of close friends from various African countries. They were often men who did not so much shake hands when we met as actually hold my hand: sometimes, on the street, holding my hand for 10 minutes or more. Not something I was used to! The stories they had to tell were also deeply moving: those who were part of the freedom fight in ‘Rhodesia’, or who had been imprisoned for their struggle for justice in Ethiopia, to name just a few.
With time we realised how close we were to other places. We could take a train and a ferry and soon we were in Paris. I remember standing on a part of the Eiffel Tower and overhearing another bunch of tourists and it hit me that this was the first time I’d heard the Aussie accent for months. Later we went to Athens and visited Corinth, and many places with biblical resonances. But it happened that in Athens they were in full flight of an election campaign—most amazingly, small planes flew over dropping campaign leaflets all over the city.
At the University I had expected to encounter a strong group of fellow student researchers. In fact I was enrolled with one supervisor in his own one man department. I was not part of any research cohort, and one day during the summer break I noticed that the refectory was full of people talking about various aspects of Christian theology. I asked one person who told me this was an international conference on the ancient scholar Origen. My supervisor had not told me about it, as he assumed that since he wasn’t interested I wouldn’t be either. Here I was, I’d come halfway around the world to one of the top theological schools in Britain, and I missed out on this conference completely.
The University library was my place of work. My only place to be. Every day I was greeted, usually when leaving, by security people who checked our bags, and always referred to each of us as ‘luv’. To be called ‘luv’ by a 60 year old man was a new experience for me too.
These were the days of IRA campaigns against the British government. One day the library staff walked around and told us all to take our purse or wallet, nothing else, and quietly leave the building. ‘Come back tomorrow, if the library is still here’ was the unspoken message. This was the first of several bomb scares we encountered that year.
Gradually I began to notice other students working on biblical subjects, just by spying on their desks when they went out for a break. Several of these I got to know and found that one was an Australian brother from the De La Salle community. We had lots of fun times with him and his fellow student, an intriguing Irishman. The International Society was our main source of social life. It was a support group which provided a ‘Just Lunch’ once a week and arranged day trips to various places some weekends. On the first of these we visited York, which was so fascinating, but also unbelievably cold. I had never been that cold before and don’t think I have since.
Two very significant things happened during our time in England. The first was the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer. That summer it was wet: the locals said it wasn’t usually like this, but we came to see that they said that every year. But, astonishingly, on the day of the wedding, the sun shone and it remained dry for at least a week after. I had heard of the Divine Right of Kings, but I did not really think they controlled the weather so directly. Most people were transfixed by the celebrations. We took the opportunity with some other ‘foreigners’ to play tennis, as for once it was easy to book a court! Merilyn’s work colleagues were aghast when she told them how we had spent the day.
Not long after, Britain went to war against Argentina, over the Falkland Islands. Again, we were astonished at the enthusiasm of so many for a war. They truly believed that having a war would make the country strong again. We could see how they were still not ‘over’ the last one, the Second World War. Thankfully it did not last long. But it did reveal deep divisions in the community. Where we lived there were students from Argentina and from Britain. Mostly the latter were embarrassed, while the former were just afraid.
These experiences are common to so many international students and immigrants, all over the world, and here today. I do not forget them.
This was probably the most lonely period of my entire life. I found that nothing I had done before, even in two research degrees, was of any interest or consideration. How could it be, seemed to be the attitude. I was working on a project which no one else shared, with a supervisor who did not have strong social skills and largely left me to it. In my own academic career, I’ve worked hard not to follow his style. I found, too, a profound disdain for most theology done on the other side of the Atlantic, let alone in the two-thirds world. What I knew and valued as Pastoral Theology was essentially suspect. It occupied barely three shelves in the University library. There were some great leaders in that area, in Manchester, but mostly they did not find a place in the University.
In Britain at the time, theology faculties in the universities were not engaged with ministry formation. Ordinands or those seeking to be ordained went to university to get a degree in theology and then went to a theological college to learn about ministry. While the standards of academic theology may have been higher than in many other places, it seemed to me that theology so clearly separated from the practice of the faith, and ministry, was in significant ways impoverished. So too the separation of ministry formation from serious theological reflection is also impoverished. Many in each context were aware of these challenges and at least in some ways tried to overcome them.
My research required me to undertake an extensive literature search. I wanted to find everything in the library on my subject: the relation of doubt to faith. This involved looking along the shelves at every book title, taking down anything even vaguely related and checking its contents, index, and so on. I looked at more than 100 years of every journal the library subscribed to. Only in the final months of my work did I begin to learn (by attending some night classes) about things called computers. (This in the town where the first large computer in the country had been built, decades earlier: so large that it filled an entire room, to process data cards.)
A little later another student told me that over at Leeds they had a machine into which you could feed a single word or idea and it would search the library catalogue and print out for you a list, of all the related titles. Wow!
In our final year the Fallowfield Baptist Church, where we had joined when we first arrived, underwent some major changes in leadership. It was decided not to have a single pastor, but instead a senior person who was on staff at the nearby Baptist College, plus three students. I have never forgotten that, as this was being considered, an elderly lady said in the meeting: ‘I can understand all this, but what is worrying me is, Who’s going to take my funeral?’ She was loved by all and what she said expressed a concern many of them had. They needed to have a clear sense of who was leading them.
This caused me to think deeply about leadership. It seemed to me in many ways that this church had lacked clear leadership, and I recognised in their concern my own attitude up to that time. I was very wary of what was often called ‘strong leadership’. To me and my generation that usually meant authoritarianism—of the left or the right.
Now, however, I was seeing that you could not in fact lead, as I put it, from the back row, avoiding taking a stand. True, I strongly opposed Margaret Thatcher’s way of domination and shouting down any who questioned her way. But was this the only possibility for genuine and effective leadership? I spent a lot of that year thinking about leadership, and it was a good thing that I did so, as soon I received an invitation to the Hobart Baptist Church and a situation where I would have the opportunity to exercise leadership. This experience of seeing a need for real leadership, that was both visible and caring—not just to conduct funerals—was a profound influence upon my sense of calling to the next phase of my life. What does it mean to offer clear leadership, listening, engaging, but also articulating a possible direction?
In the next months, we both survived our examinations, and soon set off on a long holiday throughout Asia and our trek home to Australia.