The Serendipity of Life's Encounters

Ann Loades

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781506484457
• eBook ISBN: 9781506484464
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Reflecting on the particular challenges facing a schoolgirl of the 1950s attracted to the possibility of going to university to read theology, and on her path to becoming the first woman to be given a personal Chair at the University of Durham, professor emerita of divinity at the same, an honorary professor at the University of St. Andrews, and a CBE for "services to theology, " Ann Loades introduces some of the key tenets of her theological thinking, including about theodicy, women in theology, worship, engagement with actual living, and biography and theology in various writers.

In the My Theology series, the world's leading Christian thinkers explain some of the principal tenets of their theological beliefs in concise, pocket-sized books.

1

A theology of social concern learned from schooling

FOR ME, DISCOVERING theology came about by sheer accident. Its roots lay in my schooling, starting as early as my experiences at my very first school, in the ‘nursery’ part of a boarding school for children whose parents needed to find them somewhere safe from bombs and the threats of worse to come. We were ‘evacuees’, far too young to be away from the only person or people we knew, and hating it – in my case until I changed schools at age eleven. To begin with we were all boys and girls together, though the boys tended to disappear as soon as their fathers found somewhere else, out of a context in which boys might become ‘sissies’. We all lost good friends that way.

The nursery part of school did have its interests, however. Around the room in which we were taught there was an illustrated alphabet frieze in colour: ‘A’ to ‘Z’, with appropriate fruit or birds or animals. I must have learned this very quickly because I remember being able to read my first, short sentence, ‘The fox sat on the mat’, and being able to picture the fox from the frieze, sitting on a mat in front of a good fire. Perhaps as a result I have always been fascinated by animals and the non-human world, and have never understood how anyone could be indifferent to the context in which we currently find ourselves – this world so full of variety, colour, and ingenious creatures with whom we share so much. Disastrous indifference in the case of formal theology has also been the case in the churches, so many of which were so entertainingly decorated with non-human creatures in the past.

I found solace in books, comics, magazines and whatever else I could discover to read. There were no books at home. The word ‘book’ meant something in print which was not a newspaper, and until I was old enough to trundle off to a library, I was very dependent on whatever came into the house – if anything. Holidays were a trial of a different kind – being looked after by the woman with whom my hard-working mother had found lodgings for us. Along with the other few children around I used to escape into the nearest park for as much a part of a day as was possible.

At my first school, there was an outstanding teacher, Mrs Matthews, who introduced us to just about everything. We learned to read aloud, which was essential to getting to grips with a text; and we learned a lot ‘by heart’. Learning to use pen and ink was predictably a disaster – scratchy pens, ink wells and blotting paper, with (later) fountain pens only a little better. This was years before the invention or accessibility of biros, let alone the big fat variety which I could get a hold on that made it easier to write. Piano lessons, school singing sessions, and some beginners’ dancing lessons triggered my intense enjoyment of the ‘performing arts’. ‘Art’ was in short supply, apart from hours spent colouring ‘doilies’ with coloured pencils, but I loved the art lessons at my next school, in Oldham, Lancashire.

I managed to pass the entrance examination to that school, which was two bus-rides away in each direction (but we had a hot meal in the middle of the day). One feature of the entrance examination was reading aloud from Johanna Spyri’s Heidi (I even managed to pronounce the names of the goats!). Those of us beginning school in the new arrivals class had to take turns to read aloud from Scripture in morning assembly. We always had good teachers of history, and somewhere along the line I latched on to the importance of learning what had happened in Europe in the previous two centuries, appalling though it was. One consequence of this was that I have always been interested in ‘context’ when trying to understand ‘theology’; that is, I need to know why a topic fascinates someone, where they came from, what was happening in their country.

In the main school, there was always a selection process for reading at a Carol Service, and there were competitions (which I never entered) at junior and senior level for prizes for reading aloud. If there is one skill I learned which could be transferred to just about anywhere – including, eventually, giving lectures or papers, or reading a ‘lesson’, or delivering my own sermons – it was that of getting used to my own voice in a formal setting. This was invaluable. Some of the formal settings (cathedrals) in which I learned to read out loud were huge! The school had an interest in how we read, for if we were to progress beyond the age of eighteen it was likely that it would be helpful for us to shed our Lancashire accents in public, so we gradually learned to do so. Moreover, I had a ‘star’ for my first essay in Nature Study, an essay about ‘The Mole’, so I was beginning to learn to write short pieces as well.

My school was a ‘direct grant’ grammar school for girls, in the days when there were far fewer such places for girls than there were for boys. The uniform was hideous; track suits were unheard of, so we were turned out to play ball games (at which I was hopeless) in bitter weather wearing our indoor clothes. Our exit aired the classrooms. Unlike home they were at least warm, and in some places there were hot pipes on which we could gratefully sit, so we could thaw out during the next lesson. Back in class, I spent a lot of time reading ahead under cover of my desk.

Many of the teachers lived close to the school, and when retired were always invited back to school events, which gave me an initial glimpse of the importance of ‘community’ which had nothing to do with ‘church’. We could have piano lessons, which I took right the way through school, becoming a fast ‘sight reader’, and learned to cope with nerves for in-school ‘recitals’ of what we had learned during a term. We had an outstanding teacher of music, Mr Noel Walton, brother of the orchestral composer Sir William, so we heard piano transcriptions of the latter’s music on many occasions.

I hoped to study music beyond school, not least to have singing lessons, but succumbed both to discouragement (‘You can’t make a living from music!’) and the sheer difficulty of finding teachers at university and in my first years of being a school teacher myself. So singing in choirs, when possible, became my ‘practice’, and experiencing music in churches and cathedrals generated in me a sense of ‘transcendence’ and indeed made worship possible. When I managed to take up dance lessons again (both ‘classical’ ballet, and ‘Graham technique’, learned on ‘summer schools’ which became holidays and where friendships grew), I found having done so much music and being able to sing a melody simply invaluable. This was also the case when I qualified to teach ballet. I was hopeless at teaching young children, and best with teenagers and with adults – not least adult beginners.

We also had an extraordinary person teaching Scripture: Miss G. P. Pestle, who had two brothers who had read Theology at University College, Durham (‘The Castle’) in preparation for ordination. Miss Pestle was strangely dressed, and taught in a way particular to herself, but somehow we learned that she was profoundly compassionate, not least to animals. I loved the ‘First’ Testament, which somehow was connected to my Jewish friends in school (these friends did not attend morning assembly, which, as it happened, was minimally ‘Christian’ so far as I recall). Shalmaneser, Tig-Lath Pileser (or ‘Pul’), the Rabshakeh, and others all helped to focus my attention onto the map of the ‘Middle East’, and to the interplay of ancient empires. I was also fascinated by the Gospels, but apart from the maps o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. A theology of social concern learned from schooling
• 2. University teachers outside as well as inside formal teaching
• 3. The limitations of any ‘systematic’ theology; theodicy and abuse
• 4. Prejudice and feminist theology in the university
• 5. The arts and new moves in Theology
• Ann Loades: Curriculum Vitae
• Select Recent Writings