People
have asked me where I got my love for reading, and in particular wrestling with
the Scriptures from. Often the question is asked because of the working class
background that I come from; indeed I remember at one interview a University
Vice-Chancellor looking down through her spectacles, which were perched on the
end of her nose, asked, ‘were you an unusual child, Dr Ellis?’
The
Vice-Chancellor had made the assumption that working class children did not
read, and here was I with a New Testament doctorate challenging her
assumptions. Tim Chester makes the following point: ‘many working-class people
love to read. There is a long history of self-improvement through literacy
among working-class people, which finds expression in workers’ libraries and
organizations like the Workers’ Education Association’.[1]
Specifically within the UK, there has been, (or was), a long history of
education being a means of escape from a life of relatively low-aspiration.
To
answer the first question about a love for reading, you will have to come with
me to Hillfoot School in Sheffield, to a reception class. A rather shy
white-haired boy sat on the carpet with Joanne, Craig and Glynn and 15 others.
Mrs Dahlek spoke softly, and asked what she had written on the blackboard. Only
two of the class knew; I never knew that Kevin was spelt that way. I did not
know it probably could be captured and put down like that I did not know that I
could not read. I was after all 4. But that moment did give me a real desire to
learn to decipher squiggles on a page; and my love for reading began to take
shape.
The
second about the love for the Bible is a little more complex. I was nurtured in
the Christian faith at Parkwood Springs Primitive Chapel and then at St James
and St Christopher’s Shiregreen. I am not sure either place had a particular
focus on the Bible; although having said that I do remember stories being told
by Miss Lovell, the Sunday School Superintendent, and still remember the
particular timbre in her voice as she told them. I also remember how deeply
intertwined both Christian communities were in their local communities, from
running Boys Brigades and Scout Troops, Walks of Witness (May Queen festivals
combined with Pentecost) and Lunch Clubs, which provided food for the elderly
and work experience for those with learning disabilities. Therefore if it is
true that for most people the only Bible they encounter is the lived witness of
a Christian community, then what these local expressions of faith taught was a
story of inclusion, generosity, laughter and gritty determination. These sit
cheek by jowl with petty power politics, child-like squabbles and a resolve to
exclude people who did not quite fit. Churches in urban areas, like those in
sub-urban, rural and inner city, are usually an accurate reflection of the
communities that surround them. They are often people with broken lives attempting
to live life differently. It is my experience that the overarching story of the
Bible can provide some scaffolding to help people to do just that.
St
James and St Christopher’s Church, Shiregreen was a typical urban estate Parish
Church. Even now, I cannot say for definite which particular tribe of English
Anglicanism it fits into. During my childhood and teenage years, it oscillated
between central catholic, intellectual liberal and open evangelical depending
who the vicar was at the time. each incumbent introduced different things: more
smells than bells, Christian Aid week that seemed to last for longer than seven
days, proving the truth of the fact God’s time is different to ours and the ‘gentle’
charismatic traditions of John Wimber. For me though it all represented what
Christianity was. It was the heady days before I discovered Christianity was
tribal, surely all Christianity was Shiregreen shaped. Of course, I observed
adults behaving squabbling apparently like petulant toddlers over what they did
and did not like. Nobody seemed to quote from Scripture.
The
Scriptures were read in a particular tone. Everyone flat lined as they read
‘the Lesson’. We were schooled, each one of us, by Henry Cooper (not that one),
who had been Church warden as he said ‘since Noah was a lad’. Henry was the one
who got the Bible out, who placed in on the reading desk, and made sure it was
open at the right page. I was allowed to read as part of the Scout Parade.
Those who were not good enough to read because they had not served their time
in the church or could not read in Henry’s way were not allowed to do so. The
Bible was the warden’s personal fiefdom.
It
was however at the age of 14, discovering that I was not allowed to go to a bible
study group because I did not have ‘a proper adult faith’ and ‘could not be
expected to understand the Bible’ that stimulated my curiosity and desire to
know more about my faith. In retrospect the vicar who said I could not join in
did me a favour; teenagers, then as now, are only too willing to prove people
wrong.
It
was through participation in youth groups at neighbouring churches, where I
encountered others of similar age, wrestling with the story of Jesus as told by
Luke for A level RE, and two years with the London City Mission (LCM) that
fuelled my desire to get to grips with the Christian Scriptures.
It
was in the LCM base on Old Jamaica Road in Bermondsey that I encountered the
idea of reading the Scriptures every day. It had, I think, never occurred to me
before. There is a story of my arrival at LCM that is worth telling because it
is, or was, illustrative of aspiration on a housing estate. I blew my ‘A’
levels the first time around. It was my fault; if you are up all night working
for Mission Sheffield before you take them, then you will not usually be
switched on for exams. The second time around was different: worked hard (extra
timed essays, weekends spent in the research section of Sheffield City Library
– this was a necessity, space was needed to learn) and was absolutely focused.
In spite of this, I did not go straight to university. I did not think I was
bright enough. The school was not particularly switched on, not even a handful
of pupils went on to university. Hammond describes a ‘wall in the head’ for people
living on estates. That was true for me; so I did not apply; and when I did
eventually make an application, it was a hokey cokey moment, with it being put
in and out of the pillar box a number of times, before the application was
loaned to Her Majesty on the way to UCCA.
The
desire to learn and apply Scripture was cultivated by the leaders of the
Voluntary Evangelism Scheme. I went for two weeks, and stayed for over two
years. They took a chance with a shy and insecure 19 year old, and my
journeying with the Bible was about to take a dramatic turn.
The
LCM is an evangelical organisation – not that I knew what that was and meant at
the time – they were just a group of people seeking to make sense of their
faith in Jesus Christ in a late 20th Century context. We were
trained in a particular form of evangelism; and encouraged to relate the Bible
– and specifically what God might be saying through the Scriptures to those we
came into contact with.
I
was appalling naive. I was devouring the written text of the scriptures with
aplomb. I had just finished reading about the various features of Solomon’s
Temple when a little later, I knocked on Isaac’s door. He came sleepily to the
door, and explained that he had just arrived from Nigeria, so was jet lagged;
whereupon I launched into a 20 minute explanation of ‘how Solomon’s Temple
worked, and how it had been superseded by the work of Jesus on the cross’.
After, asking Isaac whether he had understood the importance of what I was
saying, and he looking a little puzzled; I repeated everything again but a
little slower; just about reaching the court of the priests when the door was
politely closed before me.
However
I also had the opportunity to work alongside an Irish missionary, whose whole
way of life who lived and breathed a form of theology of liberation. He may
never have read Mesters’ Defenseless
Flower or Rowland’s Liberating
Exegesis[2],
but he knew the stories of the Bible set people free. His work as a London City
Missionary emphasised personal salvation, but his experience of life in Ireland
meant that he could echo with ease some of narratives of the liberationists who
struggled to make sense of the Bible alongside broken and oppressed people.
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