A Collegiate Way of Life at Baylor University

With Scott Moore and Barry Harvey I left Oxford yesterday morning for Victoria Station, London. We checked our bags at a nearby hotel and then went by train to Canterbury. Some months ago Scott proposed a pilgrimage on our final day before returning, following in the steps of those countless Christians from days of old to the present who have journeyed to the great cathedral.

Canterbury is a clearly identifiable medieval town. From the station at Canterbury East, we walked along the ancient defensive wall to the village, and along the main street lined with quaint shops and flats–too overrun with global, corporate franchises like the ubiquitous Burger Kings and McDonalds, but still bearing resolute witness to the days of old. Turning down an alley that led straightway to the cathedral gate, we were met with a vision of one of the great places of Christian worship in the world.

Though Scott regards Canterbury as his favorite cathedral the world around, and though I am in awe of its majestic witness to human longing for the God who has visited us in Jesus Christ Incarnate, I maintained that St. Peter’s in Rome holds pride of place. I detected mild disappointment in Scott that Canterbury was less than supreme in my estimation, but I must hasten to say that it is virtually indescribable in its beauty. Its sweeping gothic lines, its sacred memorializing of Becket and Anselm, its angelic choirs with voices reverberating from end to end, its sightless heights–such as these qualities mark it wondrous in the Christian world.

How many penitents it has held over the centuries, how many earnest prayers have been directed to God, how many faithful acts of obedient Christian discipleship have been practiced, how many words of pastoral counsel heard and received–thanks be to God!

During an evening in London we took the tube to Leicester Square, then walked to the raucous evening life of Covent Garden. Street performers of varied ability, a carousel, and shops and stores clamored for the attention of the throngs of people there. After the finest meal of my week abroad, at an Indian-Bangladeshi restaurant, we walked to Charing Cross, visited a few bookstores, toured the area southwards to the river Thames, and walked across and back on the Golden Jubilee bridge, from which we saw London at night in one direction to the Houses of Parliament and in the other to St. Paul’s Cathedral–a perfect way to commemorate our last evening in London.

My heart is set on home now. I write aboard the plane; we have taken off and are pointed westward toward the New World where loved ones wait for me. To embrace wife and child, hold them close, hear them and bear them along with me in and through all of life’s joys, and also to keep them from all the world’s pains when they come–these goods of life together draw me homeward.

High among the lessons underscored anew during these last days is the imperative to conform my life to disciplines and practices of Christian faith, the ones attested to by millennia of well-ordered, time-tested, biblically-shaped, and ecclesially-based tradition. Christians are made, not born, and however much I know and assent to this, to observe the divine offices each day within our household, to note the saints’ days and holy days of the liturgical year, to hold in my heart the creeds, confessions, hymns, and prayers that have buoyed the sinking souls of the faithful through the years, and to know these things amidst friends and families–my own included–must occupy my attention. I have long thought of the need to follow a new, more serious way of discipleship. I have oft wanted to speak with Michele in earnest of it, but ’til now I have not. Delay no longer. “Choose ye this day whom ye shall serve,” the Lord says. Insofar as such choosing takes place each day, and inasmuch as the resources of the Christian tradition enable just that, so must I give the tradition that is mine the wholeness of my devotion.

Gentle, cooling rains, accompanied by a few flashes of lightning and restrained peals of thunder, made sleeping last night almost pleasant. The summer heat has been virtually unbearable, and all of us have found ourselves struggling to stay comfortable. So warm, humid, and sticky has it been, with a near universal absence of air conditioning, that a few jokes have passed around the dinner table about whether we are in Oxford, Mississippi and not Oxford, England. To have a few days of rain and the wafts of refreshing air blowing through the window on the quad was wonderful. And though I do not doubt the capacity of the British thunderstorm to let loose on occasion with destructive intensity, yesterday’s evening storm was fully in character with every stereotype of the British people–proper, refined, and altogether repressed by the canons of decency and politeness.

I spent a portion of the afternoon yesterday with friends touring Magdalen College, the great fifteenth century institution known for both Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Thomas More, along with Wm. Tyndale, Thomas Hobbes, and of course C.S. Lewis, among the most famous of the college’s fellows. Magdalen is remarkable for its wealth, and for its concomitant spaciousness and relative opulence. With its soaring, solid tower, from which Charles I defended himself against his besieging countrymen, its ornate chapel, and its spread of adjoining buildings around the deer park, the contrast with Regent’s Park College could hardly be sharper. Other Oxford colleges surpass Magdalen in various singular respects, but I doubt any of them are grander taken altogether. Still, it is strikingly apparent that, however far separated in terms of resource Regent’s Park and the likes of Magdalen may be, the basic physical arrangements of the Oxford College are what serve as the animating principle of its success. Life together in community, joined in by those committed to finding truth, and enabled by the shared practices of prayer, table fellowship, study, and close conversation, among others.

Our seminar discussions are going generally well each day, occupying the better part of the mornings. The theme set for the meeting, by my design when we crafted the call for papers last year, was organized around the question of what Baptists have to learn from and to contribute to the longer, larger Christian tradition. As it turned out, a solid core of our participants ended up drawn from the authors of the so-called Baptist Manifesto: Curtis Freeman, Barry Harvey, and Elizabeth Newman, among other later signatories–Mark Medley, Philip Thompson, and Scott Moore. Here we have an exceptional group of faithful thinkers committed to Christian catholicity, and to the common cause in which they are joined. . . .

I spoke to Michele by phone for the first time last night since leaving Waco on Saturday. The phone had 3:28 of time left on it when I started the call, so our conversation was hurried and brief. How sweet to hear her voice, to know that she and Zachary are well, and that my daily prayers for God’s peace and protection have been answered.

Regent’s Park College must number among the poorest of the Oxford colleges. Tucked away on the northeast side of the central portion of the city, it is unlikely that many passers-by identify it without a marked map in hand. Its plain facade has no grand portal and only the most obscure of signage, with a small college shield, near the entrance to name it. The small interior quad has some plain and very modest efforts at a garden. The hall of course features the ubiquitous Oxfordian high table, but the space itself is marked by a conspicuous penury, a testament to the constraints and marginal status of the nonconformist Baptists that sponsor the college, perhaps. The ceiling is wood-paneled, but with a stained plywood, so it appears, rather than with a richer hardwood as might be found in other college halls. My own quarters, in room ten on the second floor of the north wing, are those occupied by students of the college in term, and they are Spartan by any standard, though certainly adequate for my needs. For all of its lack of architectural fanfare, it can claim among its heroes such noteworthy Baptists as Thomas Helwys, for whom the great hall is named, and William Carey, whose name is found alongside Helwys’.

Yesterday offered an occasion for bookshopping, first at Jericho Books a few blocks away, by myself, and then later at St. Stephen’s across from Christ Church with Barry Harvey, Mark Medley (Campbellsville, KY), and Kyle Childress (Nacodoches, TX). At Jericho I purchased Burnett’s Early Greek Philosophy and Merton’s Waters of Silence. At St. Stephen’s I purchased a couple of volumes about Newman and the Tractarians.

There’s more to write, but Scott Moore has arrived from a conference in Dresden; he will be here, in RPC, for the rest of the week’s seminar.