a junior delegate and had little to add to the discussion, but I listened to some of the most progressive and articulate political leaders at the time, both black and white. More than ever before, I became aware of the gaps in my political knowledge. There were some senior church leaders present whom I would later get to know well, including Catholic Archbishop Denis Hurley, and the Presbyterian minister Calvin Cook, whose intellectual stature I soon came to admire.
Other defining experiences were the two visits I made to Chief Albert Luthuli, the former president of the ANC, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and a deacon in the Groutville Congregational Church. Luthuli was already banned and confined to his magisterial district. My first visit was in February 1962, and the second a few months later. I still have a photograph of Luthuli standing alongside my bright-red VW Beetle outside his home. His book Let My People Go, which I was reading at the time, was a life-changer. But try as I then did to encourage other white ministers to read it, I failed. To them, Luthuli was a communist. I suspect they thought I was one as well.
I was happy in my work in the congregation, and gladly accepted the extra responsibility of a new extension charge in New Forest about eight kilometres away. Preaching at least twice on Sundays was a challenge, but a good discipline. I enjoyed confirmation classes and Bible study groups, but pastoral care was a burden. What could I say to the parents of a five-year-old boy who was killed by a drunken driver while crossing the road near our church? How was I to counsel the teenage daughter whose parents thought she should seek an illegal abortion? How could I help a victim of polio and another of bilharzia, who asked me to pray for their healing? Little of what I had learnt as a theological student equipped me for such tasks. Today there are internships, continuing education programmes, and other support or mentoring structures. I am sure some senior ministers wondered whether I would go the distance.
Perhaps it was my pastoral inadequacy that led me to think about further study – largely as a distraction. As my BD was the equivalent of a master’s degree, I registered for a PhD at the University of Natal. And, because my congregation was located in an area with a large Indian population, I decided to explore the growing dialogue between Christianity and Hinduism. Professor Alfred Rooks in the Department of Theology suggested that I begin by reading the writings of Sarvepalli Radhakrishna, the well-respected Hindu Oxford philosopher of religion. This I did, and began to have occasional conversations with swamis in local ashrams and priests in nearby temples. None of this held much promise for my work as a pastor, though, nor did I feel equipped to pursue research at the required level.
In my second year at Sea View, I applied for and received a World Council of Churches (WCC) scholarship to study at Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS), which was then linked to the University of Chicago. WCC scholarships were not intended to further academic careers, but to widen horizons and change perspectives. I looked forward to that, but in preparation for a PhD, I hoped to focus on Christianity and World Religions – a subject well catered for in the Divinity School at the university.
My congregation gave me a year’s leave of absence, and we promised to return. So we made preparations to leave Durban for Chicago – a city associated in our minds with Al Capone, corrupt politicians, and a bloody massacre at a barber shop on St. Valentine’s Day.
5
Chicago, Chicago!
Departure and arrival, the path and the goal, all are part of the adventure, and if you leave on such a journey, you will return as a different person.
(Christopher Engels)9
In July 1963, Isobel, Stephen (now twenty-one months old) and I set off on the Southern Cross for Southampton. We crossed the equator – Stephen and I for the first time – and I was ceremoniously dunked into a tub of water. Stephen spent much time in the crèche, but when on deck he would occasionally break free from my grip and, to my horror, run to the railings. I came second in the table tennis tournament, led an evening service at the request of the captain and, on a more sombre note, conducted two funerals – one that of a New Zealand diplomat. We called in at Las Palmas, one of the Canary Islands, and spent an interesting day exploring its mountainous interior.
Once we had arrived England, we stayed some days with friends in London. Visiting the city’s well-known tourist sites (usually with Stephen in tow) was exciting, despite the rain. We then toured the Oxfordshire countryside in a small Morris Minor station wagon, cooking our meals on a gas cooker perched on the lowered back door of the car, again in the rain. We visited Cornwall and Isobel’s relations whom she had last seen when she was twelve. This was her ancestral home and remains close to her heart.
We crossed the Atlantic on the old Queen Mary, deep in the bowels of steerage class. En route we experienced an Atlantic storm, and generally had a dismal time in a tiny cabin whose single light went off the moment we closed the door. But apart from seeing the iconic Table Mountain in the distance as you arrive in Cape Town, few things can compare to arriving in New York for the first time by sea. After disembarking, we sat on the quayside with our luggage for several hours, having no idea as to how we would get from there to Chicago. Leaving our trunks in the care of officials who promised to rail them to us (the trunks arrived three weeks later), we took a cab to a dodgy downtown hotel where we spent the night. The next day, a South African student friend who was studying at Union Theological Seminary, Bob Hammerton-Kelly, introduced us to Union and helped us catch an overnight train to Chicago.
We were met at Chicago Central Station by Jo Davis, a warm and generous staff member at CTS, and were soon settled into our apartment in Hyde Park on Kimbark Avenue. The house, which we shared with three other families, had once been the residence of the philosopher-educationalist John Dewey, whose famous experimental school was across the road. The University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Chapel towered close by. It was all invigorating and exciting.
I registered for a one-year Master of Theology (MTh), which required a dissertation and six semester courses, at least two of which had to be taken at the university. I did courses in Constructive Theology, Cultural Anthropology, Social Psychology, and one on the Ministry of the Laity. I also did a course on Ministry to the Mentally Ill, and an experimental course in Leadership Sensitivity Training. I learnt much from this eclectic assortment of courses, but ached to do some “serious” theological study. Therefore, I attended as many additional lectures a possible. These included a series by the French philosopher Paul Ricœur on Hermeneutics, and a weekly seminar by Paul Tillich on his major works. I also learnt much from Franklin Littell, a noted Methodist historian, about the German church struggle. In January 1964, I was a delegate at the Ecumenical Student Conference held in Athens, Ohio, where I heard daily lectures by the Yale church historian Roland Bainton, and the Russian Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann. Most importantly, it was in Chicago that my interest in Bonhoeffer began in earnest.
Two things accounted for this interest: Firstly, on the boat from Durban to Southampton, I read Honest to God (a media sensation at the time) by John Robinson, the Anglican bishop of Woolwich. Robinson, who years later visited us in Cape Town, drew somewhat randomly on Bonhoeffer’s theological ideas in his letters from prison. I had read these before as part of a ministers’ study group in Durban, but only now did I begin to glimpse their possible implications. Robinson visited Chicago while we were there, and I heard him lecture, as well as give a seminar on Honest to God. At the latter, Tillich made the comment that, while Robinson might not have fully understood Barth, Bultmann and Bonhoeffer, he had certainly understood him and his books were now selling better than ever before.
The second and most important reason for my interest in Bonhoeffer, was the fact that Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer’s close friend and biographer, had given the Alden-Tuthill lectures on “The Challenge of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life and Theology” at the seminary in 1961. I soon devoured these, and discovered what I really wanted to do. There were no courses on Bonhoeffer, but I made a special study of his doctoral dissertation, Sanctorum Communio, which became a major source for writing my own dissertation under
