The Southwark Ordination Course: 2023, celebrating 60 years
THIS PAGE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION - but in the meantime, the reason for this page is that I trained on SOC (1986-1989). I hope to make some notes about the experience of part-time training. If you are a SOC student, please get in touch (see footer).
I was recently asked for some comments about the Southwark Ordination Course (SOC) and my experience of it. I was a student between 1986-1989. These are not polished comments, and are largely as I emailed them to my enquirer.
Resources and links
I was recently asked for some comments about the Southwark Ordination Course (SOC) and my experience of it. I was a student between 1986-1989. These are not polished comments, and are largely as I emailed them to my enquirer.
- The context is (as it always is) relevant: there had been to-ing an fro-ing on the question of voluntary clergy from the days of Roland Allen. Nothing much had happened; there was much defensive caution, linked to views of the (male) priesthood being made up of learned gentleman and professionals. Bringing in working men was resisted for reasons both made explicit and kept private. It is, of course, how professions tend to behave. There were two drivers: more clergy were needed in parishes, and some concern that the church was not doing enough to engage the working classes.
- Trevor Huddleston (Bp of Stepney), John Robinson (Bp of Woolwich) and A N Other (I forget the name) explored local schemes to ordain working class men to operate locally, and to help (re) connect with working class people. Mervyn Stockwood (the Bp of Southwark, a flamboyant character and reportedly not one always to follow proper processes) went ahead with plans for SOC.
- It is easy to romanticise the past. Looking back (I was a SOC ordinand 1986-1989, aged 30-33) I thought it rather tame. In other words, I recall hardly any radical thinking or teaching. I suppose that SOC was keen to be considered on a par with residential theological colleges. I understand that. Tame it may have been, but I greatly valued it, and not least because of the way it placed my own formation in the midst of my daily wage-earning (inner city social work). The trendy term is 'contextual theology' but I don't recall getting any course-related help in this, and pursued it as a private, parallel exploration.
- The staff group of three (Principal, Registrar and Director of Studies) were supportive and encouraging. Some of the lecturers were fairly well known, though not always engaging. Others were what I'd call rather churchy. Most of us would have been described as that stage as middle class, whatever our family origins. I saw no evidence of the expressed wish (Stockwood I think, among others) to bring in working class people really happening. I'm not surprised, and there is evidence that such plans nearly always founder (The RC has always been better at this, I think).
- Courses like SOC - for which I am hugely thankful and appreciative - are limited by the nature of ordinand supply. And it seems to me that many biases operate within selection processes from local parish, via DDOs, to selection conferences and episcopal style, etc. Maybe, the CofE is irredeemably middle class in many ways. (An interesting exception in theological training Kelham, in Nottinghamshire, aimed at training working class men for ministry: Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh, writes about this in his autobiography. Kelham closed many years ago). In summary, my own view is that SOC did not represent anything radical, save in offering older men and women (30+) a route into ministerial training whilst continuing in so-called secular work.
- You might think that the following point is unwarranted (though I hope your obvious admiration of your XXXX's ministry might see what I am getting at): the French priest-worker experiment was theologically driven and transgressive of established models. The CofE can't much manage that, despite what it may say. I rather think that SOC and those courses that followed it, were principally concerned with the inculcation and transmission of dominate ecclesiastical and theological mindsets. This seems to include a focus on the parish, an interest in clerical status and ambition, and being thought of as a 'sound fellow' - of whatever sex.
Resources and links
- A HISTORY OF THE REGIONAL THEOLOGICAL COURSES and an Evaluation of their Effectiveness in the Initial Training of the Clergy of the Church of England by J J W Edmondson, 2003. The SOC features in this. PDF download — rather large at c18MB
- WANTED - A NEW TYPE OF PRIEST
A flyer promoting the Southwark Ordintion Course. Exact date unknown - perhaps the 1970s. - BISHOP JOHN ROBINSON'S SERMON at the tenth anniversary of SOC
- A letter from the Bishop of Woolwich in which he mentions SOC, and report on the 1961 SOC Summer School, in the Southwark Diocesan Leaflet, September 1961 ("Circulation over 57,000").
Canon Eric James, writing in 1986, gives [...] details concerning the vision for the founding of the Course, and also an even more cutting criticism:
"The goals of S.O.C. - in no order of priority - were to do something about:
(1) The crisis in ordained manpower which loomed ahead.
(2) The financial crisis which was likely to make it impossible for at least some dioceses to have all the paid full-time ordained manpower they might want.
(3) The class-structure of the ordained ministry - which undoubtedly played a considerable part in the failure of the
Mission of the Church of England to the whole of society.
(4) The unscriptural separation between ordained and lay ministry.
(5) The serious ignoring of women's ministry.
(6) The divisions of the Church manifested in the training of clergy of the C of E. by themselves.
(7) A model of "recruitment" for ordained ministry which tended to wait for individuals to perceive their vocation rather than the other New Testament model of the local church taking thought as to how it should raise up local ministry.
(8) The failure to make use of secular work experience and the context of work and home as the raw material of theological
thinking.
Eric James, 1986