It is funny how anniversaries creep up on you. It is twenty years ago this week since I went to read theology at the University of St Andrews. I can remember Freshers’ Week very clearly all these years later. Inevitably, some of those whom I met in the first few days there, I have lost touch with, but some of those I met very early on in that experience have proved to be friends for life.
Going to study at St Mary’s College in St Andrews changed me more than almost anything else that I’ve done. It was whilst I was there that I joined the Episcopal Church and became an Anglican, after carefully shopping around looking at the alternatives. My three years there also taught me to think clearly for myself, and I don’t think you can ask more from a unversity experience than that.
Theology at St Andrews in those days was a little different to how it is now, I think. It was generally a liberal, progressive, enquiring theology that was being laid in front of us. It was a common experience for people like me who came with fairly conservative theological presumptions to go through an experience of feeling a little lost for a while. All that one thought was open to question. Eventually, most of us managed to reconstruct ways of thinking, living and being out of the building blocks that the course offered. That experience for me was total. It was life-changing.
I’m grateful to those who taught me and those who experienced it with me. I wish I knew where to recommend to people to have the same experience now.
Sadly, I just don’t know.
Leave a Reply