Anniversary celebrations at Oxford’s oldest theological college

This year, Cuddesdon Theological College celebrates his 150th anniversary. Celebrations included a weekend of events, including a Eucharist led by the Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Revd Richard Harries and an address by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Both were ‘Cuddesdon men’. Bishop Richard said: ‘We are heirs of the seriousness of purpose which wanted priests wholly given over to Christ, leading to the founding of Cuddesdon 150 years ago; we are heirs of the seriousness of purpose which wanted to recognise all truth as God’s truth in a new quest for intellectual integrity, leading to the emergence of Ripon Hall.

Let us ask God for a seriousness of purpose for the future of the college in these changing times and for ourselves as we continue to share in the ministry of Christ’s Church.’ Below, Revd Dr Mark Chapman, vice-principal of the College, explains its origins.

THIS year sees the 150th anniversary of England’s oldest and probably most famous theological college in the unlikely setting of a small Oxfordshire village – it owes its existence to the great reforming Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce. By the mid-19th century he was becoming increasingly anxious about the liberalisation of Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

University Reforms meant that graduates would not be exposed either to enough theology or to the ethos and spirituality of the Church of England. He consequently set about building a College on seminary lines over the road from his palace in Cuddesdon (where he could keep his beady eye on what went on). The role of the college was to ensure that the men learnt to pray together, live together and laugh together – it was a kind of spiritual finishing school combined with a country club. It did not take long for Cuddesdon men to enter high office – it was seen by many outside as the great bishop factory, producing a variety of models for service at home and overseas.

And some were of the deluxe type including the Archbishops, Cosmo Gordon Lang and Michael Ramsey. If there was a typical twentieth-century Cuddesdon man, he was a public schoolboy, high but not too high in his religion, well-connected and capable of holding his own in the House of Lords. By the mid-60s, when Robert Runcie was principal, however, things changed rapidly – there was a sudden decline in the number of ordinands which meant things had to move on, and the student body altered equally rapidly. The church was no longer an attractive career for Oxbridge graduates and students came from increasingly diverse backgrounds. The fall in numbers overall meant that smaller or weaker colleges closed, and a number of others merged. In 1975 Ripon Hall, at Boars Hill on the other side of Oxford, joined with Cuddesdon to form Ripon College Cuddesdon. Nowadays almost all the students read for Oxford degrees in theology, something that would have been unthinkable only forty years ago, but they still attend a pattern of services that would have been familiar to Samuel Wilberforce himself.

And perhaps most crucially, since 1979 women have trained alongside the men, and more and more married students have come to the College. This means that there is no longer a typical ‘Cuddesdon man’ – for a start, almost half the numbers leaving the college in the past ten years have been women – and as yet there is certainly no typical ‘Cuddesdon woman’.

But what is important is that the distinctive blend of serious theology and serious spirituality rooted in daily prayer is not lost to the church in its desire to rationalise and centralise. As Rowan Williams writes in his foreword to the new history: ‘We can be grateful that the Church of England has been so wonderfully served; and we can strengthen our resolve to make sure that such service is still available to the Church of the future’.

Mark Chapman is author of Ambassadors of Christ, a history of Cuddesdon