A. E. Harvey - Drawn Three Ways: Memoir of a Ministry, a Profession, and a Marriage

Drawn Three Ways

Memoir of a Ministry,
a Profession,
and a Marriage

A. E. Harvey

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Grand Rapids, Michigan

2016 A. E. Harvey
All rights reserved
Published 2016 by
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Harvey, A. E. (Anthony Ernest), author.
Title: Drawn three ways: memoir of a ministry,
a profession, and a marriage / Anthony Harvey.
Description: Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015050828 | ISBN 9780802873323 (pbk.)
eISBN 9781467445252 (ePub)
eISBN 9781467444781 (Kindle)
Subjects: LCSH: Harvey, A. E. (Anthony Ernest). |
Church of England Clergy Biography. |
Theologians Great Britain Biography.
Classification: LCC BX5199.H367 A3 2016 | DDC 283.092 dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050828

www.eerdmans.com

Contents

A nthony Harvey has been, in a variety of quiet but deeply effective ways, a profound influence in the life of the Church of England. As a scholar, a teacher of ordination candidates and many others, a writer who has illuminated biblical topics and connected them with current theological concerns, and a pastor of acute sensitivity, he has helped to form generations of intelligent clergy and engaged laypeople. He shows clearly that an academic ministry is anything but a detached one. An abiding and articulate care for the forgotten and neglected, for migrants and detainees, for those struggling with poverty in central Africa and those struggling with inflexible religious institutionalism nearer home, has been a constant thread in his ministry. From his involvement in the groundbreaking report Faith in the City and its implementation in the 1980s to more recent interventions in national and international issues, he has maintained a resolute independence and moral clarity, at the service of those who are most inconvenient to tidy-minded and nervous authorities.

This moving and unpretentious memoir charts a journey of education in faith, not least through times of deep challenge in personal life. It shows us a scholar always willing to put the resources of a remarkable learning at the disposal of the Christian community. His life story is a testimony to a style of Anglican identity that seems in some danger of being eclipsed these days intelligently critical, sharply aware of the contradictions of being a minister of the gospel at the heart of establishment (canons of Westminster are not exactly marginal people, but they are in a remarkably good position to offer space for the marginal to speak and be visible), absorbed in the creative business of allowing Scripture to speak in a complex social environment without resorting to intellectual or imaginative shortcuts. It is a timely picture of what the Church of England can still be at its best.

But the weight and force of the book come from his honesty in charting triumphs and failures alike, with clarity and without self-pity or self-dramatizing. This is not only the record of a theological career, but a genuine confession of faith. It has the capacity to rekindle faith in the theological vocation in the fullest sense of the word theological, and to renew a confidence in the possibility of interweaving human honesty and Christian depth. It is a timely book and I feel privileged to have read it.

Rowan Williams

I have often been asked in recent years whether I would think of writing an account of my life, particularly of my time at Westminster Abbey, where I was canon and sub-dean for seventeen years and certainly witnessed and participated in occasions that are worth recording from the point of view of a privileged observer and participant. But I doubted whether the rest of my life held sufficient interest to any but my friends and family to be worth submitting to a wider readership. When I began to reflect on it, I found that the various and varied phases of my journey teaching and research in a university, training clergy, carrying out pastoral duties were held together by a number of influences and motivations that were worth exploring in their own right, and that my abilities and my character as well as my faith, which I sense has evolved from that of a stoic Christian to that of a Christian Stoic had developed over time in ways that might be interesting to others outside my immediate circle. And there was a further motive. I had married Julian, a person of remarkable talents, including a gift for vivid prose and evocative poetry, some of which I longed to make available to a larger public. It seemed that a record of my own life might provide a framework within which some examples of her work could be made known. Accordingly I have sought to integrate these elements in a narrative of our life together.

I was fortunate to receive advice and acute criticism from Marge Clouts, a person of long experience and expert literary judgment. Without her encouragement the book might never have been completed. To her I owe profound gratitude. But she carries, of course, no responsibility for any errors of judgment and taste that the book may contain. I am also deeply grateful to my family and friends who have given me loyal support on my journey along the three ways that I felt drawn to follow, and have striven to combine, during the greater part of my life.

Anthony Harvey
January 2016

1944-48Eton College

1944-49Conservatoire Royale de Musique, Brussels

194953Worcester College, Oxford

195355Munich

195556Talks Producer, BBC

195658Westcott House, Cambridge

1957Marriage

1958Ordination

195862Curate, Christ Church, Chelsea

196269Research Student (Fellow), Christ Church, Oxford

196667Jerusalem

196976Warden, St. Augustines College, Canterbury

197682University Lecturer in Theology and Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford

197782Chaplain, The Queens College, Oxford

198299Canon Theologian, Sub-Dean, and Librarian, Westminster Abbey

1999Retirement to Willersey, Gloucestershire

2000Visit to El Salvador

2003, 2007Visits to Democratic Republic of Congo

2008Death of third daughter Christian

2012Julian admitted to care home

2015Death of Julian

W hen I was at Oxford as an undergraduate around 1951 I had a tutor for ancient history who was, even by the standards of the day, unusual. Each student was obliged to arrive precisely on the hour, neither earlier nor later. As the clock struck, one knocked at the door and was invited to come in by a voice that seemed to come from some inner room, where perhaps a cup of coffee had been brewing. After sitting down and reading out ones weekly essay one was asked to go and sit at a small table and take down the tutors words verbatim. So I found myself obediently writing such sentences as, The weakness of Mr. Harveys argument is... His eccentricities extended even to delivering his lectures at dictation speed, such was his distrust of the ability of undergraduates to take correct notes of his carefully weighed historical judgments. Yet he was a highly respected ancient historian and in many ways an excellent tutor. On one occasion I had come up with what I thought was an ingenious theory, suggesting that Thucydides had been mistaken in his account of a certain battle and that I could work out myself what had really happened. You know, Mr. Harvey, he said with a sardonic smile, if you tear up the only evidence we have you can say anything you like, and it wont be worth saying. He then looked at me over his spectacles and remarked, not unkindly, I suppose, Mr. Harvey, you are really just a gifted amateur. The phrase stuck in my mind, and my life has not belied it. It has been one of the threads woven into the texture of my career as an academic theologian, a priest of the Church of England, and an occasional contributor to public discussion of ethical and political issues.