Howard Oliver
Profile
How does Dr Howard Oliver, a scientist and life-long church member, conceive of God? This question was uppermost in my mind when I interviewed him for the newsletter. Despite his characteristic reticence, Howard was very ready to explain. But first things first …
Born in 1947, Howard grew up in Oxford, where his father worked in radiotherapy and medical physics. From the Oxford Boys’ Grammar School, Howard went to Keble College to read physics (1965–68), and from there to Reading University to study for an MSc in Meteorology. Two major events took place in his life in 1969: he married Sylvia, a fellow Oxford physicist; and he began working for the Natural Environment Research Council at the Institute of Hydrology, Wallingford, where he was to remain employed until he took early retirement in 2001. His work entailed research on the water cycle (studying rainfall, evaporation, and river flow) and its application to the solution of water-balance problems in the UK and overseas: he advised governments of developing countries on these matters. He was awarded an external PhD in meteorology by Reading University in 1974.
Howard is now a supernumerary fellow and lecturer in physical geography at Harris Manchester College; senior research associate and lecturer in climatology at the University’s School of Geography; and an advisory fellow at the Wytham Environmental Change Network laboratory just outside Oxford. He is enjoying the freedom to pursue his interests in historical meteorology: he researches and lectures on a range of fascinating topics, including the role of weather in war (from Caesar’s invasions to the D-Day landings); the depiction of weather in art (for example, the cloudscapes of John Constable, whom he describes as a good meteorologist); and ‘dissenting meteorology’: the achievements of Quaker and Unitarian natural scientists such as John Dalton, who taught at Manchester Academy in the 1790s.
Howard’s semi-retirement allows him to see more of his family: daughter Hazel, who is a solicitor in London, son Peter, a biochemist in Oxford, and his one-year-old granddaughter. He enjoys photography and watching birds in their natural context, especially on the coasts of Norfolk and Dorset. And he gets pleasure from growing organic vegetables on his allotment – and eating them.
Howard’s personal concern for the natural environment is evident in the occasional services that he leads on Sunday mornings in our chapel. His services are unique in their blending of ecological and spiritual elements. So what is his religious background? He was brought up as a Methodist and remained active in the denomination until the late 1970s, serving as Sunday School Superintendent at the church in Chalgrove. But he began to have doubts about the exclusive monopoly on the truth that is claimed by the standard Christian doctrines. Under the influence of Don Cupitt and the Sea of Faith movement, he began to explore new religious ideas. When he tried the services at Manchester College, led by Revd. Bruce Findlow, he felt comfortable with the Unitarians’ spirit of enquiry and lack of dogma, and decided to stay. (Subsequently he learned that his paternal grandfather had been a Unitarian in Northampton.) His mother, still an active Methodist, attends our services occasionally, especially when Howard is preaching.
And what is his concept of the divine? In reply to my question, Howard describes his sense of an all-powerful presence or force permeating the world – and it is not just a concept, he says: for him it is a perceived reality. He quotes some words of John Burroughs from a book entitled Accepting the Universe (1920), which begin Bruce Findlow’s liturgy of ordered meditation, used by Howard whenever he conducts services in our chapel:
"God is the fact of the fact, the life of the life, the soul of the soul, the incomprehensible, the sum of all contradictions, the unity of all diversity. God cannot be seen, but by God all seeing comes; cannot be heard, but by God all hearing comes. Turn your back upon God and you turn your back upon gravity, upon air, upon light. God is not a being, yet apart from God there is no being – there is no apart from God." Catherine Robinson November 2004