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Leo Bowder
Profile
Last year, when the Chapel Committee was looking for someone to represent our congregation on the newly formed Oxford Council of Faiths (which comprises the six major religions – Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism – plus minority faiths from Ahmadi to Zoroastrian), Leo Bowder, with his Master’s degree in inter-religious relations from Birmingham University, seemed an isomorphic fit. Happily he agreed to represent us; in fact, he has since been voted on to the Steering Committee of the Council. He also represents us on the Oxford Round Table of Religions. If you have read Leo’s reviews and articles in the Chapel Society Newsletter (1) you will already know that he has explored a wide variety of faiths, possibly all of the minority religions represented on the Council, so we are fortunate to have him represent us.
However, Leo’s journey in life began in an archetypal Christian setting: he was born on Christmas Day (1974) in Liverpool, and pictures of him and all the other Christmas babies, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in baskets under a huge Christmas tree, appeared in the local press. His early upbringing was in the Church of England and the Church of Ireland. His father is an Anglican clergyman of liberal leanings, who at one point served as Chaplain to the University of Kent. Notwithstanding his multi-faith interests, Leo feels comfortable with the Unitarian services in the Manchester College chapel, with their recognisable structure so typical of traditional Christian services: prayers, readings, sermons, and, of course, hymns – albeit hymns whose tunes are familiar but whose words have changed from those that he learned in childhood.
Leo is the eldest of three boys born to an English father and a half-Irish mother. Indeed, he has spent about half of his life in Ireland. He boarded at St Columba’s School in Dublin from 1983 to 1990, returning to England when his father took the Chaplaincy post in Canterbury. He attended the King’s School and then read for a degree in English and Drama at St Mary’s College in Twickenham.
Graduating from St Mary’s in 1997, Leo returned to Dublin, where he trained as a mural painter on a programme for the public arts sponsored by the Irish government. He obtained a City and Guilds art qualification in Dublin, earned money by painting and decorating, and led projects creating murals in the Phoenix Park Zoo and local schools, and teaching paint effects, sponging, and other art techniques. He was responsible for about 25 young people with emotional difficulties, including drugs problems; he enjoyed being a calming influence on the young people, and it was perhaps from this point on that he began to see his future as a teacher.
While at university, Leo had stopped attending church services regularly and thought of himself as an agnostic. However, the events on the 11th day of September 2001 proved to be a spiritual watershed for him. He realised that he needed to know more about Islam and other world religions. So, in his words, he became a seeker, attending a mosque in Dublin and reading extensively about Buddhism, the Baha’i faith, and Rastafari. Eventually Leo knew that he wanted to be a teacher of world religions. He returned to England in 2004 and was accepted on a course leading to a Master’s Degree in Inter-religious Relations at Birmingham University. There he felt like a sponge, absorbing as much as he could about all religions. He comments, ‘Perhaps I stretched myself too thin – refusing to specialise in any one religion, unlike some of the other students’. However, he did narrow down his interests sufficiently to write his dissertation, which was a critical analysis of the Baha’i perspective on inter-faith relations. It was in Birmingham that Leo met Revd Simon Ramsay, whom he credits with introducing him to Unitarianism.
Graduating in 2005, Leo came to Oxford and began attending services in the HMC Chapel. He has spent the past two years working in the Religion and Art departments of a local secondary school as a teacher’s assistant, which has given him excellent work experience. He has been accepted for the Post-graduate Certificate in Education programme at Oxford Brookes University, starting in September. He also wishes to train eventually as a lay preacher and is attending a three-session beginners’ course organised by the Midland Union of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches.
Leo feels at home in our chapel. He favours the grassroots, ‘build your own theology’ approach to religion, whereby each individual develops his or her own ideas and values, rather than the traditional approach of the established church, which inculcates belief from the top downwards. However, he wonders if his ‘multifarian’ approach would be too diverse even for our Chapel Society. I, for one, am stimulated by the diversity of his views and impressed by his spirit of seeking, and I suspect he will continue to define his own religious beliefs.
As for outside interests, Leo plays bass guitar with the aspirant Oxford-based combo, The Deputees – ‘a pop/rock band with a West Coast sound – an “indie band”.’ ‘Is that Indian music?’ I asked him. No, he laughed, an indie band is independent and not associated with major record labels.
Leo writes occasional reviews and features for The Church Times, including an account of the recent visit of the Dalai Lama to Oxford. We are indeed fortunate to have someone in our congregation who is so attuned to the very diverse spiritual world beyond our own chapel walls.
(1) A review of The Larger View: Unitarians and World Religions, July/Aug 2007; ‘The Happy Saddhu’, Sept/Oct 2007; ‘The “SACRED” Exhibition at the British Library’, Nov/Dec 2007; and a review of Young, British and Muslim, May/June 2008.
June 2008 - Bob Redpath