Sheila Allcock
Profile
Are Unitarians Christians? The debate swirls round and round, getting nowhere, in internet discussion groups and the pages of The Inquirer. But it rarely surfaces in our chapel, where humanists, agnostics, and theists happily go with the flow alongside believers who are closer to the theological mainstream. One of our associate members, Sheila Allcock, is actually a churchwarden of Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry, Oxford.
Sheila’s spiritual journey began as a child in the Sunday School of the Congregational church in Cockfosters. She recalls: "I was very happy there and was able to ask the same questions that still bother me from time to time, such as: if it were a virgin birth, why do we get Joseph’s genealogy in the Bible? If Mary had had the experience of angels and magi at Jesus’ birth, why was she unaware that her son was different?" Later acquaintance with the Baptist church in South Norwood and the ‘smells and bells’ church of St Endellion in Cornwall led her to choose the mainstream Church of England, rather than the ‘low’ or the ‘high’, and she was confirmed fifty years ago by Bishop Cuthbert Bardsley.
Shortly after that, while still at school, Sheila (who like many of her generation had become politicised by the Suez crisis) joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She went on to found a CND branch at Leicester University, where she studied for a degree in Zoology. Her faith (or at least her church attendance) wavered during these years, when she was organising meetings and demonstrations: CND members were scathing about churchgoers, and vice versa. She recalls: ‘In spite of Canon Collins’ leadership, I felt that the mainstream churches were too much part of the establishment to take up the moral cause.’ After her marriage (to the son of a Baptist minister) she moved with her husband to Ottawa, where the well-heeled members of the Baptist church regarded CND as a communist front organisation, and Sheila and John stopped going to church altogether.
On returning to England, they attended Stoneygate Baptist Church in Leicester, and subsequently Buttershaw Baptist Church on a large council estate in Bradford. "I well remember my first visit there. During the Minister’s address to the children, he asked for volunteers to act out a story from the gospels. A girl put up her hand and asked ‘Can a girl be Jesus?’, to which he replied ‘Yes’ without hesitation." The Allcocks spent several happy years in this congregation, while Sheila, by now a qualified librarian, was setting up the library of the Project Planning Centre for Developing Countries at the University of Bradford.
Can a girl be Jesus? Sheila says that this episode was probably the start of her interest and involvement in the Movement for the Ordination of Women. She joined it in Bradford and became active in the Oxford branch when she moved here in 1988 to take up the post of Librarian at the International Development Centre in Queen Elizabeth House, in the University of Oxford. Five years of intense campaigning came to a climax at Easter 1994, when the first ordinations of women in the Oxford Diocese took place at a joyous service in Christ Church Cathedral. "It was the first campaign that I’ve belonged to that was successful! I feel very strongly about this issue, both on theological grounds and also on the grounds of justice. Unfortunately many ordained women in the C of E are still experiencing problems, with other clergy and some church members behaving in a most unChristian manner." It is fitting that the Curate at Holy Trinity (C.S. Lewis’s church), where Sheila now serves as a churchwarden, is a woman.
Shortly after moving to Oxford, at a lecture about Christianity in the twentieth century, Sheila had met Ralph Waller, the Principal of Manchester College. "I was interested to see what Unitarians had to offer. Ever since 1989 I have attended services in the MCO chapel regularly, but not frequently. As a bit of a heretic myself, I like the Unitarians’ lack of a formal creed and their willingness to seek wisdom in other traditions; but I also need the sacraments of the Church of England. Both Peter Hewis and my vicar are aware of my divided loyalty, which doesn’t seem to be a problem for either of them." Unfortunately for Sheila we never sing her favourite hymn, which is ‘My Song is Love Unknown’, by Samuel Crossman (1664). Its theology of redemption is a bit too much for most Unitarians to swallow, but the words are very moving, and Sheila, whose personal life has been overshadowed by sadness in the past ten years, finds particular comfort in the lines ‘love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be’.
Having taken early retirement from the QEH library two years ago ("to avoid having to supervise the destruction of my own creation"), Sheila continues to work part-time in the library of St Cross College, enjoys having more time to spend with her two sons and one granddaughter, and can indulge her passion for watching cricket. (She is currently campaigning against Sky TV’s impending monopoly of televised coverage of first-class cricket.) Her duties as churchwarden at Holy Trinity take up much of her time, but it is always a pleasure to welcome her when she is free to join us on Sundays. She says: "I have come to the conclusion that God can appear in any church, and one should not necessarily expect to find spiritual sustenance from the same denomination all one’s life. I am happy in the rather strange position in which I find myself, and very grateful for the friendly welcome that I receive at MCO when I do attend." Catherine Robinson January 2006