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OH408 Interview with Diarmaid MacCulloch (OutStories Bristol)
Charles Beaton [CB]: Okay I’m here in Oxford with Diarmaid MacCulloch and we’re at 41
Diarmaid MacCulloch [DM]: 41 Saint Giles in the centre of town
CB: Okay could you say your full name and your date of birth
DM: My full name is Diarmaid Ninian John MacCulloch and I’m Professor of the History of the Church in Oxford and my date of birth is 31st of October 1951
CB: Okay thank you we’re going to talk through your experience particularly in Bristol but I’d like to start with where you were born and where you were brought up and tell me how that was
DM: Right um both my parents were Army officers and so I was actually born in the Army uh my dad was an Army Chaplin and he married an officer in the ATS so I was born in Kent but after my dad left the Army he became a country parson in Suffolk so I grew up in one of those classic country rectories all sold off now and it was a very happy enjoyable childhood an only child slightly isolated therefore and from then I went to Cambridge and uh read History in Churchill College Cambridge stayed there to be a research student got a doctorate um became a junior research fellow and that takes you to 1978 when my first job came up which was in a Methodist theological college in Bristol Wesley College now just closed
[0.01.35] CB: And why did you choose Bristol
DM: I chose Bristol (short pause) just uh because that was the job market and 1978 was a terrible time in uh academia things have not changed since but it was the first job which came up so I took a job teaching Church History to prospective Methodist Ministers ordinands as they’re called and uh it was all Church History everything I used to call it Plato to NATO uh which was a very good start in an academic career because you gotta instantly see the big shapes the generalisations
CB: This was a Wesleyan College and you’d been brought up in a Church of England
DM: It was a Methodist College yes and I was a rather very high Church Anglican and I think the then Principal a man called David Stacey rather liked that I was this ecumenical element there uh and I I suppose I was always the slightly exotic person on the staff which started as 7 people ended up about 6 um Anglican uh historian so slightly different discipline from my colleagues uh and as it turned out also an openly gay man quite quickly
[0.02.58] CB: Um and you came out whilst you were in the job there to your colleagues
DM: Yes I came out in fact in Cambridge to start with um remarkably easily actually and at the age of 20 21 uh just met my first boyfriend and it was great so I had no inhibitions about that and that was the shape of the 1970’s for me uh so when I went to Bristol in 1978 it wasn’t difficult uh to envisage coming out didn’t really talk about it because in those days you didn’t in interviews and things like that but uh fairly soon afterwards I was um involved in a television programme uh I guess it was about 1980 or so uh little bit of the back story to that during my time in Cambridge I’d applied for ordination in the Church of England and once more cheerily said I’m a gay man I don’t know if that’s a word you’d use in those days probably was and of course was instantly turned down uh it was beyond the capacity of the Church to believe that anyone could say this through the process so the the television programme that I think was on Channel 4 no ITV pre Channel 4 days television programme was on ITV and it was about those who’d had trouble with the Church and being gay so straight away I was plunged into this situation that is going to be broadcast to the nation sometime around 1980 it was an important moment because I’d not come out to my parents at that stage though I’d not exactly hidden things so they were faced with coping with the fact that I was going to be on national telly pretty quickly so I told them beforehand their initial reaction was what you’d expect at that time shock uh my Mother I remember they had both retired they’d retired by that time my Mother said oh we’ll have to move house uh but that was the reaction of 24 hours and after that the the the enormous stability in my family the the affection that they felt for me love that they felt for me kicked in and they said right we’ll stand by you I my Mother watched the programme my Father couldn’t bear to but from then on uh it it was a hugely positive thing to have done so that was the family side of the programme then there was the College uh and the College was good the College was officially very good the Principle was a man called David Stacey a Bristolian by birth uh a rugged old fashioned Methodist uh who had simply thought his way to liberal Christianity come from a Wesleyan Methodist background working-class boy very clever Old Testament scholar and so when he when I told him that this programme was coming up he took it in his stride he was a great one for seeing trouble ahead and he could see what the troubles would be but he was also a great one for thinking ways through them and he thought of ways of coping with the situation at first he was going to give me total backing that was the main thing and the Methodist Church being what it is a very thoughtful liberal denomination certainly was then perhaps well I think that’s still true um he got in touch with the hierarchy of the Church and made sure that there were enough people who would back me so uh we were then faced with the College now that was more difficult because the the 7 members of staff Methodist Ministers 6 of the other my 6 other colleagues were profoundly divided anyway profoundly divided between Liberals and Conservatives so this was just another issue on which they could be divided and 2 of my colleagues in particular one of whom now now dead was um Donald English very powerful distinguished Methodist who became President of the Methodist Conference uh actually was the President of the Methodist Conference before that and became again he was clearly very very unhappy but I have to say that everyone behaved in an extremely civilised way about it to my face I think the rows were all contained by the Principle David Stacey students again profoundly divided uh none of them had the faintest idea that this was gonna happen uh they didn’t read me as a gay man because I didn’t do all the conventional things they thought gay men would do in the early 1980’s and so once more I think I became the uh the symbol of the factionalism of Christianity so it wasn’t easy but I mean on the on the day that the programme was going out I think we had our weekly College service where everyone has to had to be Friday evening and the Principle made a point of inviting me round for a drink beforehand and walking into the building with me so that no one could be in any doubt what his position was so and then the programme went out and it that was it really but having said that was it it remained an issue for the rest of my time there and I was there for 12 years from 1978 to 1990 it was always an issue and it was one more thing I taught I think I was teaching people History but I was also teaching them how to cope with the shock of an openly gay authority figure within the College and academic years of course run from October to October so every September I thought oh God another batch of fresh students who I’ve got to go through exactly the same process with and I did so effectively for something like 9 or 10 years we had this cycle of students coming in very many of them uh very shaggy backwoods people not used to the situation reacted badly because they were reacting badly for all sorts of reasons to this new situation in all sorts of ways so I was one symbol of that I think what I would say about those 10 rather exhausting years was that there were always more people at the end who were sympathetic than there were at the beginning and I’m pleased about that I think I was doing a rather important job for the Methodist Church I guess in the end I must’ve trained about 300 of the current Methodist Ministry if not more and that’s been important to the Methodist Church but it wasn’t easy and it was tiring
[0.10.22] CB: What age were you I know you were in your early 30’s in comparison to the other staff
DM: Yes that’s right I was a mere babe I was 26 or ‘7 when I went there so even when I left I was comparatively young and yes the rest of the staff were 40’s plus so again uh a slight oddity uh it wasn’t the job I wanted really because it may have helped quite a bit that I didn’t really care what I did I remember when I first went somebody had just given me a Sex Pistols badge Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols so I was very into punk rock at the time and uh I wore it on my lapel for the first term and I think that was a sort of preparing shock for people and now I realise it was sort of an unconscious statement so that was my role and I was the maverick anyway the jester and that went on uh despite the fact by the end of my time there I was the eldest statesman I’d been there longer than anybody else
CB: Oh right on the staff
DM: After 12 years yes they came and went and I didn’t
CB: Quite a high turnover yeah
DM: Uh so yes 12 years which takes you to 1990 in the end I felt I am not part of this career structure uh it would be best if I bail out now they offered me a renewal of contract I thought about it I said no I’ll just freelance I’ll see what happens and that took the next 5 years of my life to the end of my time in Bristol
CB: Right I was um the turnover of staff were your colleagues going on to be Ministers did they themselves
DM: They all my all my colleagues were Methodist Ministers and the Methodist Church makes a point of circulating its employees the Principle was there until retirement so David Stacey was there I think until the late 80’s perhaps but otherwise yes there was a turnover
CB: Yes this was the Wesleyan College which is in um
DM: Wesley College Bristol it’s in Westbury-on-Trym it’s now just closed in uh 2012 it’s just closed
CB: I have actually been to the building they have a lovely old-fashioned canteen still running
DM: Yes (laughs) yes oh well all gone now I’m afraid
[0.12.56] CB: When when you said before you’d gone to the College you’d looked for ordination
DM: Yes in the Church of England
CB: How how does that work who do you apply to
DM: You apply to a Bishop in the diocese and this was in when I was in Cambridge so it was the Diocese of Ely and so I applied to the Diocese and Director of Ordinands ooh no I’m telling a lie uh I applied from my childhood home Suffolk so I applied in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich so that it was the DDO the Diocesan Director of Ordinands there I was uh talking to (short pause) shall we stop and because of that train there that overhead I’ll I’ll start all that again so in the late 70’s I applied for ordination actually in my childhood home in Suffolk which in Anglican terms is the diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich and you apply to a specific officer called the Diocesan Director of Ordinands and I applied uh quite comic looking back and I think even at the time I found it comic I was the ideal candidate I was clearly bright I was a junior research fellow in Cambridge College so just the sort of person they want and then I said oh by the way there is one other thing I am actually gay and this completely blew the whole process out the water that the man did not know what to do at all and his reaction was in that case that kills any question of ordination
CB: And he said that to your face
DM: Oh he said that to my face yes uh which point I became a little emotional cross rather than unhappy and then I went through the same process in the Dioses of Ely which is the Cambridge Dioses and that the DDO then was much more thoughtful uh (short pause) a quiet celibate country parson uh and he said well do you think it’s just a phase you’re going through I said no it is not a phase I’m going through that’s reality and and although I could see this this wasn’t going to get very far he said well go and see the Bishop and the Bishop a lovely man was again very thoughtful um Peter Walker was his name uh alas now dead uh I I felt it was a very positive experience talking to Peter I also talked to Bishop John Robinson used to be a name to conjure with the honest to God Bishop who I must say wasn’t all that good he said he couldn’t see any way forward in the present circumstances (short pause) uh I went to see the Bishop Mervin Stockwood another great name from the past uh of course now we know a flamboyantly gay man and he just said no there’s no possibility at all and it was the openness with all these people and the clergy of course hoaching with gay men then as now uh but the problem was upsetting the apple cart letting the yes letting the name be named that’s what the Church couldn’t cope with then and even now of course it’s in a terrible confusion about that (short pause)
[0.16.15] CB: That was the Cambridge bit was in 197-
DM: It was the late 1976 or 1978 uh I’d been in Cambridge from 1969 through to 1978 so all all this sort of attempts at ordination came towards the the end of my time in Cambridge
CB: So it would have been easier to have not come out and you would have become a Vicar
DM: Oh yes no question I’d have sailed through I’d have been a Bishop by now but my Mum and Dad had when I was a little boy always told me to always tell the truth and so that’s what I did in a naïve way and that’s my profession anyway I’m a Historian by trade that’s what we do we tell it like it is and so it never for a moment crossed my mind to hide this really important thing about myself uh and I suppose at one level I always knew that the result would be a negative one at that stage and could observe what was happening with great interest (short pause)
CB: It it’s like the you knew that you wouldn’t get that career by being out who who was your support
DM: My Parish Priest at the time a gay man uh he was very supportive and the College Chaplain uh wonderful maverick Scottish Episcopalian uh called Richard Kane he was enormously supportive and I was also involved in the early stages of setting up what is now the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement Gay Christian Movement at the time I was member number 13 GCM is a bit like the Nazi Party in that you keep your number on your membership card uh still got it somewhere and so this is all in the mid 70’s 1976 I think GCM was founded so I knew there was a lot of support and and I could see the future was going to be our way no question uh and it was a question of when that would happen and I suppose having a slightly detached temperament I thought it was better for me to do this than some more vulnerable person uh particularly because it was always likely to be one string to my bow I would probably always have another job and wouldn’t be dependent on the whims of Bishops
[0.18.41] CB: So you spent your time at Wesley College I’m still on the ordination you then applied again
DM: I did I applied in Bristol and um (short pause) things had moved on a bit then it seemed uh it was much more an issue which people talked about and the Church had not really established attitude so about 1984 or so I thought well I will try again and again with complete openness and uh hit the arrival of a new Bishop called Barry Rogerson uh and he was one of the Church’s establishment liberals so uh it went okay a tremendously sympathetic Diocese and Director of Ordinands this time a man called David (Eyesit) uh uh and he was very supportive and the Bishop put me forward for the selection process which is a national process so you all gather in a particular retreat house in the Midlands this was and you’re put through a series of hoops interviews (short pause) role-plays all sorts of things uh and um it was a miserable experience because of course this was the only issue anyone talked to me about they took everything else for granted and um (short pause) anyway to cut a long story short I think the selection process recommended that I shouldn’t go forward and the Bishop decided to overrule them which was his absolute right so uh Barry Rogerson had backed me uh and I got through the process and I went to a Theological College in Oxford where I presently am again Ripon College Cuddesdon once more a very supportive environment a liberal high Church-ish Anglican Theological College where the Principle knew exactly the situation uh I had old friends who were also students so they knew the situation complete openness therefore uh in a sense a fool’s paradise because uh Cuddesdon is still a good deed in a naughty world in the Church of England it is a very liberal accepting diverse place it was then and it is now so that that that was a year of training and at the end of that the Bishop of Bristol ordained me Deacon in Bristol Cathedral but things were spinning out of his control by that time it was just at a moment when the Evangelical wing of the Church of England was beginning to regroup and find uh a common front against this alarming new development and there was a man called Tony Higton the Reverend Tony Higton who got himself elected to the Church’s National Parliament the General Synod and he put a motion through Synod uh who’s exact terms I can’t remember but amounted to the fact that uh homosexuals were not acceptable in the Ministry uh it was a lifestyle which was incompatible that’s the word I remember from this motion with being a Clergyman so and the General Synod swayed by this it was the Thatcher era uh they were frightened by the issue so they backed this maverick who I don’t think is any longer in the Ministry of the Church of England uh but just summed up so much conservative anger at that stage so that hit the Church just at the moment when I hit it too ordained Deacon in Bristol Cathedral took my new partner along introduced him to the Bishop which I think began disconcerting the Bishop this was not what he had expected uh and the trouble was that I was providing a model of a successful gay partnership I mean the best the Church could cope with at the time were unsuccessful gay men whom they could give pastoral care to they were they were not ready for people in committed faithful ordinary relationships so the Bishop started feeling that he was getting cold feet one problem was that he was by now the Chairman of the Clergy Selection Process for the entire Church so he was now very vulnerable very exposed and his liberalism and his ambition starting conflicting and I was not helping because I was in my fool’s paradise thinking right sorted now do what I like in terms of being open and I was even how could I do this to him I even took my partner to a Clergy partner’s evening at which he was stuck in groups with bewildered wives uh talking about the problems of being a partner of a Clergyperson uh all credit to him for going through that awful experience uh but by now all these things are coming together and the Bishop called me in and said I don’t think I can ordain you at the moment situation is too difficult and if I put you the question is your lifestyle compatible with the Higton motion in General Synod would you say yes or no and um I said I’m not going to answer that I am not going to answer that this is a disgraceful motion and I’m not going to () to its terms um the details of the next hour are a little confused in my mind but it was fairly clear to me that he was saying I will ordain you sometime but when the fuss has blown over uh and I said I am not prepared to do that I am not prepared to go along with that sort of fudge so by the end of the hour or 2 hours or whatever it was I walked out with no prospect of imminent ordination to the Priesthood having been made a Deacon the year before uh which was an awful experience it’s if you think in terms of the Church as Mother it’s like your Mother turning round and kicking you in the teeth and worse was to come because I decided that it was impossible for me to go on ministering in the Parish Church where I was Deacon which was All Saints Pembroke Road in Clifton uh the Church I had been worshipping in in the Choir since I had arrived in Bristol and All Saints is a great Anglo Catholic shrine Church smells and bells very high had been a flagship of that sort of worship for the previous century and more and of course it was full of gay men because those sorts of Churches always are uh (short pause) and it was there for a very live issue there once more enormous amount of support in the congregation not just from the gay men from all over but now they’re faced with this open bombshell and they were terribly divided divided between their affection for me and some of them with an entirely different moral system uh and they were like rabbits in the headlights some were enormously supportive and angry others were just utterly confused and didn’t know what to think (short pause) and uh I I asked for the Vicar to read out a statement to explain why I wasn’t going to be there and as luck would have it there was a BBC journalist in the Congregation that day he wasn’t normally there so he of course he picked this up and now it became a story for BBC Bristol uh but within an hour or 2 for the nation the Western News Agency picked it up from the BBC bulletins in Bristol and within a day or 2 I was finding myself at the eye of a national storm with my partner uh who was enormously angry already about the situation he was a non-Christian he had been I told you so ever since this bombshell broke and we were now faced by being besieged by reporters I was the subject of a car chase by the agents of the Western Press Agency across Bristol from my work trying to get home didn’t make it home went to my solicitors issued a statement (short pause) and that’s what the press had a very interesting because um it was clear that none of what you might call the opposition were either making a press statement or prepared to say anything and so what went out was actually my press statement and that decided the way the story was spun uh as a result it was spun in a reasonably sympathetic way talking about the Bristol Evening News but then also all the papers uh up to The Guardian up to The Times there was an editorial in The Daily Star which was not sympathetic I think it was uh uh something like we congratulate the Bishop of the brave Bishop of Bristol in standing up to refusing to ordain a poofter Bishop bans a poofter was the headline in either The Sun or The Daily Star (short pause) uh but read down and the story actually with my statement so it was pretty sympathetic um (short pause) curious the sort of reaction I got very little hostile reaction at all um 1 or 2 people ringing up still number in the phone book who clearly looking for help and support in their own troubles I wasn’t prepared to do it I just hadn’t got the energy um the sort of random thing people heard in pubs was well if he wants to get ordained why shouldn’t he good luck to him and (short pause) so there it stood and uh there were ramifications because of course the College then had to take an attitude uh the same sort of divisions between the um the very pro and the bewildered and a few he deserves nothing less than this rejections (short pause) but then the Methodist Church had to stick it’s pennyworth in because The Telegraph helpfully pointed out to the Methodist Church my contract was coming up for renewal and the Methodist Church is run by its Conference its Annual Conference this was just before that so my contract part of the routine business became a major issue for Methodist Conference that year and I have to say the Methodist Church superbly for a start they threw the journalists out before this item was going to be discussed they dismissed them all went into camera we’re talking about a conference of around 300 400 people they discussed my um reappointment and many former students of mine were there and my the accounts that I have been given was that they were all tremendously personally supportive and so I was reappointed so it was one little piece of good news amid a Summer of absolute misery uh it’s a very good way to lose weight actually to be refused ordination I recommend it only on those grounds so the rest of my time at Wesley College Bristol that we’re now talking uh 1988 and then the next 2 years when I was there were under the shadow of this awful rejection uh and everyone knew that the students knew that I knew it got an enormous amount of support from among them more than I needed really it’s often quite difficult being given a lot of support and sympathy so I suppose that all contributed to my decision to leave the College and just chance my arm because being surrounded by people about to enter the Church all the time when you’re not is a bit wearing and so off I went out of that job in 1990 to freelance which in my terms meant um (short pause) teaching a bit in universities and writing a big book my first really big book which was a biography of an Archbishop of Canterbury ironically enough Archbishop Thomas Cranmer so I spent 5 years researching for that and then writing it supported a bit by grants from academic foundations plus the teaching I was doing in the University of Bristol and lots of other mates who’d gone off on sabbaticals in their universities and got me to teach for them it was a great time a fantastic time so few worries and it sort of acted as therapy after that awful experience and at the end well I was beginning to be saleable in university terms the book was obviously going to be a blockbuster and so eventually I got landed a job here in Oxford and so that’s the end of my Bristol story
[0.32.19] CB: You left the Wesley College I’m curious that day the press turned up they knew where you worked what do you think why were they pursuing you what was the which
DM: I suppose they simply wanted a rounded story they knew that the Church of England had turned me down they knew I taught in a Methodist Theological College teaching Ministers and they wanted colour they wanted statements from me of course they all said we’ll present it very sympathetically (short pause) and uh who knows if I’d had slightly more reserves of emotional energy I might have just stood at the door and given them a statement but I wasn’t capable of that so I ran away and went to my solicitor in Queens Square and we hammered out a statement there and that’s what we gave the press I mean we literally sort of handed it out at the solicitor’s door and at that point they lost interest and uh I went home and uh a very good friend uh in fact who was the builder for us doing work on our house in Totterdown just gave us his holiday home in Devon said go away go away ‘til the fuss has died down so we went thinking a pack of the press would pursue us all the way down to Devon they didn’t they’d lost interest at the first service station not that they knew where we were and 2 days 3 days later it was a (non) story the monster had moved on to some other story though we uh we bought all the papers and it was in every paper Western Daily Press to The Times
CB: ‘Cause it was about uh out deacon who was not prepared to be otherwise
DM: The thing about it was it was the first product of this Tony Higton motion in General Synod that was the first time that that had been put to the test and so I was the first uh you know person on the uh on the radar
CB: Yeah (short pause) of the Church of England sorting out it’s
DM: Of the Church of England of course it was it was at a very fraught time for gay people generally this was 1988 uh AIDS was still a major issue uh it was the Thatcher years the right-wing press were rampant they were looking for an issue to clobber the Church of England this is also the era of Archbishop Ramsey great liberal Archbishop very much in the sights of the right-wing press so for all sorts of reasons uh it was a perfect news story (short pause)
[0.34.59] CB: How did your domestic life operate then
DM: (laughs) I met my partner just before I’d gone to Theological College and gone to Cuddesdon so that would be 1986 so he was faced with the bewildering experience of being plunged into this Church culture apparently at first extremely positively uh but then it all turning round and he had uh a very negative idea of the Church despite having gone to perhaps because of going to Bristol Cathedral School uh and he was able to say I told you so the Church is an evil institution which does people harm so we had to live with that and uh on the whole I think he was probably right uh I ceased to go to Church for a long while and another major influence on that was was something entirely different which was the Salman Rushdie affair uh (short pause) it when was that ’89 ’90 I guess Salman Rushdie and The uh Satanic Verses the um the point was that here were people of a sacred book behaving in a bestial fashion someone who had written a novel and I could see exactly whose side I was on in that it was the novelist and then I had Anglican Bishops making mealy mouthed statements of sympathy with Muslims for what Rushdie had written and I thought that was absolutely disgraceful so my feeling then was what price any sacred if they make people behave this badly then I’m not interested in them so I walked away not just this time from the institutional practice of the Church but from I guess faith for a long while and that remained a very strong uh feeling for quite a while uh I’ve moved gradually cautiously back towards the Church now and uh I think that’s the right thing to do and who knows what will happen next (short pause) uh but it was (perhaps) a useful holiday from institutional religion
CB: You’re talking about your time in Oxford
DM: Yes and here I’m teaching in the faculty of Theology and Religion and teaching Church history here and have gone on writing ever bigger books on Church history which again I think looking back () being partly therapy and it being to help me sort out my attitude to the Church particularly History of Christianity 1000 pages and a TV series on the back of it and I have to say that at the end of looking at the history of the Church with all its ghastliness I felt much better disposed towards Christianity than I started because it’s about human beings and their faults as much as anything and they can behave very badly or very well and you never know which way human beings are going to jump and whatever is behind it it seems to be that it’s not a good idea to dismiss it as Richard Dawkings dismisses it uh and then a curious oddity at the end of my career was to receive a knighthood last year in the New Year’s Honours List of 2012 and that had a slightly peculiar uh off spin in that clergy of the Church of England uh are not allowed to use the title Sir because the principle is that Knights are intended to kill people and clergy are generally discouraged from killing people so if you’re a clergyman and a Knight you don’t get the perks of killing people either you don’t get to be called Sir and the Queen doesn’t put a a sword on your shoulder when she does the business and that was interesting because it presented me well I am a clergyman but I’m a clergyman uh to whom the Church has kicked in the teeth in the most dramatic way and should I allow the clergy stuff to get in the way of being called Sir and then a wise friend said to me if you were to reject your clergy status in order to be called Sir everyone would think you were a complete idiot and I thought yes he’s right and so the the paradox of this knighting is that it has made me reaffirm my clergy status which I have not used for getting on for 2 decades and it’s there and it’s it seems to be an amusing outcome of this complicated story
[0.39.41] CB: Because the being ordained as a Deacon is perpetual
DM: You could renounce it but the process of renouncing is humiliating uh and just not what I want to do so it’s there and uh who knows what will happen to it
CB: A knighthood is a wonderful thing to have happened given the what had happened in the past
DM: Yes The Guardian The Guardian commented that it was a slap in the face to the Church of England and uh that may have been part of why it was granted I don’t know but certainly there may be those in the Church of England who feel it is a bit of a slap to them yes
CB: Is there anything else you want to talk about um
DM: Um hmm I don’t know I mean I guess my reminiscences of Bristol’s club life are ‘80s uh there was much more of it than Cambridge uh it was The Elephant it was The uh what was the club called on (Maudely) Road
CB: The Oasis
DM: The Oasis (laughs) yes and at the bottom of 39 Steps uh which had some other name as well didn’t it and that’s where I met my long-term partner uh we we’ve broken up now but we were together for 19 years we met in the 39 uh at the bottom of Christmas Steps which was a splendid club really it was like going to uh uh a rather raucous party in someone’s front room uh it was uh very agreeable to see a major Medieval building being so misused uh as for a gay club (up a flight of steps) I I thought the gay life of Bristol was splendid and uh perhaps not as much as one would expect from a large city at the time 2 clubs and a couple of pubs nothing to what you get in Manchester these days uh but it was fun and I met a wonderful variety of people and I mean the great thing about being gay in those days was that Eros as the great leveller you met far more people than you would as a heterosexual in your generation or your status you met so many different people and uh that was good about the gay ghetto but all ghettos are bad and in the end it’s good that they should be dissolved
CB: Did you related to that is The Gay Christian Movement were you still in touch with
DM: I’m not I left The Gay Christian Movement partly over a matter of its future direction so it was a matter of personalities at the top I became its Secretary briefly uh but rather more was my feeling of disillusionment with the whole Christian business so it wasn’t so much in the end uh GCM not the G bit but the C bit which um made me leave I’m still benevolently in touch with it but I’m not actually doing much with it at the moment or doing anything with it now
CB: And at that period in Bristol I think the
DM: I was very high-profile at that stage there was a local group run by well a succession of people but it was a nice perhaps a little earnest but that’s Christian groups for you but it was clearly very supportive to its members and to each other uh I’m not even sure whether it still exists
CB: Mm I think it still it’s somewhere (short pause) so that’s the the club scene you described your work um the Church was there anything else about Bristol that you any other activism by activism I mean like setting up the Gay Christian Movement in the first place
DM: Yes I mean it was already there when I arrived um so I went along but I can’t say I was ever tremendously involved in the organisation of that I’m grateful for those that did because it’s always thankless doing these things but it kept going and uh I try to be supportive in being there when I could (short pause)
CB: Okay have we reached the
DM: Probably I know what else would be on your list that you feel we haven’t covered
CB: Well there’s other things like family and friends
DM: Yeah we talked about family quite a bit
CB: We touched on a bit
DM: Yes friends hmm not much to say there really um yeah
CB: Okay because clearly you’ve what you’re experience would say that someone should be writing up your story your biography and that’s not what I’ve come here today to do (laughs)
DM: Yes you want to know about Bristol
CB: Yeah so it’s okay then we’ll
DM: That’s fine I can’t think anything there I’d want to censor if you get a run past what goes in the public exhibition that’s fine
CB: Okay thank you very much for your time
DM: Not at all
CB: I’ll stop this
Diarmaid MacCulloch [DM]: 41 Saint Giles in the centre of town
CB: Okay could you say your full name and your date of birth
DM: My full name is Diarmaid Ninian John MacCulloch and I’m Professor of the History of the Church in Oxford and my date of birth is 31st of October 1951
CB: Okay thank you we’re going to talk through your experience particularly in Bristol but I’d like to start with where you were born and where you were brought up and tell me how that was
DM: Right um both my parents were Army officers and so I was actually born in the Army uh my dad was an Army Chaplin and he married an officer in the ATS so I was born in Kent but after my dad left the Army he became a country parson in Suffolk so I grew up in one of those classic country rectories all sold off now and it was a very happy enjoyable childhood an only child slightly isolated therefore and from then I went to Cambridge and uh read History in Churchill College Cambridge stayed there to be a research student got a doctorate um became a junior research fellow and that takes you to 1978 when my first job came up which was in a Methodist theological college in Bristol Wesley College now just closed
[0.01.35] CB: And why did you choose Bristol
DM: I chose Bristol (short pause) just uh because that was the job market and 1978 was a terrible time in uh academia things have not changed since but it was the first job which came up so I took a job teaching Church History to prospective Methodist Ministers ordinands as they’re called and uh it was all Church History everything I used to call it Plato to NATO uh which was a very good start in an academic career because you gotta instantly see the big shapes the generalisations
CB: This was a Wesleyan College and you’d been brought up in a Church of England
DM: It was a Methodist College yes and I was a rather very high Church Anglican and I think the then Principal a man called David Stacey rather liked that I was this ecumenical element there uh and I I suppose I was always the slightly exotic person on the staff which started as 7 people ended up about 6 um Anglican uh historian so slightly different discipline from my colleagues uh and as it turned out also an openly gay man quite quickly
[0.02.58] CB: Um and you came out whilst you were in the job there to your colleagues
DM: Yes I came out in fact in Cambridge to start with um remarkably easily actually and at the age of 20 21 uh just met my first boyfriend and it was great so I had no inhibitions about that and that was the shape of the 1970’s for me uh so when I went to Bristol in 1978 it wasn’t difficult uh to envisage coming out didn’t really talk about it because in those days you didn’t in interviews and things like that but uh fairly soon afterwards I was um involved in a television programme uh I guess it was about 1980 or so uh little bit of the back story to that during my time in Cambridge I’d applied for ordination in the Church of England and once more cheerily said I’m a gay man I don’t know if that’s a word you’d use in those days probably was and of course was instantly turned down uh it was beyond the capacity of the Church to believe that anyone could say this through the process so the the television programme that I think was on Channel 4 no ITV pre Channel 4 days television programme was on ITV and it was about those who’d had trouble with the Church and being gay so straight away I was plunged into this situation that is going to be broadcast to the nation sometime around 1980 it was an important moment because I’d not come out to my parents at that stage though I’d not exactly hidden things so they were faced with coping with the fact that I was going to be on national telly pretty quickly so I told them beforehand their initial reaction was what you’d expect at that time shock uh my Mother I remember they had both retired they’d retired by that time my Mother said oh we’ll have to move house uh but that was the reaction of 24 hours and after that the the the enormous stability in my family the the affection that they felt for me love that they felt for me kicked in and they said right we’ll stand by you I my Mother watched the programme my Father couldn’t bear to but from then on uh it it was a hugely positive thing to have done so that was the family side of the programme then there was the College uh and the College was good the College was officially very good the Principle was a man called David Stacey a Bristolian by birth uh a rugged old fashioned Methodist uh who had simply thought his way to liberal Christianity come from a Wesleyan Methodist background working-class boy very clever Old Testament scholar and so when he when I told him that this programme was coming up he took it in his stride he was a great one for seeing trouble ahead and he could see what the troubles would be but he was also a great one for thinking ways through them and he thought of ways of coping with the situation at first he was going to give me total backing that was the main thing and the Methodist Church being what it is a very thoughtful liberal denomination certainly was then perhaps well I think that’s still true um he got in touch with the hierarchy of the Church and made sure that there were enough people who would back me so uh we were then faced with the College now that was more difficult because the the 7 members of staff Methodist Ministers 6 of the other my 6 other colleagues were profoundly divided anyway profoundly divided between Liberals and Conservatives so this was just another issue on which they could be divided and 2 of my colleagues in particular one of whom now now dead was um Donald English very powerful distinguished Methodist who became President of the Methodist Conference uh actually was the President of the Methodist Conference before that and became again he was clearly very very unhappy but I have to say that everyone behaved in an extremely civilised way about it to my face I think the rows were all contained by the Principle David Stacey students again profoundly divided uh none of them had the faintest idea that this was gonna happen uh they didn’t read me as a gay man because I didn’t do all the conventional things they thought gay men would do in the early 1980’s and so once more I think I became the uh the symbol of the factionalism of Christianity so it wasn’t easy but I mean on the on the day that the programme was going out I think we had our weekly College service where everyone has to had to be Friday evening and the Principle made a point of inviting me round for a drink beforehand and walking into the building with me so that no one could be in any doubt what his position was so and then the programme went out and it that was it really but having said that was it it remained an issue for the rest of my time there and I was there for 12 years from 1978 to 1990 it was always an issue and it was one more thing I taught I think I was teaching people History but I was also teaching them how to cope with the shock of an openly gay authority figure within the College and academic years of course run from October to October so every September I thought oh God another batch of fresh students who I’ve got to go through exactly the same process with and I did so effectively for something like 9 or 10 years we had this cycle of students coming in very many of them uh very shaggy backwoods people not used to the situation reacted badly because they were reacting badly for all sorts of reasons to this new situation in all sorts of ways so I was one symbol of that I think what I would say about those 10 rather exhausting years was that there were always more people at the end who were sympathetic than there were at the beginning and I’m pleased about that I think I was doing a rather important job for the Methodist Church I guess in the end I must’ve trained about 300 of the current Methodist Ministry if not more and that’s been important to the Methodist Church but it wasn’t easy and it was tiring
[0.10.22] CB: What age were you I know you were in your early 30’s in comparison to the other staff
DM: Yes that’s right I was a mere babe I was 26 or ‘7 when I went there so even when I left I was comparatively young and yes the rest of the staff were 40’s plus so again uh a slight oddity uh it wasn’t the job I wanted really because it may have helped quite a bit that I didn’t really care what I did I remember when I first went somebody had just given me a Sex Pistols badge Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols so I was very into punk rock at the time and uh I wore it on my lapel for the first term and I think that was a sort of preparing shock for people and now I realise it was sort of an unconscious statement so that was my role and I was the maverick anyway the jester and that went on uh despite the fact by the end of my time there I was the eldest statesman I’d been there longer than anybody else
CB: Oh right on the staff
DM: After 12 years yes they came and went and I didn’t
CB: Quite a high turnover yeah
DM: Uh so yes 12 years which takes you to 1990 in the end I felt I am not part of this career structure uh it would be best if I bail out now they offered me a renewal of contract I thought about it I said no I’ll just freelance I’ll see what happens and that took the next 5 years of my life to the end of my time in Bristol
CB: Right I was um the turnover of staff were your colleagues going on to be Ministers did they themselves
DM: They all my all my colleagues were Methodist Ministers and the Methodist Church makes a point of circulating its employees the Principle was there until retirement so David Stacey was there I think until the late 80’s perhaps but otherwise yes there was a turnover
CB: Yes this was the Wesleyan College which is in um
DM: Wesley College Bristol it’s in Westbury-on-Trym it’s now just closed in uh 2012 it’s just closed
CB: I have actually been to the building they have a lovely old-fashioned canteen still running
DM: Yes (laughs) yes oh well all gone now I’m afraid
[0.12.56] CB: When when you said before you’d gone to the College you’d looked for ordination
DM: Yes in the Church of England
CB: How how does that work who do you apply to
DM: You apply to a Bishop in the diocese and this was in when I was in Cambridge so it was the Diocese of Ely and so I applied to the Diocese and Director of Ordinands ooh no I’m telling a lie uh I applied from my childhood home Suffolk so I applied in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich so that it was the DDO the Diocesan Director of Ordinands there I was uh talking to (short pause) shall we stop and because of that train there that overhead I’ll I’ll start all that again so in the late 70’s I applied for ordination actually in my childhood home in Suffolk which in Anglican terms is the diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich and you apply to a specific officer called the Diocesan Director of Ordinands and I applied uh quite comic looking back and I think even at the time I found it comic I was the ideal candidate I was clearly bright I was a junior research fellow in Cambridge College so just the sort of person they want and then I said oh by the way there is one other thing I am actually gay and this completely blew the whole process out the water that the man did not know what to do at all and his reaction was in that case that kills any question of ordination
CB: And he said that to your face
DM: Oh he said that to my face yes uh which point I became a little emotional cross rather than unhappy and then I went through the same process in the Dioses of Ely which is the Cambridge Dioses and that the DDO then was much more thoughtful uh (short pause) a quiet celibate country parson uh and he said well do you think it’s just a phase you’re going through I said no it is not a phase I’m going through that’s reality and and although I could see this this wasn’t going to get very far he said well go and see the Bishop and the Bishop a lovely man was again very thoughtful um Peter Walker was his name uh alas now dead uh I I felt it was a very positive experience talking to Peter I also talked to Bishop John Robinson used to be a name to conjure with the honest to God Bishop who I must say wasn’t all that good he said he couldn’t see any way forward in the present circumstances (short pause) uh I went to see the Bishop Mervin Stockwood another great name from the past uh of course now we know a flamboyantly gay man and he just said no there’s no possibility at all and it was the openness with all these people and the clergy of course hoaching with gay men then as now uh but the problem was upsetting the apple cart letting the yes letting the name be named that’s what the Church couldn’t cope with then and even now of course it’s in a terrible confusion about that (short pause)
[0.16.15] CB: That was the Cambridge bit was in 197-
DM: It was the late 1976 or 1978 uh I’d been in Cambridge from 1969 through to 1978 so all all this sort of attempts at ordination came towards the the end of my time in Cambridge
CB: So it would have been easier to have not come out and you would have become a Vicar
DM: Oh yes no question I’d have sailed through I’d have been a Bishop by now but my Mum and Dad had when I was a little boy always told me to always tell the truth and so that’s what I did in a naïve way and that’s my profession anyway I’m a Historian by trade that’s what we do we tell it like it is and so it never for a moment crossed my mind to hide this really important thing about myself uh and I suppose at one level I always knew that the result would be a negative one at that stage and could observe what was happening with great interest (short pause)
CB: It it’s like the you knew that you wouldn’t get that career by being out who who was your support
DM: My Parish Priest at the time a gay man uh he was very supportive and the College Chaplain uh wonderful maverick Scottish Episcopalian uh called Richard Kane he was enormously supportive and I was also involved in the early stages of setting up what is now the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement Gay Christian Movement at the time I was member number 13 GCM is a bit like the Nazi Party in that you keep your number on your membership card uh still got it somewhere and so this is all in the mid 70’s 1976 I think GCM was founded so I knew there was a lot of support and and I could see the future was going to be our way no question uh and it was a question of when that would happen and I suppose having a slightly detached temperament I thought it was better for me to do this than some more vulnerable person uh particularly because it was always likely to be one string to my bow I would probably always have another job and wouldn’t be dependent on the whims of Bishops
[0.18.41] CB: So you spent your time at Wesley College I’m still on the ordination you then applied again
DM: I did I applied in Bristol and um (short pause) things had moved on a bit then it seemed uh it was much more an issue which people talked about and the Church had not really established attitude so about 1984 or so I thought well I will try again and again with complete openness and uh hit the arrival of a new Bishop called Barry Rogerson uh and he was one of the Church’s establishment liberals so uh it went okay a tremendously sympathetic Diocese and Director of Ordinands this time a man called David (Eyesit) uh uh and he was very supportive and the Bishop put me forward for the selection process which is a national process so you all gather in a particular retreat house in the Midlands this was and you’re put through a series of hoops interviews (short pause) role-plays all sorts of things uh and um it was a miserable experience because of course this was the only issue anyone talked to me about they took everything else for granted and um (short pause) anyway to cut a long story short I think the selection process recommended that I shouldn’t go forward and the Bishop decided to overrule them which was his absolute right so uh Barry Rogerson had backed me uh and I got through the process and I went to a Theological College in Oxford where I presently am again Ripon College Cuddesdon once more a very supportive environment a liberal high Church-ish Anglican Theological College where the Principle knew exactly the situation uh I had old friends who were also students so they knew the situation complete openness therefore uh in a sense a fool’s paradise because uh Cuddesdon is still a good deed in a naughty world in the Church of England it is a very liberal accepting diverse place it was then and it is now so that that that was a year of training and at the end of that the Bishop of Bristol ordained me Deacon in Bristol Cathedral but things were spinning out of his control by that time it was just at a moment when the Evangelical wing of the Church of England was beginning to regroup and find uh a common front against this alarming new development and there was a man called Tony Higton the Reverend Tony Higton who got himself elected to the Church’s National Parliament the General Synod and he put a motion through Synod uh who’s exact terms I can’t remember but amounted to the fact that uh homosexuals were not acceptable in the Ministry uh it was a lifestyle which was incompatible that’s the word I remember from this motion with being a Clergyman so and the General Synod swayed by this it was the Thatcher era uh they were frightened by the issue so they backed this maverick who I don’t think is any longer in the Ministry of the Church of England uh but just summed up so much conservative anger at that stage so that hit the Church just at the moment when I hit it too ordained Deacon in Bristol Cathedral took my new partner along introduced him to the Bishop which I think began disconcerting the Bishop this was not what he had expected uh and the trouble was that I was providing a model of a successful gay partnership I mean the best the Church could cope with at the time were unsuccessful gay men whom they could give pastoral care to they were they were not ready for people in committed faithful ordinary relationships so the Bishop started feeling that he was getting cold feet one problem was that he was by now the Chairman of the Clergy Selection Process for the entire Church so he was now very vulnerable very exposed and his liberalism and his ambition starting conflicting and I was not helping because I was in my fool’s paradise thinking right sorted now do what I like in terms of being open and I was even how could I do this to him I even took my partner to a Clergy partner’s evening at which he was stuck in groups with bewildered wives uh talking about the problems of being a partner of a Clergyperson uh all credit to him for going through that awful experience uh but by now all these things are coming together and the Bishop called me in and said I don’t think I can ordain you at the moment situation is too difficult and if I put you the question is your lifestyle compatible with the Higton motion in General Synod would you say yes or no and um I said I’m not going to answer that I am not going to answer that this is a disgraceful motion and I’m not going to () to its terms um the details of the next hour are a little confused in my mind but it was fairly clear to me that he was saying I will ordain you sometime but when the fuss has blown over uh and I said I am not prepared to do that I am not prepared to go along with that sort of fudge so by the end of the hour or 2 hours or whatever it was I walked out with no prospect of imminent ordination to the Priesthood having been made a Deacon the year before uh which was an awful experience it’s if you think in terms of the Church as Mother it’s like your Mother turning round and kicking you in the teeth and worse was to come because I decided that it was impossible for me to go on ministering in the Parish Church where I was Deacon which was All Saints Pembroke Road in Clifton uh the Church I had been worshipping in in the Choir since I had arrived in Bristol and All Saints is a great Anglo Catholic shrine Church smells and bells very high had been a flagship of that sort of worship for the previous century and more and of course it was full of gay men because those sorts of Churches always are uh (short pause) and it was there for a very live issue there once more enormous amount of support in the congregation not just from the gay men from all over but now they’re faced with this open bombshell and they were terribly divided divided between their affection for me and some of them with an entirely different moral system uh and they were like rabbits in the headlights some were enormously supportive and angry others were just utterly confused and didn’t know what to think (short pause) and uh I I asked for the Vicar to read out a statement to explain why I wasn’t going to be there and as luck would have it there was a BBC journalist in the Congregation that day he wasn’t normally there so he of course he picked this up and now it became a story for BBC Bristol uh but within an hour or 2 for the nation the Western News Agency picked it up from the BBC bulletins in Bristol and within a day or 2 I was finding myself at the eye of a national storm with my partner uh who was enormously angry already about the situation he was a non-Christian he had been I told you so ever since this bombshell broke and we were now faced by being besieged by reporters I was the subject of a car chase by the agents of the Western Press Agency across Bristol from my work trying to get home didn’t make it home went to my solicitors issued a statement (short pause) and that’s what the press had a very interesting because um it was clear that none of what you might call the opposition were either making a press statement or prepared to say anything and so what went out was actually my press statement and that decided the way the story was spun uh as a result it was spun in a reasonably sympathetic way talking about the Bristol Evening News but then also all the papers uh up to The Guardian up to The Times there was an editorial in The Daily Star which was not sympathetic I think it was uh uh something like we congratulate the Bishop of the brave Bishop of Bristol in standing up to refusing to ordain a poofter Bishop bans a poofter was the headline in either The Sun or The Daily Star (short pause) uh but read down and the story actually with my statement so it was pretty sympathetic um (short pause) curious the sort of reaction I got very little hostile reaction at all um 1 or 2 people ringing up still number in the phone book who clearly looking for help and support in their own troubles I wasn’t prepared to do it I just hadn’t got the energy um the sort of random thing people heard in pubs was well if he wants to get ordained why shouldn’t he good luck to him and (short pause) so there it stood and uh there were ramifications because of course the College then had to take an attitude uh the same sort of divisions between the um the very pro and the bewildered and a few he deserves nothing less than this rejections (short pause) but then the Methodist Church had to stick it’s pennyworth in because The Telegraph helpfully pointed out to the Methodist Church my contract was coming up for renewal and the Methodist Church is run by its Conference its Annual Conference this was just before that so my contract part of the routine business became a major issue for Methodist Conference that year and I have to say the Methodist Church superbly for a start they threw the journalists out before this item was going to be discussed they dismissed them all went into camera we’re talking about a conference of around 300 400 people they discussed my um reappointment and many former students of mine were there and my the accounts that I have been given was that they were all tremendously personally supportive and so I was reappointed so it was one little piece of good news amid a Summer of absolute misery uh it’s a very good way to lose weight actually to be refused ordination I recommend it only on those grounds so the rest of my time at Wesley College Bristol that we’re now talking uh 1988 and then the next 2 years when I was there were under the shadow of this awful rejection uh and everyone knew that the students knew that I knew it got an enormous amount of support from among them more than I needed really it’s often quite difficult being given a lot of support and sympathy so I suppose that all contributed to my decision to leave the College and just chance my arm because being surrounded by people about to enter the Church all the time when you’re not is a bit wearing and so off I went out of that job in 1990 to freelance which in my terms meant um (short pause) teaching a bit in universities and writing a big book my first really big book which was a biography of an Archbishop of Canterbury ironically enough Archbishop Thomas Cranmer so I spent 5 years researching for that and then writing it supported a bit by grants from academic foundations plus the teaching I was doing in the University of Bristol and lots of other mates who’d gone off on sabbaticals in their universities and got me to teach for them it was a great time a fantastic time so few worries and it sort of acted as therapy after that awful experience and at the end well I was beginning to be saleable in university terms the book was obviously going to be a blockbuster and so eventually I got landed a job here in Oxford and so that’s the end of my Bristol story
[0.32.19] CB: You left the Wesley College I’m curious that day the press turned up they knew where you worked what do you think why were they pursuing you what was the which
DM: I suppose they simply wanted a rounded story they knew that the Church of England had turned me down they knew I taught in a Methodist Theological College teaching Ministers and they wanted colour they wanted statements from me of course they all said we’ll present it very sympathetically (short pause) and uh who knows if I’d had slightly more reserves of emotional energy I might have just stood at the door and given them a statement but I wasn’t capable of that so I ran away and went to my solicitor in Queens Square and we hammered out a statement there and that’s what we gave the press I mean we literally sort of handed it out at the solicitor’s door and at that point they lost interest and uh I went home and uh a very good friend uh in fact who was the builder for us doing work on our house in Totterdown just gave us his holiday home in Devon said go away go away ‘til the fuss has died down so we went thinking a pack of the press would pursue us all the way down to Devon they didn’t they’d lost interest at the first service station not that they knew where we were and 2 days 3 days later it was a (non) story the monster had moved on to some other story though we uh we bought all the papers and it was in every paper Western Daily Press to The Times
CB: ‘Cause it was about uh out deacon who was not prepared to be otherwise
DM: The thing about it was it was the first product of this Tony Higton motion in General Synod that was the first time that that had been put to the test and so I was the first uh you know person on the uh on the radar
CB: Yeah (short pause) of the Church of England sorting out it’s
DM: Of the Church of England of course it was it was at a very fraught time for gay people generally this was 1988 uh AIDS was still a major issue uh it was the Thatcher years the right-wing press were rampant they were looking for an issue to clobber the Church of England this is also the era of Archbishop Ramsey great liberal Archbishop very much in the sights of the right-wing press so for all sorts of reasons uh it was a perfect news story (short pause)
[0.34.59] CB: How did your domestic life operate then
DM: (laughs) I met my partner just before I’d gone to Theological College and gone to Cuddesdon so that would be 1986 so he was faced with the bewildering experience of being plunged into this Church culture apparently at first extremely positively uh but then it all turning round and he had uh a very negative idea of the Church despite having gone to perhaps because of going to Bristol Cathedral School uh and he was able to say I told you so the Church is an evil institution which does people harm so we had to live with that and uh on the whole I think he was probably right uh I ceased to go to Church for a long while and another major influence on that was was something entirely different which was the Salman Rushdie affair uh (short pause) it when was that ’89 ’90 I guess Salman Rushdie and The uh Satanic Verses the um the point was that here were people of a sacred book behaving in a bestial fashion someone who had written a novel and I could see exactly whose side I was on in that it was the novelist and then I had Anglican Bishops making mealy mouthed statements of sympathy with Muslims for what Rushdie had written and I thought that was absolutely disgraceful so my feeling then was what price any sacred if they make people behave this badly then I’m not interested in them so I walked away not just this time from the institutional practice of the Church but from I guess faith for a long while and that remained a very strong uh feeling for quite a while uh I’ve moved gradually cautiously back towards the Church now and uh I think that’s the right thing to do and who knows what will happen next (short pause) uh but it was (perhaps) a useful holiday from institutional religion
CB: You’re talking about your time in Oxford
DM: Yes and here I’m teaching in the faculty of Theology and Religion and teaching Church history here and have gone on writing ever bigger books on Church history which again I think looking back () being partly therapy and it being to help me sort out my attitude to the Church particularly History of Christianity 1000 pages and a TV series on the back of it and I have to say that at the end of looking at the history of the Church with all its ghastliness I felt much better disposed towards Christianity than I started because it’s about human beings and their faults as much as anything and they can behave very badly or very well and you never know which way human beings are going to jump and whatever is behind it it seems to be that it’s not a good idea to dismiss it as Richard Dawkings dismisses it uh and then a curious oddity at the end of my career was to receive a knighthood last year in the New Year’s Honours List of 2012 and that had a slightly peculiar uh off spin in that clergy of the Church of England uh are not allowed to use the title Sir because the principle is that Knights are intended to kill people and clergy are generally discouraged from killing people so if you’re a clergyman and a Knight you don’t get the perks of killing people either you don’t get to be called Sir and the Queen doesn’t put a a sword on your shoulder when she does the business and that was interesting because it presented me well I am a clergyman but I’m a clergyman uh to whom the Church has kicked in the teeth in the most dramatic way and should I allow the clergy stuff to get in the way of being called Sir and then a wise friend said to me if you were to reject your clergy status in order to be called Sir everyone would think you were a complete idiot and I thought yes he’s right and so the the paradox of this knighting is that it has made me reaffirm my clergy status which I have not used for getting on for 2 decades and it’s there and it’s it seems to be an amusing outcome of this complicated story
[0.39.41] CB: Because the being ordained as a Deacon is perpetual
DM: You could renounce it but the process of renouncing is humiliating uh and just not what I want to do so it’s there and uh who knows what will happen to it
CB: A knighthood is a wonderful thing to have happened given the what had happened in the past
DM: Yes The Guardian The Guardian commented that it was a slap in the face to the Church of England and uh that may have been part of why it was granted I don’t know but certainly there may be those in the Church of England who feel it is a bit of a slap to them yes
CB: Is there anything else you want to talk about um
DM: Um hmm I don’t know I mean I guess my reminiscences of Bristol’s club life are ‘80s uh there was much more of it than Cambridge uh it was The Elephant it was The uh what was the club called on (Maudely) Road
CB: The Oasis
DM: The Oasis (laughs) yes and at the bottom of 39 Steps uh which had some other name as well didn’t it and that’s where I met my long-term partner uh we we’ve broken up now but we were together for 19 years we met in the 39 uh at the bottom of Christmas Steps which was a splendid club really it was like going to uh uh a rather raucous party in someone’s front room uh it was uh very agreeable to see a major Medieval building being so misused uh as for a gay club (up a flight of steps) I I thought the gay life of Bristol was splendid and uh perhaps not as much as one would expect from a large city at the time 2 clubs and a couple of pubs nothing to what you get in Manchester these days uh but it was fun and I met a wonderful variety of people and I mean the great thing about being gay in those days was that Eros as the great leveller you met far more people than you would as a heterosexual in your generation or your status you met so many different people and uh that was good about the gay ghetto but all ghettos are bad and in the end it’s good that they should be dissolved
CB: Did you related to that is The Gay Christian Movement were you still in touch with
DM: I’m not I left The Gay Christian Movement partly over a matter of its future direction so it was a matter of personalities at the top I became its Secretary briefly uh but rather more was my feeling of disillusionment with the whole Christian business so it wasn’t so much in the end uh GCM not the G bit but the C bit which um made me leave I’m still benevolently in touch with it but I’m not actually doing much with it at the moment or doing anything with it now
CB: And at that period in Bristol I think the
DM: I was very high-profile at that stage there was a local group run by well a succession of people but it was a nice perhaps a little earnest but that’s Christian groups for you but it was clearly very supportive to its members and to each other uh I’m not even sure whether it still exists
CB: Mm I think it still it’s somewhere (short pause) so that’s the the club scene you described your work um the Church was there anything else about Bristol that you any other activism by activism I mean like setting up the Gay Christian Movement in the first place
DM: Yes I mean it was already there when I arrived um so I went along but I can’t say I was ever tremendously involved in the organisation of that I’m grateful for those that did because it’s always thankless doing these things but it kept going and uh I try to be supportive in being there when I could (short pause)
CB: Okay have we reached the
DM: Probably I know what else would be on your list that you feel we haven’t covered
CB: Well there’s other things like family and friends
DM: Yeah we talked about family quite a bit
CB: We touched on a bit
DM: Yes friends hmm not much to say there really um yeah
CB: Okay because clearly you’ve what you’re experience would say that someone should be writing up your story your biography and that’s not what I’ve come here today to do (laughs)
DM: Yes you want to know about Bristol
CB: Yeah so it’s okay then we’ll
DM: That’s fine I can’t think anything there I’d want to censor if you get a run past what goes in the public exhibition that’s fine
CB: Okay thank you very much for your time
DM: Not at all
CB: I’ll stop this
