I wasn’t brought up in the faith. My maternal grandfather was a Methodist lay-preacher, but when my mother left County Durham for marriage in south-west Scotland, she left the religion of her childhood behind. My Scottish father’s experience of church gave him an odd penchant for the electric organ, but that was about it. So when, at the age of 12, I screwed up my courage and came out as a Christian, Dad put his hand on my shoulder – for the only time – and said: ‘It’s OK, son; it’s just a phase.’
Now, as my Christian phase approaches its seventh decade, I find myself looking back and wondering what had happened to me. What caused me to risk that first venture of exposed dissidence?
There were mediating institutions and people, of course. The Christian headmaster and mistress of my Ayrshire prep school. The summer Crusader Camps on the fabulous Dorset coast. And, decisively, an evangelical boarding school on the south side of Bath. Those were all important, but they were secondary. The flame had flickered into life earlier, and spontaneously.
In 1961, when I was six, my father took me to the local fleapit to see The King of Kings, the Hollywood film about Jesus narrated by Orson Welles. I was deeply moved by it, so much so that my reaction comprises a rare memory of my childhood. After returning home, I lay on my bed weeping. I even prayed to God to take the burden off Jesus and put it on me – which was, I grant you, precociously messianic for someone who hadn’t reached idealistic adolescence.
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