Obituary Canon Donald Allchin


ANON ARTHUR Macdonald Allchin – “Donald”, as he was always known – was deeply concerned throughout his life with the quest for Christian unity. While always a committed member of the Anglican Church, rooted in the Anglo- Catholic tradition, he had far-reaching contacts with other Christian communions. Among his Catholic friends was Thomas


C


Merton, and as a residentiary canon at Canterbury he arranged for regular visits by monks and nuns from Bec, as well as from Mont des Cats and Chevetogne, who would stay in the precincts and share in the liturgical life of the Cathedral.


At the same time Allchin was a lifelong


supporter of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, which promotes dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the West, and for 17 years he was editor of the fellowship’s jour- nal, Sobornost. He was a personal friend of the two greatest Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century, the Russian Vladimir Lossky and the Romanian Fr Dumitru Staniloae. It gave him particular pleasure when in 1977 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Divinity by the University of Bucharest (he also held a Lambeth DD). He had likewise many Lutheran friends, especially in Denmark, and the most substantial of his many books was devoted to the nine- teenth-century Danish theologian N.F.S. Grundtvig. He was truly a bridge-builder.


Allchin was born in London on Easter Day 1930, the son of a dis- tinguished physician, and he was educated at Westminster School, where he was a King’s Scholar. He was in his last year at Westminster when I arrived as a “Junior” in September 1947, and I was assigned to the Election Room of which he was in charge as monitor. I remember him from that time as kindly and encour- aging, a luminous presence, never a remote figure. From Westminster, Allchin went in 1948 to Christ Church, Oxford, receiving a BA in Modern History in 1951 and a BLitt in 1956. His research topic was the revival of the religious life in Anglicanism, and this led to his first published book, The Silent Rebellion. This was a pio- neering study, placing the Anglican monastic revival in its cultural and social context. He spent a year in Greece as a Philip Usher Scholar in pursuit of his interest in Orthodoxy. After two years at Cuddesdon Theological College, outside Oxford, he was ordained dea- con in 1956 and priest in 1957. Between 1956


and 1960 he was assistant priest at St Mary Abbots, Kensington, central London, his only experience of parochial ministry. In 1960 he moved back to Oxford, spending nine years as librarian at Pusey House. When I was writing my first book and often felt dis- couraged, I used to walk down to Pusey House where half-an-hour’s talk with him was enough to break my writer’s block. He did not usually offer specific advice, but his humour and enthusiasm renewed my vision, and I went home knowing exactly what I wanted to say. Between 1973 and 1987 he was a canon at Canterbury, and then he returned to Oxford for seven years as the first director of the St Theosevia Centre for Christian Spirituality. His later years were spent at Bangor, Wales, where he was made an honorary professor of the university. After his health deteriorated, he died in Oxford before Christmas 2010. Allchin possessed notable gifts as a spir- itual guide. Between 1967 and 1994 he acted as Warden of the Anglican women’s com- munity at Fairacres, Oxford, and he was linked also with the convent at Tymawr, near Monmouth. He neither desired nor received high office in the Anglican Church, for he was essentially a free spirit. Although he never married, he was highly sociable, with a remarkable gift for friendship. A prolific writer, with a vivid


‘He neither desired nor


received high office in the Anglican


Church for he was essentially a free spirit’


and fluent style, Allchin was author or editor of some 22 books. Among his recurrent themes was the theology of Creation. He had a keen sense of the sacred in nature, one of his books being named characteris- tically, God’s Presence Makes the World. Another book, on the Blessed Virgin Mary, was called The Joy of All Creation, for he was sensitive to Mary’s cosmic role. Some people felt that he spoke too often about joy, but for me his words rang true. One of the titles ascribed by the Orthodox to Mary is “Mother of God of Unexpected Joy”, and that


is exactly what Donald Allchin brought into my life and that of many others: unexpected joy.


Metropolitan Kallistos Ware of Diokleia


Canon Donald Allchin, born London, 20 April 1930; died Oxford, 23 December 2010.


■Metropolitan Kallistos Ware of Diokleia is an English bishop in the Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate.


FROM THE ARCHIVE 50 YEARS AGO


The Irish in Britain – the pastoral problem The immigrant passes from a community closely knitted by blood relationships, friendship, custom and tradition, to one in which scarcely any relationship exists other than those of work and a loose kind of camaraderie.


With this change goes the loss of a whole


complex of social pressures, loyalties, and drives. Without these it is only too easy for the unoriginal to lose his way. Furthermore, the influences of his new milieu will tend positively to drive the newcomer off the old track, precisely because many of the old accepted values and obligations are rejected. Loneliness and isolation will drive him to seek com- fort where it is most obviously available to a depressed Irishman – liquor, and, later, sex. Perhaps most serious of all from the religious point of view is the absence of the Priest. As I have pointed out above, in most Irish communities the priest influ- ence is all pervading. In the secular atmosphere of a British industrial town the reverse is the case. The priest’s authority and prestige is usu- ally small in working-class society, and he is to be found in person, neither in factory, “digs”, dance hall or pub. And if the new arrival comes in contact with an English priest he will seem distant and remote, more like the Protestant minister, or bank manager at home than, say, the curate who knew as much about the fortunes of the local football teams as any young fellow in the parish, and was always ready to talk about them.


The Tablet, 4 February 1961 100 YEARS AGO


Mr Leonard Stokes, president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, is about to try a novel method of encouraging the stu- dents to think for themselves. He proposed that next year, if he were still in the chair, the student under 30 who could write the best address to his fellow students should read it to them and have twenty guineas for his trouble. The light touch of youth was worth a great deal in all forms of art, but at the same time he advised the young students “not to try to be too clever and artistic (with a capital A) for nothing was worse than apparent effort in design”. Whilst thinking for themselves, heaven forbid that they be original, for theirs was a traditional art, and it was necessary to draw largely on the past if they hoped to do better in the future.


The Tablet, 4 February 1911 5 February 2011 | THE TABLET | 33


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