Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church in Oxford has its roots in the chaplaincy to Presbyterian students in the early 20th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Patrick Comerford
Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church on Alfred Street, off the High Street in Oxford, has its roots in the chaplaincy to Presbyterian students in Oxford in the early 20th century.
With the Caroline restoration in 1660, Presbyterians and Independents or Congregationalists in Oxford often worshipped together in temporary meeting houses. These included Dr Christopher Rogers’s house, ‘Tom Pun’s house’ in George Street and Sir John Thompson's house in the parish of Saint Peter-in-the-East.
After the Declaration of Indulgence in 1672, applications were made to licence a meeting house for the Presbyterians in Anthony Hall’s house in St Ebbe’s and for two meeting houses for Congregationalists. With the Act of Toleration (1689), the main Presbyterian meeting house was in a former dancing school outside the North Gate, and then in Anthony Hall’s house, where they remained until 1715.
During riots in 1715, a Tory mob wrecked the Presbyterian meeting house and burnt the pastor in effigy. Hall’s son refused to renew the lease and the Presbyterians bought the site of what would become New Road Baptist Church, which I was writing about yesterday (4 February 2024).
William Plater, the last of the ‘Old Presbyterians’ in Oxford, died in 1800. His family had been prominent in the church since the 1680s. Congregationalists and Scottish and English Presbyterians did not re-establish a presence in Oxford for some decades.
A renewed Congregationalist presence in Oxford began with the secession of 12 members from the New Road Baptist Church in 1830 and 28 more in 1836. The first Congregational chapel in Oxford opened in George Street in 1832. A site for a new church in St Giles’s Street was bought in 1900, but the idea was abandoned in 1910. The congregation disbanded in 1933, and the church was closed and sold to the city council.
The Cowley Road Congregational church began as a mission from the George Street chapel in 1868-1869. It became the Tyndale Church in 1955, but closed in 1962 and was demolished in 1963. The Temple Cowley Congregational church began in 1878 and moved to Oxford Road, Cowley, in 1930.
HC Bazeley of Brasenose College opened a Scottish Presbyterian church in the former Quaker meeting house in Pusey Lane by in 1871. He built a small church in Nelson Street in 1877, but the congregation dispersed after he died in 1883.
The Belfast-born politician and diplomat James Bryce laid the foundation stone of Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church in Oxford in 1914 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Saint Columba’s Church traces its origins to a chaplaincy for Presbyterian students that began in 1908 as a joint initiative by the Church of Scotland, the United Free Church of Scotland and the Presbyterian Church of England. Other Presbyterians were soon attending regularly, leading to Saint Columba’s Church being built in Alfred Street.
The church was designed by the Dublin-born architect Thomas Phillips Figgis (1858-1948). His works in Ireland included Harold’s Cross Parish Hall (1883), now known as Century House, Dublin, and the Parochial Hall on Novara Road in Bray, Co Wicklow.
Much of the funding for the building was donated by the Scottish twin sisters, Agnes and Margaret Smith, the ‘Sisters of the Sinai.’ Their story is told by Professor Janet Soskice of Cambridge in Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels (London: Vintage, 2010), in which she describes their discovery of an early copy of the Four Gospels in Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai, in 1893.
The foundation stone of the church was laid in 1914 by the Belfast-born politician and diplomat James Bryce (1838-1922), Lord Bryce, who had been Chief Secretary for Ireland (1905-1907) and the British ambassador to Washington (1907-1913).
Saint Columba’s was dedicated and opened in 1915. The architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner has described the church as a ‘well-mannered’ building. The church has a long aisles nave and a shallow, rectangular chancel. The Arts and Crafts-style stained glass in the chancel is by Theodora Salusbury.
Saint Columba’s became a self-governing congregation in the Presbyterian Church of England in 1929. It served as both a church and a university chaplaincy, retaining only slender links with the Church of Scotland.
The front courtyard was replaced in 1960 when a lobby or vestibule designed by E Brian Smith was added to the church.
The ministers who have served the church include: the Revd David Lusk, father of the Revd Mary Levison (1923-2011), a pioneer and campaigner for the ordination of women in the Church of Scotland; the hymnwriter, the Revd Caryl Micklem; and two ministers who later became principals of Westminster College, Cambridge, the Revd Roy Drummond Whitehorn and the Revd Dr Susan Durber.
The novelist John Buchan (Lord Tweedsmuir), author of The 39 Steps, was an elder in Saint Columba’s in the 1920s and 1930s before he became Governor General of Canada. Other lay members have included the physician and Olympic rower Dr WGRM (Ran) Laurie (1915-1998), his son the actor Hugh Laurie and the organist Guy Warrack.
The Presbyterian Church of England and the Congregational Churches united to form United Reformed Church in 1972 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
The Presbyterian Church of England and the Congregational Churches united to the United Reformed Church in 1972, and Saint Columba’s became a congregation of the URC.
Saint Columba’s URC serves both town and gown in Oxford, as a local community church and as the Reformed churches’ chaplaincy to the University. It shares its ministry with Mansfield College Oxford, a college founded by Congregationalists and that has a URC chaplain, and with Cumnor URC since 2001.
Saint Columba’s describes itself as ‘a spiritual community of thinkers and listeners and lovers, in love with Jesus and excited about the invitation Jesus offers to participate in the life of God in the world. We are creating an welcoming and affirming community that speaks out about social justice issues and seeks to share what we have with others.’
The church says, ‘When we gather at the Lord’s table, we bring food for others too. When we worship, we seek to meet God face to face – no matter our age. Rooted in the Reformed tradition, we enjoy our freedom to draw on the past and reach into the future in innovative ways.’
The church adds, ‘We want a better world and believe that the kingdom of heaven is indeed at hand, a kingdom where children do not go to bed hungry, weapons are turned into ploughshares, and women and men know their value before God. We hunger and labour for the kingdom, and hope that you do too.’
Consistent with these values, Saint Columba’s performs same-sex marriages, blesses civil partnerships, and also hosts First Sunday, a fellowship for LGBTQ Christians.
• Saint Columba’s is in ministerial transition, meaning it is currently without a minister in pastoral charge. Sunday Services are at 10:45 am.
Saint Columba’s Church says, ‘We hunger and labour for the kingdom, and hope that you do too’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
05 February 2024
Daily prayer in Ordinary
Time with French
saints and writers
3: 5 February 2024
Eugénie Mouchon-Niboyet (1796-1883), the granddaughter of two Reformed pastors, was a French journalist, early feminist and Christian activist
Patrick Comerford
The 40-day season of celebrations of Christmas and Epiphany came to an end with the Feast of the Presentation or Candlemas on Friday (2 February), and we are now in Ordinary Time, that short time before Lent begins next week.
Charlotte and I are planning to visit Paris later this week. So, in these 11 days in Ordinary Time, my reflections each morning are drawing on the lives of 11 French saints and spiritual writers.
As this series of reflections began, I admitted that I have never been very comfortable with many aspects of French spirituality, and that I need to broaden my reading in French spirituality. So, I have turned to 11 figures or writers you might not otherwise expect. They include men and women, Jews and Christians, immigrants and emigrants, monks and philosophers, Catholics and Protestants, and even a few Anglicans.
I am taking some quiet time early this morning for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, A reflection on a French saint or writer in spirituality;
2, today’s Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
Eugénie Mouchon-Niboyet (1796-1883) founded the first feminist daily newspaper in France
French saints and writers: 3, Eugénie Mouchon-Niboyet (1796-1883):
Eugénie Mouchon-Niboyet (1796-1883), the granddaughter of two Reformed pastors, was a French author, journalist, early feminist and a Christian activist who is best known as the founder of La Voix des Femmes (The Women’s Voice), the first feminist daily newspaper in France.
Eugénie Niboyet was born Eugenie Mouchon in Montpellier on 10 September 1796. In The Real Book of Women (Le vrai livre des femmes): ‘I come from a literate family with origins from Geneva, Switzerland.’ Her paternal grandfather, the Revd Pierre Mouchon (1733-1797), was a Swiss pastor in Geneva and Basel, and compiled the index to the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert, the monument of the Enlightenment. Her maternal grandfather was a pastor from Gar.
During the French Revolution, her father fled the Cevennes where he sought refuge to avoid execution. She was raised in a family that was loyal to Napoleon, and during the Bourbon Restoration the family lived in Lyon. Eugenie was marked for life by the arrest of some family members and by her visits to prison.
At 26, Eugénie married Paul-Louis Niboyet, a 30-year-old lawyer, in a Protestant wedding in 1822. The couple lived in Mâcon in Burgundy, where their only child, a son Jean Alexandre Paulin Niboyet, was born in 1825.
Eugénie moved to Paris in 1829, and began to make a living as a writer. In a prize-winning essay for la Société de la morale chrétienne (the Society of Christian Morality), she focused on the theme of the blind and their education. She joined the Society of Christian Morality and become involved in many social issues, including prison reform, education reform and the abolition of slavery in French colonies.
The Society of Christian Morality shared its conference rooms with the Saint-Simonians. Eugénie attended the sermons of the Saint-Simonians and, inspired by their ideas, followed their movement with her husband and son.
The Saint-Simonians were radical and fringe Christians and utopian socialists. She became one of the four women who became responsible in 1830 for preaching to the workers but bringing them aid and education. The radical religious movement eventually split and Eugénie distanced herself from the Saint-Simonians without disowning their economic and political ideas.
She was part of the group of women who took part in the first periodical written entirely by women, La Femme libre (The free woman), created by Marie-Reine Guindorf and Desiree Veret.
Back in Lyon in 1833, Eugénie founded the first feminist periodical outside Paris region with the publication of The Women’s Adviser (Le Conseiller des femmes), followed by The Lyonese Mosaic (La Mosaïque Lyonnaise), and in 1834 she took part in the creation of The Athenaeum of Women (L’Athénée des femmes).
Back in Paris, Eugénie founded The Gazette of Women (La Gazette des femmes) in 1836. She was the editor in chief of The Peace of the Two Worlds (La Paix des deux mondes) in 1844.
The revolution of 1848 gave new hope to feminism. In March 1848, Eugénie founded and ran The Voice of Women (La Voix des femmes). It was described as ‘a socialist and political newspaper representing all women’s interests,’ and was supported by a political club that included many feminists involved with small publications.
The Voice of Women took a radical initiative on 6 April when it nominated the writer George Sand (1804-1876) as a candidate to the French Constituent Assembly. Sand disavowed the initiative and claimed she did not know the women involved. Satirical cartoonists lampooned Eugénie and the journalists of The Voice of Women.
Discouraged and hurt by the fallout, Eugénie ceased publishing The Voice of Women on 20 June, and her group of feminist activists dispersed. She retired from public life and went into exile in Geneva, where she lived with difficulty translating Charles Dickens and children’s books by Lydia Maria Child and Maria Edgeworth.
Eugénie Niboyet returned to France in 1860, and published The True Book of Women (Le Vrai livre des femmes) in 1863. She took up the pen again after the Paris Commune in 1871 to call for pardons for the convicted Communards. By contrast, the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur was built on the summit of the butte of Montmartre to ‘expiate the crimes of the Commune.’ It looks down on the site where 30,000 Communards were slaughtered.
At the age of 82, Eugénie Niboyet was honoured at the feminist congress in Paris in 1878. She died in Paris on 6 January 1883.
Allée Eugénie Niboyet … a street sign in Lyon 7e arrondissement (Photograph: Romainbehar, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Mark 6: 53-56 (NRSVA):
53 When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. 54 When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, 55 and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. 56 And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the market-places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.
The south façade of the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur in Montmartre (Photograph: Tonchino/Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Today’s Prayers (Monday 5 February 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Gender Justice in Christ.’ This theme was introduced yesterday by Ellen McMibanga, Zambia Anglican Council Outreach Programme.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (5 February 2024) invites us to pray in these words:
We pray for the Anglican Church in Zambia – for all the projects and programmes they are running to give justice and a voice to the oppressed and to care for their communities.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
you have created the heavens and the earth
and made us in your own image:
teach us to discern your hand in all your works
and your likeness in all your children;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who with you and the Holy Spirit reigns supreme over all things,
now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God our creator,
by your gift
the tree of life was set at the heart of the earthly paradise,
and the bread of life at the heart of your Church:
may we who have been nourished at your table on earth
be transformed by the glory of the Saviour’s cross
and enjoy the delights of eternity;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Almighty God,
give us reverence for all creation
and respect for every person,
that we may mirror your likeness
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection (Francis Le Jau, 1665-1715)
Continued Tomorrow (Albert Schweitzer, 1875-1965)
At the age of 82, Eugénie Niboyet was honoured at the feminist congress in Paris in 1878
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
Patrick Comerford
The 40-day season of celebrations of Christmas and Epiphany came to an end with the Feast of the Presentation or Candlemas on Friday (2 February), and we are now in Ordinary Time, that short time before Lent begins next week.
Charlotte and I are planning to visit Paris later this week. So, in these 11 days in Ordinary Time, my reflections each morning are drawing on the lives of 11 French saints and spiritual writers.
As this series of reflections began, I admitted that I have never been very comfortable with many aspects of French spirituality, and that I need to broaden my reading in French spirituality. So, I have turned to 11 figures or writers you might not otherwise expect. They include men and women, Jews and Christians, immigrants and emigrants, monks and philosophers, Catholics and Protestants, and even a few Anglicans.
I am taking some quiet time early this morning for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, A reflection on a French saint or writer in spirituality;
2, today’s Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
Eugénie Mouchon-Niboyet (1796-1883) founded the first feminist daily newspaper in France
French saints and writers: 3, Eugénie Mouchon-Niboyet (1796-1883):
Eugénie Mouchon-Niboyet (1796-1883), the granddaughter of two Reformed pastors, was a French author, journalist, early feminist and a Christian activist who is best known as the founder of La Voix des Femmes (The Women’s Voice), the first feminist daily newspaper in France.
Eugénie Niboyet was born Eugenie Mouchon in Montpellier on 10 September 1796. In The Real Book of Women (Le vrai livre des femmes): ‘I come from a literate family with origins from Geneva, Switzerland.’ Her paternal grandfather, the Revd Pierre Mouchon (1733-1797), was a Swiss pastor in Geneva and Basel, and compiled the index to the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert, the monument of the Enlightenment. Her maternal grandfather was a pastor from Gar.
During the French Revolution, her father fled the Cevennes where he sought refuge to avoid execution. She was raised in a family that was loyal to Napoleon, and during the Bourbon Restoration the family lived in Lyon. Eugenie was marked for life by the arrest of some family members and by her visits to prison.
At 26, Eugénie married Paul-Louis Niboyet, a 30-year-old lawyer, in a Protestant wedding in 1822. The couple lived in Mâcon in Burgundy, where their only child, a son Jean Alexandre Paulin Niboyet, was born in 1825.
Eugénie moved to Paris in 1829, and began to make a living as a writer. In a prize-winning essay for la Société de la morale chrétienne (the Society of Christian Morality), she focused on the theme of the blind and their education. She joined the Society of Christian Morality and become involved in many social issues, including prison reform, education reform and the abolition of slavery in French colonies.
The Society of Christian Morality shared its conference rooms with the Saint-Simonians. Eugénie attended the sermons of the Saint-Simonians and, inspired by their ideas, followed their movement with her husband and son.
The Saint-Simonians were radical and fringe Christians and utopian socialists. She became one of the four women who became responsible in 1830 for preaching to the workers but bringing them aid and education. The radical religious movement eventually split and Eugénie distanced herself from the Saint-Simonians without disowning their economic and political ideas.
She was part of the group of women who took part in the first periodical written entirely by women, La Femme libre (The free woman), created by Marie-Reine Guindorf and Desiree Veret.
Back in Lyon in 1833, Eugénie founded the first feminist periodical outside Paris region with the publication of The Women’s Adviser (Le Conseiller des femmes), followed by The Lyonese Mosaic (La Mosaïque Lyonnaise), and in 1834 she took part in the creation of The Athenaeum of Women (L’Athénée des femmes).
Back in Paris, Eugénie founded The Gazette of Women (La Gazette des femmes) in 1836. She was the editor in chief of The Peace of the Two Worlds (La Paix des deux mondes) in 1844.
The revolution of 1848 gave new hope to feminism. In March 1848, Eugénie founded and ran The Voice of Women (La Voix des femmes). It was described as ‘a socialist and political newspaper representing all women’s interests,’ and was supported by a political club that included many feminists involved with small publications.
The Voice of Women took a radical initiative on 6 April when it nominated the writer George Sand (1804-1876) as a candidate to the French Constituent Assembly. Sand disavowed the initiative and claimed she did not know the women involved. Satirical cartoonists lampooned Eugénie and the journalists of The Voice of Women.
Discouraged and hurt by the fallout, Eugénie ceased publishing The Voice of Women on 20 June, and her group of feminist activists dispersed. She retired from public life and went into exile in Geneva, where she lived with difficulty translating Charles Dickens and children’s books by Lydia Maria Child and Maria Edgeworth.
Eugénie Niboyet returned to France in 1860, and published The True Book of Women (Le Vrai livre des femmes) in 1863. She took up the pen again after the Paris Commune in 1871 to call for pardons for the convicted Communards. By contrast, the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur was built on the summit of the butte of Montmartre to ‘expiate the crimes of the Commune.’ It looks down on the site where 30,000 Communards were slaughtered.
At the age of 82, Eugénie Niboyet was honoured at the feminist congress in Paris in 1878. She died in Paris on 6 January 1883.
Allée Eugénie Niboyet … a street sign in Lyon 7e arrondissement (Photograph: Romainbehar, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Mark 6: 53-56 (NRSVA):
53 When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. 54 When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, 55 and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. 56 And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the market-places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.
The south façade of the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur in Montmartre (Photograph: Tonchino/Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Today’s Prayers (Monday 5 February 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Gender Justice in Christ.’ This theme was introduced yesterday by Ellen McMibanga, Zambia Anglican Council Outreach Programme.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (5 February 2024) invites us to pray in these words:
We pray for the Anglican Church in Zambia – for all the projects and programmes they are running to give justice and a voice to the oppressed and to care for their communities.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
you have created the heavens and the earth
and made us in your own image:
teach us to discern your hand in all your works
and your likeness in all your children;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who with you and the Holy Spirit reigns supreme over all things,
now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God our creator,
by your gift
the tree of life was set at the heart of the earthly paradise,
and the bread of life at the heart of your Church:
may we who have been nourished at your table on earth
be transformed by the glory of the Saviour’s cross
and enjoy the delights of eternity;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Almighty God,
give us reverence for all creation
and respect for every person,
that we may mirror your likeness
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection (Francis Le Jau, 1665-1715)
Continued Tomorrow (Albert Schweitzer, 1875-1965)
At the age of 82, Eugénie Niboyet was honoured at the feminist congress in Paris in 1878
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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