Patrick Comerford
It was a true joy and pleasure to be back in Cambridge last weekend and to take part in the celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies. The celebrations provided a delightful opportunity for about 70 people to celebrate and reflect on the work of IOCS over the past quarter of a century in promoting a ‘Generous Orthodoxy’.
I had been a student on the summer courses IOCS offered at Sidney Sussex College over many years (2008-2026), and this was an opportunity to renew old friendships and to make new friends.
I was my third time back in Cambridge this year. But Saturday – as well as being a day of celebrations and reflections – was also a day for prayer and worship, and it was my first time to visit Westminster College and its chapel, to visit the Woolf Institute and to learn about its work.
Westminster College on Madingley Road, Cambridge, is the theological college of the United Reformed Church, training people for ordained ministry and also providing wider theological training in the URC.
The college was founded in London in 1844, after the synod of the newly-formed Presbyterian Church in England in 1842 decided to set up ‘as speedily as possible’ a college that would provide men with ‘a literary, philosophical and theological education, to qualify them for the office of Holy Ministry in the Presbyterian Church.’
The new English Presbyterian College was formed at Exeter Hall on the Strand in 1844. The Revd Dr Peter Lorimer (1812-1879) was appointed the first principal in 1845 and was also Professor of Hebrew and Biblical Criticism, teaching Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Syriac and Chaldee, as well as exegetical theology.
The college then had three successive homes in Bloomsbury: 51 Great Ormond Street, (1852-1858), 29 Queen Square (1858-1864) and Queen Square House, Queen Square (1864-1899). It was involved in the proposals in 1890 for a new federal University of Westminster, involving most of London’s higher-education institutions. When these proposals failed, the college moved to Cambridge in 1899 as Westminster College.
The site near the centre of Cambridge was bought from Saint John’s College, and was the gift of Scottish twin sisters Agnes Smith Lewis (1843-1920) and Margaret Dunlop Gibson (1843-1926), both noted biblical scholars, linguists and orientalists. They are known for their study of one of the earliest versions of the earliest Gospel manuscripts, the Syriac Sinaiticus or Codex Sinaiticus Syriacus, discovered in Saint Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai.
The contributions of these sisters to Biblical studies also include the publication of the Codex Climaci Rescriptus, a sixth-century palimpsest that contains portions of the Old Testament and New Testament, and palimpsest manuscripts in Aramaic of the Forty Martyrs of the Sinai Desert and the Story of Eulogios, the Stone Cutter. They edited many other key manuscripts in Syriac and Arabic.
They found many of the manuscripts in the antiquities market in Cairo and acquired them for the library in Westminster College. While Lewis and Gibson were travelling in the Middle East in 1897, they also found and bought some fragments of parchment of the Cairo Genizah. With the support of Solomon Schechter, they made several more trips to the Middle East, locating the majority of the Genizah at the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo. Schechter identified the fragments as part of the Hebrew Wisdom of Sirach.
The story of these women is told by Janet Soskice, Professor Emerita of Philosophical Theology at Cambridge, in her book Sisters of Sinai (2009), and their portraits hang above the High Table in the Dining Hall in Westminster College.
Following an appeal for funds, particularly among Presbyterians in England, Westminster College commissioned a new building designed in the Arts and Crafts style by Henry Thomas Hare (1860-1921), the architect who also designed Oxford Town Hall (1897), and the college was built in 1897-1899.
The college began to amalgamate with Cheshunt College, Cambridge, in 1967, in advance of the union of the Congregational Church in England and the Presbyterian Church of England to form the United Reformed Church in 1972.
Cheshunt College, the former theological college of the Congregationalists, was founded in 1768 by Selina Countess of Huntingdon after six Anglican students were expelled from St Edmund Hall, Oxford because of their alleged Methodist leanings. It moved to Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, in 1792 and to Cambridge in 1906.
The college chapel was the gift of Sir William Noble (1863-1935), later Lord Kirkley, and his wife Margaret (née Dixon) to commemorate their son William Black Noble, who died in 1915 during World War I, and was dedicated in 1921. Noble was a shipowner and a partner in Cairns, Noble & Co, who ran the Cairn Line.
The chapel looks more like a traditional Cambridge college chapel than a Presbyterian meeting house. It includes an antechapel with a gallery, a screen with gates leading into the choir, and a raised apse. The communion table is designed for standing rather than sitting, although it is set forward from the wall.
The 11 stained-glass windows in the chapel are by the Scottish artist Douglas Strachan (1875-1950). Beginning at the far right as one enters is a series of windows, four from the Old Testament on the right and five from the New Testament on the left. Linking all the windows is the text of the canticle Benedicite opera omnia in the top panels: ‘O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord.’
The sequence begins with Ezekiel’s vision of God on one side of the organ and then Noah sacrificing at an altar after the Flood on the other. In the antechapel is a scene of the Ark of the Covenant in procession and another of Elijah with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel.
The Old and New Testaments are linked by figures over the gallery, Law and Love, before coming to a Nativity scene, the Baptism of Christ, the Temptations, Christ stilling the storm and, finally, Saint John’s vision of the New Jerusalem.
Other symbolism and figures in the chapel includes the signs of the Zodiac, a Bambi-like deer, a robin in the snow and Sir Isaac Newton.
The decoration of the apse was completed in 1929 by W Jowsey, and there is some fine needlework in the hassocks.
There are two small icons on the screen, a reminder of the role of the college in facilitating ecumenical dialogue involving the Orthodox Church.
An icon of the Samaritan Woman at the Well was a gift from the Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius. A small version of Andrei Rublev’s ‘Hospitality of Abraham’ was presented by Bishop Konstantin Tikhvinsky (Goryanov) of Tikhvin, Rector of St Petersburg Theological Academy and Seminary, when he visited Westminster College in 1999.
The war memorial plaques include one with the names of both English and German students who died in World War II.
To this day, the portraits of Lewis and Gibson hang above the high table in the Dining Hall in Westminster College. But the college sold many of the manuscripts found by Lewis and Gibson to the Green Collection in 2010 and they have since been put on show in the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC.
Three years later, the Cairo Genizah collection was sold by Westminster College for £1.2 million in 2013. The Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford and Cambridge University Library got together to buy the collection.
Westminster College used the money to help finance a refurbishment of the college in 2013-2014.
Westminster College is not part of the University of Cambridge officially, but with other courses and institutes, including the IOCS and the Woolf Institute, it forms the Cambridge Theological Federation, which is affiliated with the university. Most students at Westminster College work for either a BA or MA degree from Anglia Ruskin University or a BTh or BA degree from Cambridge University.
The 11 member and associate member houses of the Cambridge Theological Federation are: the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide; the Eastern Region Ministry Course (Anglican); the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion; the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies (Orthodox); the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology (Roman Catholic); Ridley Hall (Anglican); Wesley House (Methodist); Westcott House (Anglican); Westfield House (Lutheran); Westminster College (Reformed); and the Woolf Institute of Abrahamic Faiths.
Westminster College has been home to both the Woolf Institute and the Faraday Institute since 2017. The Margaret Beaufort Institute has a home at the Woolf Institute since moving in October from Lady Margaret House in Grange Road, the convent of the Canonesses of Saint Augustine.
The Woolf Institute, where most of our discussions took place on Saturday afternoon, was founded in 1998 by Edward Kessler and Martin Forward to ‘provide an academic framework and space in which people could tackle issues of religious difference constructively.’ It is dedicated to the study of interfaith relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims and aims to foster greater understanding and tolerance.
The institute began as the Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations, and expanded over time to include the Centre for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations and the Centre for Policy and Public Education. The three centres were combined in 2010 and renamed as the Woolf Institute in honour of Lord (Harry) Woolf, a patron of the institute and former Lord Chief Justice.
The Woolf Institute also contributes to the MPhil in Middle East Studies at the University of Cambridge, and offers a doctorate in collaboration with the Cambridge Theological Federation and Anglia Ruskin University.
Edward Kessler, the founder president of the Woolf Institute, is a leading thinker in interfaith relations, primarily Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations, and chairs the Commission on the Integration of Refugees. He is a Fellow of Saint Edmund’s College, Cambridge, and is also a Principal of the Cambridge Theological Federation.
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