Episode 08: Ian Markham
Interview Date: 12 October 2020. Interviewer: Dr Jason Clark. Research and questions by Dr Simon Machin.
The Very Revd Dr Ian Markham has undergone a considerable spiritual journey from his birth into an Exclusive Brethren family in the United Kingdom to his ordination as an Episcopalian priest in the United States. Since 2007 Dr Markham has been Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary in the United States, where he is also a Professor of Theology and Ethics. A trained Christian Ethicist and Biblical Scholar, Dr Markham is a prolific author and editor on subjects as varied as the New Atheism, world religions, morality and the reasonable radicalism of Martyn Percy. Dean Markham has also served for many years as a Priest Associate at an Episcopalian Church in Alexandria, Virginia.
Ian Markham - Timed Interview Summary
0:00 - 28:19
Reflections on the function of a Christian ethicist: to look at the way that faith makes a difference to the world. Influenced by complex family reasons, Ian’s interest is not so much in privatized faith but how faith impacts the world and how to be faithful and constructive in the world. Born in Crediton in Devon, England in 1962 into a very religious family with a strong ethic of family, hard work and loyalty. These family dynamics are complemented by membership of the Exclusive Brethren. Under the influence of the 19c theologian John Nelson Darby, the Exclusive Brethren retreated from the world, making the church circle the whole universe for its members. Distinctions between the different factions in the Brethren movement between Plymouth, Open and Exclusive. All told, with all its drawbacks it is a loving, self-confident and affirming background.
28:20 – 43:08
For complex economic reasons Ian’s father takes his family out of the Exclusive Brethren. Powerful memory as a child of watching his father phoning his own father, cousins and every relative in his life to tell them that he was leaving the Brethren, and Ian coming to the realization that this meant that there would be no further contact. Since that time, every person that his father spoke to then, his father never spoke to again. Family moves to Cornwall to participate in religious life with the Open Brethren. As a result of the move his father rediscovers ecumenical instincts evolving into mainstream evangelicalism, while Ian remains worshipping with the Open Brethren. He reflects that even as an Episcopalian priest now, he retains some Brethren reflexes, seeing life as textured between the material and the religious.
43:09 – 46:52
Apart from the family split from the Exclusive Brethren, the other major religious crisis of Ian’s young life is the death of his mother when he is nineteen. It leads to a crisis of faith and a period of atheism, but he finds that he continues talking to God, even if only to say “God, you’re not there”, and he continues to pray and cannot leave his faith behind. It is because he continues to see life as textured. Reflects on the gift of the Exclusive Brethren which was that it taught him how to experience the world as a person of faith. In a strange way he finds it a little irritating, as he would like to be a bit more tentative about his religion, but as a result of his Brethren upbringing he has a “gift” of faith.
46:53 – 53:00
Ian’s education. Options open up for the family with the ending of the Exclusive Brethren connection because its ban on higher education no longer holds the Markham children back. Ian’s parents had never really agreed with the Exclusive’s ban on education beyond the age of sixteen. His outstanding RE teacher, John Keast, a Methodist lay preacher acts as a mentor. He illustrates how deep piety does not have to be accompanied by a belief in biblical inerrancy or intellectual narrowness. Being an alumnus of King’s College London himself, Keast encourages Ian to apply to study there too. Ian gains a place.
53:01 – 1:00:03
At this time, he is ambitious for a career in politics but his mother dies and he takes time out from education. His interest in politics is stimulated by a trip to Russia. Ian is excited by the move from a small town, Bodmin in Cornwall to the capital, London. The theology department has brilliant teachers and he makes lifelong friends. He gets involved in student politics. During his period of study at King’s College, 1982-85, Mrs Thatcher is the Prime Minister and the miner’s strike is taking place. He meets his future wife Lesley. He remains enormously grateful to King’s.
1:00:04 - 1:08:00
He benefits from the cultural influence of King’s as an institution, and is confirmed into the Church of England, his faith turning Incarnational with the Eucharist becoming important. A theological interest in suffering develops into a general interest in ethics. Becomes much more sympathetic on LGBT issues and the soteriology of other religions. Because of the ethic of family loyalty, his father and siblings disagree with his move but are still sympathetic to him. There needs to be an avoidance of intolerance on both sides of any theological argument, liberals as well as conservative. He has seen the negative effect of intolerance “big time”.
1:08:01 - 1:15:33
Background to doctoral thesis at Exeter University which is eventually published as Plurality and Christian Ethics. It is derived from a New York sabbatical at The Institute on Religion and Public Life run by Richard John Neuhaus. Comes to understand that the secular is not neutral. His thesis has a biographical element to it in its consideration of “how do you live with disagreement”. At this point Ian starts to fall in love with the United States. The American Experiment was born out of a perceived solution to the difficulty that European models of church and state had with tolerating religious pluralism.
1:15:34 - 1:30:54
Cambridge University and a literary project which took 27 years to reach fruition, the publication of The Penumbra of Ethics, the series of talks given by the moral theologian Vigo Demant as the Gifford Lectures for 1956-58. Ian gets to know the Demant family and becomes interested in the scope of his work as a Christian ethicist. Gains access to the compositional papers for the hitherto unpublished Gifford Lectures. Demant is well worth revisiting because of his insights into environmentalism and social ethics. He is against globalization, for localism and the authenticity of communal life. He is also an advocate for simpler living, closer to the land. Locating Demant in his social milieu he was a joiner of groups of intellectuals, notably the Chandos Group, the Christendom Group, the Moot. For a time, he dominates the intellectual scene in Christian ethics, seeing the need to recapture the transcendent as central to existence and the purpose of living.
1:30:55 - 1:41:29
Developments in Ian’s career. Takes up position at Liverpool Hope University as Professor of Theology and Public Life. Serves on the Advertising Standards Authority as a director and ethicist for seven years. Moves to the United States to teach at Hartford Seminary in the state of Connecticut. The student body is one-third Muslim and it has a centre which is dedicated to Christian-Muslim relations. Writes World Religions Reader. Prepares for ordination in the Episcopalian Church. In 2007 the position of Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary becomes available and Ian is appointed. So, he is ordained a deacon in June 2007 and, in relation to his appointment at VTS, becomes a Very Reverend Deacon in August 2007, and priested in December 2007.
1:41:30 – 1:53:41
Virginia Theological Seminary. It is 200 years old in 2023 and has birthed churches in Japan, China and Brazil. Its central purpose is the training and spiritual formation of priests. The gospel depends on persons of authenticity witnessing to and living out what is true. Leading such an institution is dependent upon a life of prayer and an openness to the sacred in a scientific age, and ministry has to be resisted as something which is merely a career. The challenge for the church is to read the contemporary moment. Ian has been instrumental in setting up a reparations fund to pay the descendants of enslaved persons who worked on the construction of buildings at Virginia Theological Seminary. Discussion of how modernity has killed the gathering of people around a common purpose, making financial and voluntary commitments, and joining those organisations between the individual and the state which Burke referred to as “little platoons”. References Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone as important texts. There has been a curious change in mood against Christianity, so the challenge is to shift the mood back. How does the Church persuade people to experience the world and God as “textured”?