THURSDAY MAY 31 2001 - The Times
Obituary
Professor Adrian Hastings
Priest who became a prolific theologian and historian, and who opposed injustice wherever it might be found - even within his own Church
Adrian Hastings was a Roman Catholic priest who believed in going his own way, and a historian and theologian who continued to write on a great range of subjects in the face of fashionable specialisation. He spoke out against injustice wherever he found it, most notably when, in 1973, he revealed to the world the atrocities committed by the Portuguese army at Wiriyamu in Mozambique, and again during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
He continued to speak out even when this entailed criticism of his own Church. Yet although he technically excommunicated himself by his decision to marry, there were many who admired his courage and integrity, and he was always able to find a priest willing to administer Communion to him. In 1995 he said a Mass to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of his ordination, which was attended by seven of those closest to him.
Hastings often described himself as a Protestant Catholic, while emphasising that he considered that the best place for Protestants to be was within the Catholic Communion. Born in Kuala Lumpur where his father practised law, Adrian Christopher Hastings was, from the age of two, raised near Great Malvern in Worcestershire, where his family had been prominent Anglicans for generations, and these affectionately remembered roots may have contributed to his later passionate ecumenism.
He was educated at the Benedictine Douai Abbey School and read history at Worcester College, Oxford. While at Oxford, Hastings, who had been aware of a vocation since early childhood, felt a call to go to Africa as a missionary. His seminary education is described in candid detail in his book In Filial Disobedience (1978).
After a time with the White Fathers, he took the unheard-of step of applying directly to Bishop Kiwanuka of Masaka in Uganda (at the time the only black African Catholic bishop) for acceptance as a seminarian. Hastings completed his training in Rome, was ordained in 1955, and travelled to Uganda in 1958.
After an initial period as a curate, he spent five years teaching at the minor seminary of Bukalasa, where one of his great joys was the production of Shakespeare plays. But he was beginning to question the appropriateness of the kind of Westernised education his students were receiving for the job that lay ahead of them. He also felt the first rumblings of an opposition to the Catholic ban on married clergy in a culture to which celibacy was so alien.
After leaving Masaka diocese, in 1966 Hastings was commissioned to produce commentaries on the documents of the recently completed Second Vatican Council and disseminate them to some seventy East African dioceses. He was also invited to join the Anglican-Roman Catholic Preparatory Commission, an almost unprecedented ecumenical enterprise, and contributed significantly to its final report.
Despite the great affection he held for Africa, Hastings decided to return to Europe in 1970, influenced by a combination of worsening malaria and increasing scepticism about the benefits to the developing church in Africa of being lectured by a white intellectual. Back in England, he was commissioned to make a study of marriage in Africa by the Anglican Communion, leading to his book Christian Marriage in Africa (1973). His contact with the Anglican Church continued when he accepted an invitation to work as a tutor at the ecumenical campus of Selly Oak in Birmingham in 1972.
The following year Hastings suddenly found himself the centre of international attention for his role in the Wiriyamu controversy. The Catholic Institute for International Relations, of whose Education Committee Hastings was a member, was disturbed at the British government's plans to celebrate the sixth centenary of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance at a time when Portugal was engaged in a brutal colonial war in Africa. A meeting was planned, at which he was to speak, to draw attention to this overlooked dimension of the celebrations. In the meantime, he came across reports of a massacre of several hundred civilians by the Portuguese army in and around the village of Wiriyamu in Mozambique. His article based on the reports was published in The Times a week before the Portuguese Prime Minister, Dr Caetano, arrived in London for the celebrations. Hastings later wrote a book about the affair, Wiriyamu (1974).
From 1973 to 1976 he was engaged in African research at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. This resulted in two major publications: the introductory African Christianity, written in six weeks, and A History of African Christianity, 1950-1975, a lively and perceptive survey.
With his considerable moral muscle strengthened by the Wiriyamu controversy, Hastings launched himself into public awareness once again in 1979 when he married without renouncing his vocation, thus putting into practice a principle he had been upholding for many years. Hastings emphasised that his opposition was not to clerical celibacy itself, but to its being compulsory. His bride was a fellow lecturer at Selly Oak, and the wedding took place in the college chapel. For a time it was unclear whether the Catholic authorities would permit Hastings to continue receiving the sacraments, but he found a supporter in Bishop Conti of Aberdeen (in which city Hastings was now lecturing).
In 1982 he returned to Africa as Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Zimbabwe. It was there that he wrote the bulk of his acclaimed work A History of English Christianity, 1920- 1985 (recently updated to 2000). This was published shortly after he became Professor of Theology at Leeds Univ- ersity in 1985, where he remained until retirement in 1994. The department grew and flourished under his leadership, and he was well re- spected in the university, not least for his forthright interventions in Senate.
His prolific writing continued throughout his academic career and into retirement. He deliberately moved away from African scholarship after the publication in 1994 of his magnum opus, The Church in Africa, 1450-1950, and developed a new specialism in the study of nationality and nationhood, partly stimulated by an invitation to give the Wiles Lectures in Belfast in 1996, published the following year as The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism. His last book, a biography of Bishop Oliver Tomkins, will be published by SPCK in October of this year.
His magisterial breadth of interest made him the ob- vious choice to edit the new Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, published in 2000, to which he also contributed more than seventy articles. He was almost as well known for his editing as for his writing, notable among his other achievements of the 1990s being Modern Catholicism (1991) and A World History of Christianity (1999). He relinquished his editorship of the Journal of Religion in Africa at the end of 1999 but had already planned the issues for the following year.
Hastings remained politically active, particularly as a defender of the Bosnian and Kosovan causes. He was a pertinacious writer of letters to the press, and his many articles on current affairs in The Tablet were appreciated by its national and international readership.
In private as in public, Hastings was erudite, brilliant and a superb organiser. He was generous in giving praise, if scathing in rebuke, and never held a grudge. Many younger scholars benefited from his enthusiastic support. His network of friends across the world will miss his regular correspondence and his fascinating conversation.
Shortly before he died, he heard that it was proposed to elect him to Fellowship of the British Academy, news which gave him enormous pleasure. Unfortunately his death came before the formalities of election could be completed. He is survived by his wife Ann.
Professor Adrian Hastings, theologian, was born on June 23, 1929. He died on May 30, 2001, aged 71.
Obituary
Professor Adrian Hastings
Priest who became a prolific theologian and historian, and who opposed injustice wherever it might be found - even within his own Church
Adrian Hastings was a Roman Catholic priest who believed in going his own way, and a historian and theologian who continued to write on a great range of subjects in the face of fashionable specialisation. He spoke out against injustice wherever he found it, most notably when, in 1973, he revealed to the world the atrocities committed by the Portuguese army at Wiriyamu in Mozambique, and again during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
He continued to speak out even when this entailed criticism of his own Church. Yet although he technically excommunicated himself by his decision to marry, there were many who admired his courage and integrity, and he was always able to find a priest willing to administer Communion to him. In 1995 he said a Mass to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of his ordination, which was attended by seven of those closest to him.
Hastings often described himself as a Protestant Catholic, while emphasising that he considered that the best place for Protestants to be was within the Catholic Communion. Born in Kuala Lumpur where his father practised law, Adrian Christopher Hastings was, from the age of two, raised near Great Malvern in Worcestershire, where his family had been prominent Anglicans for generations, and these affectionately remembered roots may have contributed to his later passionate ecumenism.
He was educated at the Benedictine Douai Abbey School and read history at Worcester College, Oxford. While at Oxford, Hastings, who had been aware of a vocation since early childhood, felt a call to go to Africa as a missionary. His seminary education is described in candid detail in his book In Filial Disobedience (1978).
After a time with the White Fathers, he took the unheard-of step of applying directly to Bishop Kiwanuka of Masaka in Uganda (at the time the only black African Catholic bishop) for acceptance as a seminarian. Hastings completed his training in Rome, was ordained in 1955, and travelled to Uganda in 1958.
After an initial period as a curate, he spent five years teaching at the minor seminary of Bukalasa, where one of his great joys was the production of Shakespeare plays. But he was beginning to question the appropriateness of the kind of Westernised education his students were receiving for the job that lay ahead of them. He also felt the first rumblings of an opposition to the Catholic ban on married clergy in a culture to which celibacy was so alien.
After leaving Masaka diocese, in 1966 Hastings was commissioned to produce commentaries on the documents of the recently completed Second Vatican Council and disseminate them to some seventy East African dioceses. He was also invited to join the Anglican-Roman Catholic Preparatory Commission, an almost unprecedented ecumenical enterprise, and contributed significantly to its final report.
Despite the great affection he held for Africa, Hastings decided to return to Europe in 1970, influenced by a combination of worsening malaria and increasing scepticism about the benefits to the developing church in Africa of being lectured by a white intellectual. Back in England, he was commissioned to make a study of marriage in Africa by the Anglican Communion, leading to his book Christian Marriage in Africa (1973). His contact with the Anglican Church continued when he accepted an invitation to work as a tutor at the ecumenical campus of Selly Oak in Birmingham in 1972.
The following year Hastings suddenly found himself the centre of international attention for his role in the Wiriyamu controversy. The Catholic Institute for International Relations, of whose Education Committee Hastings was a member, was disturbed at the British government's plans to celebrate the sixth centenary of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance at a time when Portugal was engaged in a brutal colonial war in Africa. A meeting was planned, at which he was to speak, to draw attention to this overlooked dimension of the celebrations. In the meantime, he came across reports of a massacre of several hundred civilians by the Portuguese army in and around the village of Wiriyamu in Mozambique. His article based on the reports was published in The Times a week before the Portuguese Prime Minister, Dr Caetano, arrived in London for the celebrations. Hastings later wrote a book about the affair, Wiriyamu (1974).
From 1973 to 1976 he was engaged in African research at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. This resulted in two major publications: the introductory African Christianity, written in six weeks, and A History of African Christianity, 1950-1975, a lively and perceptive survey.
With his considerable moral muscle strengthened by the Wiriyamu controversy, Hastings launched himself into public awareness once again in 1979 when he married without renouncing his vocation, thus putting into practice a principle he had been upholding for many years. Hastings emphasised that his opposition was not to clerical celibacy itself, but to its being compulsory. His bride was a fellow lecturer at Selly Oak, and the wedding took place in the college chapel. For a time it was unclear whether the Catholic authorities would permit Hastings to continue receiving the sacraments, but he found a supporter in Bishop Conti of Aberdeen (in which city Hastings was now lecturing).
In 1982 he returned to Africa as Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Zimbabwe. It was there that he wrote the bulk of his acclaimed work A History of English Christianity, 1920- 1985 (recently updated to 2000). This was published shortly after he became Professor of Theology at Leeds Univ- ersity in 1985, where he remained until retirement in 1994. The department grew and flourished under his leadership, and he was well re- spected in the university, not least for his forthright interventions in Senate.
His prolific writing continued throughout his academic career and into retirement. He deliberately moved away from African scholarship after the publication in 1994 of his magnum opus, The Church in Africa, 1450-1950, and developed a new specialism in the study of nationality and nationhood, partly stimulated by an invitation to give the Wiles Lectures in Belfast in 1996, published the following year as The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism. His last book, a biography of Bishop Oliver Tomkins, will be published by SPCK in October of this year.
His magisterial breadth of interest made him the ob- vious choice to edit the new Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, published in 2000, to which he also contributed more than seventy articles. He was almost as well known for his editing as for his writing, notable among his other achievements of the 1990s being Modern Catholicism (1991) and A World History of Christianity (1999). He relinquished his editorship of the Journal of Religion in Africa at the end of 1999 but had already planned the issues for the following year.
Hastings remained politically active, particularly as a defender of the Bosnian and Kosovan causes. He was a pertinacious writer of letters to the press, and his many articles on current affairs in The Tablet were appreciated by its national and international readership.
In private as in public, Hastings was erudite, brilliant and a superb organiser. He was generous in giving praise, if scathing in rebuke, and never held a grudge. Many younger scholars benefited from his enthusiastic support. His network of friends across the world will miss his regular correspondence and his fascinating conversation.
Shortly before he died, he heard that it was proposed to elect him to Fellowship of the British Academy, news which gave him enormous pleasure. Unfortunately his death came before the formalities of election could be completed. He is survived by his wife Ann.
Professor Adrian Hastings, theologian, was born on June 23, 1929. He died on May 30, 2001, aged 71.