14 Expansion in Australia and South America: 1972–9
Expansion in Australia and South America: 1972–9
In 1972, Ridley became the first of the colleges of the University of Melbourne to make its residential accommodation coeducational. Leon noted in a report, ‘Now the ladies have become officially a part of us a new era has dawned.’1
Leon’s year began with the usual combination of writing and teaching at conferences, as well as interviews with students seeking information about Ridley. He continued to accept speaking engagements, including talks on John’s Gospel at several clergy schools. Leon produced two more books this year: A small book on Apocalyptic,2 which helped students find their way through the morass of competing views surrounding apocalyptic literature; where Leon argued that ‘the characteristic literary form of Christianity was the gospel not the apocalypse’,3 and The Gospel According to St Luke: An Introduction and Commentary, completed by December 1972.4 The latter had taken two years to write and was published in 1974. By this stage, Leon had fine-tuned his process for writing commentaries:
I immerse myself in the book. Then I type my thoughts out to make it my commentary. Next I use a concordance liberally and a lexicon sparingly. Then I go through all the commentary and grammar books I can lay my hands on (this gives me a chance to correct some of my mistakes and add bits in). Then the waste paper basket comes in just going over and over and over it. I have never had anything published that has less than three drafts, sometimes seven or eight.5
The year of 1973 began with Leon speaking at the January Katoomba Convention in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. The year saw a significant change in Leon’s team at Ridley, with Cole finishing after nine years on staff.
This year also saw Leon undertaking a considerable amount of travel. In August, he travelled to New Zealand. The strong cultural and sympathetic spiritual association with New Zealand colleagues gave Leon easy entrée. He began in the north at Auckland and worked his way south through Wellington, Nelson and on to Dunedin to speak at conferences for graduate fellowships, clergy and training institutes.6 Later in the year Leon travelled to Hong Kong for ten days to speak to students doing theological education by extension and others doing Bible training. On one Sunday, he preached to five hundred people at Grace Gospel Chapel.
Around this time Leon expanded Ridley chapel’s function, as he wanted people living nearby to hear the gospel and some good teaching. Ridley was not a parish, having no geographical area of its own, and it was situated within the parish of St Michael’s North Carlton. Leon convinced the archbishop to designate a small area bounded by the curve of The Avenue and the length of Royal Parade, with Ridley in it, as a quasi-parish. Although it contained only a small number of dwellings, Ridley’s new status allowed Leon to institute locally directed Sunday morning and evening services. In the mornings, mainly theological students with wives and small children, some lecturers, Christian university students and local residents attended. The evening services were held with the university students in mind. Leon would preach topically, using more illustrations than in a normal church service, and he would often base his theme on a single verse or short passage.7
Ridley’s resident university students’ marks were steadily improving and some achieved high honours that year. There were several theological results with honours. Still, the college attracted a broad spectrum of students. One theological student had left high school early. He had become a Christian and ended up at Ridley. He was rostered to lead a morning prayer chapel service and grabbed the first cassock in the cupboard, which happened to be Leon’s. Not long after, as the student was a jazz musician, Leon produced the music to the folk tune, ‘Where have all the flowers gone?’ and asked him to play it and sing a rendition of the beatitudes that Leon had written to fit the music.
In 1974, Ridley College hosted the ‘Ridley College Consultation’, a significant gathering of Australian Anglican evangelicals that had an Australia-wide impact for the next twenty-five years. Its purpose was to form a strategy for Australian Anglican evangelicalism by considering its strengths and weaknesses and charting a course for the next fifteen years. Leon chaired the meeting, Mildred provided the hospitality and John Stott was the guest speaker.8 Those attending included three bishops (J. Dain, D. Robinson and A. Stanway), ministers (J. Moroney, P. Watson, P. Barnett, K. Curnow, H. Goodhew, G. Hales, K. Kay, J. Stewart and G. Pearson) and lay people (Professor R.D. Topsom, Dr A. Bryson, Dr J. Court and Mr A. Kerr).
The gathering opened with prayer and then considered a number of matters, including national and local meetings, fraternal relations, issues surrounding the Australian quality of life, theological training, literature, liturgy and parish ministry. The group concluded that the 1971 National Evangelical Anglican Congress had stirred the imagination of the participants on what could be achieved, and that those in the church saw evangelicals in a new light with some misunderstandings removed.
The outcome of these discussions was the recommendation of the following actions:
• Proclaiming the gospel;
• Strengthening evangelical witness within the church; and
• Encouraging and equipping church members for witness.
These actions were to be pursued by:
• Holding regional and national conferences;
• Establishing a national Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion in addition to the local EFAC state-based groups;
• Accepting the charismatic ministry without accepting the views held by some of a two-stage initiation process of Christian experience and mandatory spiritual gifts;
• Retaining concern for New Zealand brethren by keeping in contact and if possible combining resources when international speakers travelled through the region;
• Affirming life issues by being socially active while remaining committed to proclaiming the gospel;
• Maintaining a vigorous interest in Anglican liturgical matters, especially any prayer books, noting that Australia (1973) sold over 100,000 copies.
Another outcome of this gathering was a strong affirmation of the value of parish ministry and theological education. It was felt a school of communication was needed to establish what literature might be required and what might be profitably distributed. This process might lead to a suitable publishing arm.
Leon’s presence at this meeting was critical in terms of its far-reaching impact: he directed the meeting, put his hand up to follow up theological expansion among evangelicals, extended goodwill to charismatics and continued to be involved with the Doctrine and Liturgical Commissions. The meeting concluded that the group would not meet again but it would make recommendation on initiatives for EFAC Australia.
After Leon turned sixty on 16 August 1974, Stanway chaired a congenial gathering to celebrate Leon and his work. Professor W.J. Dalton of the United Faculty of Theology in Melbourne gave a short address and C.F.D. Moule was happily in town. Leon was presented with a Festschrift book, and he expressed his surprise that any publisher could be strong-armed into producing it. He then thanked those present, as well as Dr R. Newton Flew and Dr M. Ramsey, from his first Cambridge days. Not long after, Leon learned that his stepbrother, Phil, had died.9
By 1975, Ridley had doubled the number of full-time theological students since Leon became principal. The quality of the college’s infrastructure also improved significantly with the building of a dining-room and meeting rooms that accommodated a growing student body and allowed for in-house conferences. Leon sat down for a first meal in the dining complex on 22 October. The number of lay people studying theology increased significantly, including an explosive growth in part-time student numbers. Leon was a major draw card, if not the draw card. The same year Stanway left Ridley, and he received genuine praise from Leon for his achievements.10 Revd George Pearson became the newly titled deputy principal.
While the college grew, Leon kept up with his speaking and continued to attend meetings for the ACT Board of Studies, Heads of Australian Colleges, Australian Evangelical Alliance, Doctrine Commission, Zadok, TEAR Fund and Tyndale Fellowship.
Included in Leon’s list of meetings to attend were occasional gatherings between Australian Protestants and Roman Catholics to discuss issues that divided the two churches; Leon had attended the first of these in the mid-1960s, and his involvement had continued. At the July 1975 meeting at Booth Lodge, the Anglicans were not doing so well in debating a particular issue. So much so, Archbishop Frank Woods felt a sinking loss looming. Leon was in attendance as the evangelical representative, and with a manner that was both authoritative and gracious he spoke up and insisted that on the issue under question, the ‘Catholic view was not the only view, either in the Anglican Church or the church at large’. Woods was deeply appreciative of Leon’s input and wrote to him: ‘I felt very grateful that we were eventually, very largely thanks to your interventions, able to reach a consensus.’11 Leon’s conservatism proved no hindrance; indeed, it was welcomed when his points were graciously put.
A Long Sabbatical
At the end of 1975, Leon and Mildred began a year-long sabbatical. Their plan was to spend time in the USA and then travel to ten locations throughout Central and South America. Their journey began with a decent holiday in Honolulu. They were delighted that the island ‘bus’ offered unlimited travel for twenty-five cents.
While on sabbatical, Leon kept in touch with Ridley and administrative matters requiring his attention were communicated through Pearson. Pearson graciously wrestled dollars from supporters and to Leon’s delight raised Aus$200,000 of Aus$350,000 targeted for Ridley’s third appeal since Leon became principal. While in the USA, Leon wrote a piece, ‘Prin. in Exile’, to encourage Ridley’s students. In it he imagined himself freezing through a Chicago winter, going to Fuller (when he could tear himself away from Disneyland), spending time in ten other countries of the Americas and finishing at Westminster. He remarked that he was glad Mildred was with the principal: ‘It’s just as well there will be someone to keep an eye on him.’12
Leon’s first stop was a freezing cold Chicago, where he was to lecture at TEDS until March.13 For ease of travelling, he bought a massive Ford LTD that dwarfed his diminutive figure. The topic of his lectures was current research, and while at TEDS he commented on the number of students coming to see him about the emerging issue of women in ministry. He noted that the ordination of women question was ‘obviously a burning issue among the reformed’.14 On the morning of Leon and Mildred’s departure from TEDS, in appalling and bone-chilling weather, two staff families and a student gathered to say goodbye at 8 a.m. Standing in snow, Dr McDonald commended Leon and Mildred to the Lord – an experience of Christian friendship that Leon and Mildred recalled many times.15
The next stop was Fuller. While Chicago had been freezing, Pasadena was hot. For two weeks Leon and Mildred lived in a single room among others, with only one shared lounge. If other residents held evening events, the Morrises were confined to their room. Leon lectured on historical theology and the Gospel of John, and there were seventy students in each class. He had also been asked to prepare a paper on the ministry of women, reading material by Paul Jewett for some background, to present to the Fuller Institute for Biblical Studies.
Leon then travelled to Western Seminary, Portland, Oregon, to give the 19–23 April spring lectures to two thousand people. These talks, which were published by the seminary as the Christian Doctrine of Love, picked up on his early work in the 1950s. Later they were expanded further and published as Testaments of Love: A Study of Love in the Bible.16
In April, I Believe in Revelation also appeared. Leon had found writing this book difficult. Highly competent scholars had written a range of liberal treatments based on their understanding of revelation, and there was a division of opinion over the nature of revelation even within evangelical ranks. Editor Michael Green had helped shape the manuscript. He and Leon believed that those with more liberal views should read an account of revelation and the authority of Scripture that covered all the bases. They hoped that such a book might reduce the tension surrounding the word ‘inerrancy’. Leon opted to call for a full acceptance of the authority of Scripture, arguing that this was a more helpful approach than accepting the term ‘inerrancy’. Yet, interestingly, his chapter on authority spent three pages arguing that even though the Bible does not use the term ‘inerrant’, it implies it. Understandably, he wanted to embrace evangelicals. The book sold some twelve thousand copies in two years, and this number continued to grow as the book was translated into other languages such as Chinese, Korean, Spanish, German and Swedish. As was the case with his studies on the atonement, Leon spent considerable intellectual and spiritual energy seeking to equip Christians in the appreciation of the truth of the authority of Scripture and the linked authority of Jesus Christ for what we say, what we do and how we evangelize.
After Fuller, Leon began his first major teaching tour of Central and South America. Over two months he repeated a series of talks on justification, propitiation, reconciliation, atonement, love, redemption, resurrection, new covenant, belonging, the customs of the world and the wisdom of the world. The last two talks were based on 1 Corinthians. The key cities were Mexico City, Guatemala City, San Jose, Panama City, Quito, Lima and Cuzco, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo and Rio and Caracas. On average, Leon and Mildred spent three to five days in each place.
Leon’s first assignment saw missionaries, students and theologians gather at a meeting convened in the Gethsemane Presbyterian Church in Mexico City. Leon’s interpreter for Mexico City was a former student of Westminster Theological Seminary, David Lechter. The gatherings included Roman Catholic converts, Wycliffe Bible Translators, and IVF and Navigators representatives.
Leon’s studies on ‘The Church and the Wisdom of this World’ spoke to the problems the Roman Catholics were experiencing and a lively discussion followed. Leon and Mildred gained:
an insight into the problems Christians faced in this kind of environment. To have nothing to do with Roman Catholic celebrations like masses at baptisms, weddings and funerals evidently gives offense. These are social occasions. But to go countenances the Roman Catholic system … or does it? There seems a division between the older Christians who were saved one by one as they came out from the Roman Catholics and the next generation. The older ones cannot countenance anything from the system they rejected and which rejected them – but the younger ones are not so emotionally involved and see the problems more in cultural than religious terms.17
Mildred noted further that some of the Roman Catholics had been tossed out of their families and felt tension over attending the weddings of family members, plus they had to deal with issues concerning schools and views of saints and idols. The highlight of the five days in Mexico was Leon’s last study, which ended with a standing ovation.
They then flew to Guatemala City, where the weather conditions were extreme and trying. Leon became unwell and severely dehydrated, and Mildred had to act swiftly to find him a doctor. Still, the next day he spoke to audiences of four hundred in the morning and five hundred in the evening. A day later Leon’s health had improved and his next lecture on redemption went well. In total, he delivered six addresses. It was providential that two rest days followed. During their rest days they toured the mountains to a height of 2,700 metres. An evening concert in a town square was filled with youth innocently enjoying themselves, and they observed, ‘with no louts to spoil it. It reminded us of Main Street Lithgow on Friday nights in our youth.’18 Mildred observed the brilliant craft of the women of the region: ‘The weaving in Guatemala is outstanding and cheap.’19
The visit to San Jose, Costa Rica, was disappointing with one meeting cancelled as only six turned up. The meetings that did occur were poorly organized, and it was quite a change to speak to a small group of twenty-five people. The deep acceptance of liberation theology was something Leon noted. The Costa Ricans pressed Leon to see how peasants toiled for a pittance under the hot sun. They argued that it was reasonable to start with economics, or start with people without liberty, and view Christianity as a means of setting them free. Why, they argued, should they start with a theology that is Western and has certain philosophical suppositions?
Leon argued that Christian theology is Christian theology. He argued that if Western theologians had made philosophy the starting point, they had been in error and he apologized for his own part in the error. However, he argued that if the Europeans had gone wrong in one direction, this was no reason for the Latin Americans to go wrong in another. He pointed out that Christianity was about what God had done in Christ. We find out about it in the Bible and unless we give priority to God’s acts and God’s revelation, we have no justification for calling the result ‘Christian’.20 Leon found it difficult to convince the Costa Ricans that the starting point for Christian belief and action is God’s revelation in Christ. He humbly explained to his friends that Christ’s ransom was a price paid to set people free. He agreed with the Latin Americans that liberation must be made a reality. Later he recorded that ‘in the end I got the point over’ (about revelation) but felt the passionate concern of the Christians there.21
After one meeting in Panama City, Leon and Mildred flew to Quito, where Leon spoke several times using a translator to Spanish-speaking audiences, gathered through the radio ministry organization HCJB. Ironically he could hardly be heard at one meeting due to the microphone being badly adjusted. They were billeted with delightful people from HCJB22 and were inspired by HCJB’s radio work as well as the direct work of the missionaries among the jungle Indians.
It was then on to Lima, Peru. Permission had to be sought for the meetings in the evening, given the political situation and curfew, but no permission was forthcoming. The organizers went ahead with the meetings, arguing that no reply was consent. Despite the curfew, some three hundred people attended the first meeting. Leon and Mildred were delighted to meet a new Australian missionary to the area, Lesley McGrath. Others present included David Jones, an Evangelical Union of South America missionary; Ralph and Barbara Ashley, The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM); the Boice family, TEAM Chicago; John MacPherson; Eckhardt and Brigitte Nehner; and Willie Mackay. Mildred was able to give some studies on Hosea to a group of ladies and noticed seven nationalities among the missionaries gathered. On the Sunday they worshipped at the Church of the Good Shepherd where Leon preached and assisted with the Holy Communion. While in Peru they took a side trip to Cuzco, flying over the Andes. After sightseeing through the Inca site at Machu Picchu, they attended some local dancing. Leon was picked by a young lady for the last dance and recorded that it was fun.23 Mildred visited a local hospital and was intrigued to see a pregnant Indian lady crocheting between labour pains and surrounded by eight family members.
They flew onwards to Santiago where Leon met with Rene Padillo, Sid Rooz, Samuel Escobar and Professor Haan. Then it was on to Buenos Aires. The small influential Christian publishing agency, Certeza, was their base, and the conference venue was a Methodist school. Leon concentrated on the preaching and teaching of eight talks from his list of material brought for the trip. Meanwhile, Mildred addressed a meeting of eighty Christian women and visited recently hospitalized people, where her nursing background came in handy. On one occasion Mildred visited a lady just home from surgery, who lived in a small shack with hessian walls, a dirt floor and a few hot coals in the middle of the floor on which was perched a tiny kettle. She surmised that the lady was home because the hospital had no nursing staff and she had no money.
Leon made a quick trip to Salta, a little town in the foothills of the Andes, where he met students doing theological education by extension. He spoke twice in prefabricated structures the Anglican missionaries were using as churches. These structures, which were just four walls, a roof and a dirt floor, were necessary as the people did not like visiting the houses of people other than personal friends, ruling out a house church. Through this part of the trip, more health issues emerged and this time both Leon and Mildred were below par. They were also buying their own meals, and they skipped some meals to stay within their budget.
From Buenos Aires they travelled to Sao Paulo, where Leon lectured from 1 Corinthians, speaking ten times. They also took side trips from here to Iguazu Falls and a Baptist seminary, where Leon spoke to some twenty students. While in Sao Paulo he wrote his second ‘Prin. in Exile’ letter to the Ridley students. He told the students he was lecturing in several Central and South American countries and noted the resemblances among the students, especially ‘restless intellects’. He commended the Ridley community: ‘in Ridley we have a fellowship of incalculable value’.24
Rio de Janeiro was the next destination. While the city was large in size and influential, Leon had fewer speaking engagements here due to the nature of his contacts and their arrangements. Leon’s audience was comprised of ISCF and IVF groups.
The final stop in South America was Caracas, Venezuela, where Leon gave six lectures to some one hundred people. Getting there was extremely tiring but the lectures were very well received, and Mildred commented: ‘Leon seems to have won his way into the hearts of the people.’25 His use of Spanish delighted the audiences.
Overall, Leon’s trip to South America had been valuable. He did, however, note that he had little contact with Anglicans other than in Salta and maybe, given he was a college principal and canon of a cathedral, more time spent with Anglicans of varying colours would have provided good opportunities to explain his position. He spoke mainly on the meaning of the cross, which he always enthusiastically proclaimed and taught, but he did wonder whether a topic like the mission of the church would have given him more scope to address the immediate issues of living as Christians in a hostile environment.26
By the time Leon and Mildred flew back to the USA on 20 August 1976, they had been away for two months. Their destination was Westminster, in Philadelphia, where Leon was to be a visiting professor of New Testament for the first semester. His main focus was the theology and text of John’s Gospel, the epistles and Revelation.27 Their living quarters were basic. A student, Chuck Lowe, recalled: ‘In those days the College was not able to provide as it should and the only accommodation for the Morrises was student housing. It was really a bit third world but they lived in it cheerfully without complaint. I know Leon wasn’t concerned but he was worried for Mildred.’28 Lowe ended up travelling to Australia to be supervised by Leon while completing a ThD. He experienced Ridley’s ‘third world’ himself in one of the larger cupboard-sized bedrooms.
While at Westminster, Leon kept his commitment to attend the World Council of Churches Conference, being chauffeur-driven to New York’s Kennedy Airport to pick up a Swissair late-night flight. His opinion of the conference was that it was curious and ineffective because it lacked statements on deliberations in case these caused offence. He also noted ‘a great gulf’29 between the conservative and more liberal members of the conference.
After his visit, Westminster’s winter bulletin recorded that ‘Morris … challenged and delighted many of us with his insights into the Gospel of John … known as an “Americophile” in his own country, he brings a fresh concern to evangelical life in the Americas.’ It also quoted Leon as saying: ‘Church life here is more vigorous. There are more people involved, more opportunities for theological education and an openness to the Spirit’s work.’30 At the same time, however, Leon had been struck by the lack of religiosity of the majority of American society.
Leon and Mildred then flew to Auckland for four days before flying home to Ridley, where they were welcomed back at a lunch one year to the date they had left – 22 December. Leon: ‘So ends the most magnificent year yet.’31
Love and Truth in Women Leaders
Prior to his sabbatical, Leon had managed to keep a tight rein on the difficult issue of women in ministry. However, while he was away on his ‘most magnificent year yet’, Ridley erupted. The presenting issue was the ordination of women, and a few otherwise placid students began leaving Ridley’s chapel when a woman read or preached. Such actions were divisive and hurtful, and much pastoral care was needed. Williams, John Wilson and other senior staff did the best they could in a situation where student emotions were running high; they were the next wave of ministers and had a deep stake in the outcomes. Towards the end of their studies, several students who had intended to enter the Anglican Church switched their allegiance to the Presbyterian Church.
Although Leon devoted most of his attention to atonement studies,32 by the late 1960s he was thinking more broadly about various Christian truths including what the Bible taught on women in ministry. During his 1976 sabbatical, he wrote a paper on the biblical data.33 This and subsequent workings of it outlined Leon’s view on ‘The Ministry of Women’, as did a detailed paper on ‘Headship Passages in the New Testament’ produced for a 1988 conference.34
Leon’s paper on the ministry of women noted the incredible difference in view between Jesus and the rabbis of his day, who held women to be inferior and refused to teach them the Torah. He noted that Jesus ‘seems to have taught women as freely as he taught men’.35 Yet he noted the problem of New Testament statements appearing to assign to women an inferior place.
He demonstrated from the New Testament that women had a ministry of service; Phoebe appeared to be a deacon in the technical use of the term, 1 Timothy 3:8–12 was most likely about male and female deacons, and the ‘Junia’ mentioned in Romans 16:7 was possibly a female apostle.
Leon went on to argue that ‘the real problem is elders’.36 Those opposed to women’s ordination contended that women were to be subordinate based on their interpretations of 1 Corinthians 11:3 and passages about women being subject to their husbands. Therefore, women could not serve as elders in a supervisory role. How could a woman be an elder when other passages forbade women to speak in church, teach, or have authority over a man?
He examined the submission passages and agreed that it was difficult to deny that they put a woman in a subordinate place. He pondered whether this was cultural or theological and said, ‘The position is not simple.’37 He pointed out the difficulties in interpreting the three headships referred to in 1 Corinthians 11, as well as the submission passages when even elders were expected to be subject to other Christians. Leon then noted the problems associated with applying instructions about wives to the wider debate and that some practices at least had references to cultural standards.
Next, he considered the ‘equality’ passages where women were not considered to be subordinate – such as 1 Corinthians 11:11f., Colossians 3:28 and 1 Peter 3:7 – and argued that these must be taken into account with the other passages.
On the issue of silence and how a woman should conduct herself in the assembly, Leon argued that if the injunctions in 1 Corinthians 14:34f. and 1 Timothy 2:11f. were permanent, that ended the matter. However, these instructions were to do with how the Christian women were to learn in their culture and congregations. On the prohibition to teach, linked to the unusual New Testament Greek word, authentein, he understood it to mean the woman must not domineer over or lay down the law to the man in the assembly. It was not, in his view, a blanket prohibition against a woman teaching in an assembly, but a first-century cultural expression of doing things decently and in order. He noted that elsewhere in the New Testament the right of women to speak was recognized – for example, in 1 Corinthians 11:5 and Acts 2:17. Other examples showed women giving instruction and serving Christ.
Leon concluded that it was difficult to maintain the view that women did nothing but keep silent when it was a question of expounding the Christian faith. Furthermore, in the culture of the day, which upheld that women should be subject to men, the examples of women being active in teaching were as many as we could reasonably expect.
He pointed out, in terms of modern ministry, that neither ‘silence’ passage addresses itself to the question of whether a well-educated, properly qualified woman may or may not speak in church.
Barbara Darling, a church historian, who would later become a bishop in the Melbourne diocese, wrote:
My first encounter with Leon was when coming for an interview to be a residential student in the mid 1970’s. After arriving late from the overnight train journey from Sydney, I knocked on the imposing front door of Cumnock. When the diminutive man opened the door I thought it must be the butler – but it was Dr. Morris with his lumberjacket on. He took me upstairs to meet Millie and have a cuppa in their tiny little kitchen … one book in particular influenced my life and that of many others. His paper The Role (sic) of Women … published within the title A Woman’s Place looked very carefully at key Biblical passages and at ministry in general.38
So Darling looked at opportunities for women in ministry and responded to the call to ordination. And Leon led by example. When on staff, Darling was to preach, teach and lead men and women. She acknowledged and greatly appreciated Leon’s unequivocal support.39 When she directly questioned him about the appropriateness of women preaching, he had no hesitation whatever.40
It is worth pausing to trace this debate’s thread forward to 1987. Public and private debate over the issue continued, and privately evangelicals shared a concern that a split over this matter might occur. Leon was not a member of the Anglican General Synod when debate focused on this issue. However, he presented his paper on ‘Headship Passages in the New Testament’ at a small conference run by EFAC Australia in 1988.41 It was convened because the tensions between evangelicals had almost reached breaking-point.
Leon’s purpose in presenting this paper was to show that more than one conclusion could be drawn from the scriptural evidence, even given his own favourable position towards women in ministry. He began by making the point that our idea of ‘head’ has to do with our brains. While we associate the word ‘head’ with direction and sovereignty, the ancient world did not see it that way. For them, ‘thought’ was located in the diaphragm or the heart. In typical style, he examined the use of ‘head’ in the Old Testament, the Greek writings and the New Testament. He then turned to significant passages about ‘the man is head of the woman’, from 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians and other passages. Next, he looked at other ancient literature, concepts such as ‘authority’ and ‘source’, and the view of scholars Wayne Grudem42 and Gordon Fee.
He concluded:
From all this it is plain that the concept of headship is a very complicated one and that it is used in the New Testament in more ways than one … it is not always clear if the Christians were following the Hebrew or Greek pattern or one of their own … it is easy for us to read back ideas that ‘head’ means one who directs, governs … even in passages where this is not the meaning … of course the idea may be present. I think it is in some passages. I am saying no more than that we cannot assume it is the invariable meaning.
Leon then set out all the possible uses of the term in a number of scriptural passages before ending with this final paragraph:
I have not tried to hide my view that when Paul uses the concept of male as ‘head’ with respect to the female the idea seems not to be that of sovereignty or the like, but more commonly of source or origin. But I have not argued that this is the only way of looking at the relevant passages. While obviously I think that those who differ from me are not interpreting the relevant passages correctly I cannot say forthrightly that they are unscriptural. Nor can they say this to me.
Delegates to this conference agreed that Leon’s breadth of scholarship, in evidence in the open debate, was hard to compete with.43 Furthermore, after revisiting these issues in more depth, he maintained that the evidence should be interpreted favourably towards including women in ministry at a high level while recognizing that other evangelicals might disagree with his view based on other understandings of the evidence. He maintained that women could be encouraged in all forms of ministry because the weight of the New Testament evidence supported it.
He saw enough evidence of the treatment and inclusion of women in ministry in the New Testament, against the culture of the first century, to be satisfied he could be a gentle supporter of women in ministry. The most obvious example was his support of women like Barbara Darling, noted earlier. It has been noted by his last vicar, a credible academic and a loving pastor, in a comment that reflects the view of a number of Leon’s conservative friends, that Leon’s views about women were surprising given he was so conservative.44
Some evangelicals in Australia, in my observation, put a distance between themselves and Leon after these debates. Some of the same people who lauded his work on the atonement, his evangelical leadership and his exegetical skill seemed to draw back simply because he came to a different position than he was supposed to in their minds. He never withdrew from them. How much this grieved Leon and Mildred is hard to quantify because they never spoke of it. Leon clearly knew there were consequences for declaring his understanding of the evidence. He put his view without fear or favour and knew that within Australia his opinion, based on his exegetical skills, carried weight.
What is clear is that where he lived in Melbourne and in many parts of his Anglican denomination across the nation, the ministry of women in leadership was championed because he gave it scriptural permission.
Ridley in the Late 1970s
Back at Ridley, and still as committed as ever to improving the college’s facilities, Leon initiated an appeal to raise money for a library complex.45 Not long after, in 1977, Leon was appointed to the Melbourne University Council.
The same year saw a number of visits by distinguished people, including Lord and Lady Ramsey and F.F. Bruce, who preached in the chapel at Leon’s invitation.46 The distinguished and recognized Ralph Martin also preached in the chapel on the topic of reconciliation, a subject on which he had done much fine research and writing. Ralph Martin recalled: ‘Leon was on the front row. This was quite a formidable experience, now that he was the famed author of so many books on the subject … But he was gracious as ever.’47
Leon had established the practice of inviting a guest preacher to the chapel each week. In one period, however, the guest preacher did not show up for three weeks in a row. Each week, Leon waited by the chapel door until five minutes before the starting time and then stood up to preach, to the utter amazement of those privileged to witness it. Darling recalled: ‘Several guest preachers failed to turn up and Dr. Morris would stand up and preach without specific preparation. Some … were his most memorable sermons … 20 minutes long, biblically based with good application and a joke exactly half way through.’48
Leighton Ford, in association with the Graham Association, also arrived in town. The association had adapted to meet local needs and the meetings were conducted over five days in smaller and regional gatherings. Leon threw his weight behind the October meetings and managed to attend the opening reception and some of Ford’s talks. It was a joy for Leon when Chuck Lowe, from Westminster, arrived at Ridley for his ThD studies, to be directly supervised by Leon.
The college sporting teams did not do well that year: they did not win a thing. In addressing the students, Leon extolled the virtue of losing, pointing out that eleven out of twelve of the Victorian Football League teams would be ‘losers’ that year and every year. ‘Life is reacting to defeat in such a way that next time we do better.’ He drew on the college motto, crux coticula fidei, the cross is the touchstone of faith. To the casual observer, ‘The cross was total defeat … but … it was the very foundation of the Christian Church. There is a parable in that for all of us.’49
At the end of 1977, Leon engaged in a four-week ministry with the Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF) in Thailand. On route he spoke in Singapore at the Discipleship Centre,50 and in Sabah, covering most of 1 Corinthians. He repeated his material over ten days to different groups of leaders and missionaries. Leon returned in mid-December, preaching on Christmas Day at the chapel.
In Brisbane in January 1978, Leon addressed the Brisbane Anglican clergy on the topics ‘Loved with an Everlasting Love’, ‘The Love of God’, ‘Love is Creative’ and ‘Love in Action’, basing some of these talks on Luke 7. Some of this material later appeared in Leon’s book, Testaments of Love.51 Not long after, he travelled to Tasmania for various meetings and in Ulverstone he addressed the Evangelical Alliance on the topic of revelation. During the year, Leon had regular meetings with David Penman, who had become the principal of St Andrews Hall and was later Archbishop of Melbourne. In June, he spoke on ‘Love and Loyalty’ at the Tyndale public lecture at Ridley. Leon took a September trip to Sydney to give seven addresses at Pymble on the Holy Spirit.52
Time to Leave
As 1978 ebbed away, finishing up at Ridley began to occupy Leon’s mind. He wrote to the students for the last time: ‘Now I find myself numbered among the valedicts.’ He concluded, affirming that the blessing of God would be with the students. Leon recorded that in his last full year, the college had seen six successive years of record enrolments.53 The student numbers show the numerical impact of his tenure. In 1964 there were some seventy students, and thirty of these were theological (most full time). In 1979 there were some 227 students, and 141 were theological (sixty-three full time). By the time Leon finished at Ridley, around half the clergy trained in the Melbourne diocese had trained under him.
On 10 March 1979, Leon presided over his last Commencement Service at Ridley. Archbishop Frank Woods was also in attendance, as he would give the address as college president. Woods was keen for Ridley to join the Melbourne College of Divinity (MCD) network to bring it under the umbrella of theological and administrative influences outside Ridley. The Ridley community was resistant, however, as it prided itself on being Anglican, Protestant, evangelical and independent. Leon was determined to remain true to evangelicalism in a pluralistic diocese. As Woods spoke at the Commencement Service, it dawned on those present that his address had a secondary agenda. Showing open distress that Ridley College would not join the MCD, Woods claimed that the college was not ‘playing ball’. If he had made this claim just once, it would have passed, but he repeated the claim until it became the talk’s dominating theme. Woods had been under pressure from others in the diocese to get Ridley on board, and perhaps he thought he would make the most of his last opportunity to speak publicly before he also retired. It seemed that frustration got the better of cold wisdom. After what seemed an age, he sat down.
The tension in the room was akin to standing in an electrical storm. When Leon rose to speak, every eye was glued on him as he made his way to the podium. Williams sat nearby. How would Leon respond? Leon spoke exactly twenty-two words: ‘We thank the archbishop for his address … he has given us much to think about … (extremely long pause … looks to Williams) and now we will award the prizes.’54 He would not criticize the archbishop, and his long relationship and respect for Woods remained rock solid.
Williams leapt up to rescue the meeting. With Leon he indulged in a Laurel and Hardy act during the awards. Williams would announce the recipient, pick up the award and pass it to Leon, and Leon made witty remarks. Several interstate students happened to be absent, and each time one of their names was called out, Williams would cheerily comment, given Ridley’s perpetual state of financial poverty, ‘Oh well, back in the kitty’, and the two would smile at each other. Leon then proudly announced that a student would receive the Wilcox prize for the best ThL marks in the previous year. Impressive? Knowing the particular student and also knowing he would not mind, as the student left the dais, Leon loudly quipped, ‘He is the only ThL student graduating this year.’ The last traces of electricity in the room evaporated, and Ridley remained Anglican, Protestant, evangelical and independent.
Shortly before his retirement, Leon reflected on his time at Ridley for Church Scene. In particular, he mentioned the increase in student numbers, the positive outcomes from Ridley becoming an affiliated college of the University of Melbourne, and how the acceptance of women students had improved the quality of college life. He shared that he was more interested in issues to do with the quality of life rather than examination marks. He also took pride in the fact that the college offered more and more courses to lay people and its influence reached well beyond Anglicanism.55
Leon attended his last Ridley Council meeting on 22 March. He wrote a piece for the students, ‘So It’s Goodbye’,56 in April 1979. He noted that he and Mildred had been associated with Ridley since 1945. He was grateful to Almighty God for manifestations of his grace. He noted that he and Mildred would be praying for them all.
There were a number of events to farewell Leon and Mildred from Melbourne University and Ridley College. These included a farewell dinner at Queen’s College on Thursday 3 May,57 followed by a garden party and dinner. Ridley’s student club gave Leon some money for a study chair, while Leon’s American ThD student, Lowe, asked David Hubbard to send an LA Dodgers baseball cap: ‘We were able to present it to Leon at a farewell function. When that cap was produced and given to Leon it was worth being there just to see the smile on his face!’58
Others wrote to Leon, including staff member Charles Sherlock. He noted four ways in which Leon and Mildred had helped him and his wife:
1. Helping in their Christian lives when there had been family and serious health issues;
2. Rehabilitating two ‘rather hopeless failures as missionaries’ – Sherlock expressed his thanks that he was asked to join Ridley’s staff;
3. Entrusting the teaching of theology to Sherlock, and constantly placing the cross and Holy Scripture before him;
4. Providing an example of humility, dedication to hard and thorough work, and compassionate love.59
Many recalled Leon’s hard work and careful stewardship of time, and how he taught people to think clearly and use words carefully.60 Of the many letters of appreciation that Leon received at this time, one comment from an archdeacon of Sabah sums up his influence well: ‘You have left some sort of indelible mark on me.’61 Many women conveyed their thanks for Leon’s direct or indirect influence on their ministry. Lowe later commented: ‘That’s why my wife Irene came to Ridley. Irene was not trained in philosophy and found the approach to theology difficult. She once came to Leon in tears saying “I can’t do this.” Leon was very supportive and urged her to keep going and that she’d be alright – he really cared for her.’62
On Sunday 6 May, Leon ascended the wooden steps to the familiar open-sided central pulpit of Ridley’s chapel. Placing his arms nonchalantly on the pulpit’s circular supports, he looked around and began his penultimate sermon as the principal of a college that he loved. That evening, he preached again in the chapel as the light glimmered off his large round glasses. Next morning, on Monday 7 May, he was free from the significant burdens of being a college principal to champion the cross and Christian truth and love in writing in a way he had wished for much of his working life.
There was another side to the productivity and effectiveness of Leon (and Mildred) through the time at Ridley. Peter Adam recalled a conversation with Leon and Mildred where they reflected on just how burdensome the position of principal at Ridley could be:
After Leon had retired … I visited him one day. I had recently been doing some work on the history of theological education in the Diocese of Melbourne. I found in the Diocesan archives a series of letters from Archbishop Frank Woods telling Leon how to run his College, and copies of Leon’s patient replies in which he did not back down for a moment to the request, for example, for a daily service of Holy Communion. During the conversation I thanked Leon for standing firm and defending Ridley’s evangelical heritage. The response from both Leon and Mildred was an amazing twenty-minute tirade on how difficult they had found their time at Ridley, and how many difficulties and pressures they had been under. This was a number of years after Leon had retired … I had always thought Leon was ideally suited for the job and was entirely unstressed in doing it. The inside story was quite different.63
From 1964 to 1979 Leon had run an effective evangelical college by any standard. He had energetically spread the central truths of Christianity and vigorously defended a correct understanding of the atonement. He had taken great trouble to evaluate and champion the place of religion in history, the doctrine of revelation, the authority of Scripture and Jesus, the value of the gospels, and the truth about eternal life, mission and ministry. Evangelicals like J. Stott, I.H. Marshall, D.A. Carson, J.I. Packer, P.H. Adam and G.A. Cole built on his contribution while like-minded Christians soaked up his clearly set-out truth. Leon had sought, through his scholarly ministry and personal pursuits, to make the Christian faith credible and easily understood. He was anxious to see God’s work of conversion and building up his people to flourish.
Retirement in Doncaster started shakily. Leon had bought a house and quickly realized it was unsuitable for their possessions, one of his few financial errors. Doncaster’s vicar, Tom Morgan, found a more suitable house at 17 Queens Avenue, Doncaster – one that would fit the books. The character of the parish of Doncaster reflected Morgan’s style – in fact, it was close to the way Morgan had once described Leon: ‘straight down the line, no mucking around’. When Leon and Mildred finally settled, they would be at home there.