The Revd Vivien Mary Edwards (née Baggs): 1944-2022
'Throughout her life Viv followed in Christ’s footsteps, in prayer, carefully prepared but still spontaneous public worship, and ceaseless love and devotion to all God’s creatures, whether of the Church or not'
Vivien, known to very many as Viv, was born on 16 August 1944, to Joan and William Baggs, in the ‘urban village’ of Charlton Kings, on the edge of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, which then still had a distinctly rural character, including her family’s own Little Herbert’s Farm.
Born into a Baptist family, of partly Methodist background from the Forest of Dean, she was brought up in a family that was heavily involved in Charlton Kings Baptist Church, where she was for a while a Sunday School teacher.
Her early education was local, but in due course she won a place at what was then Pate’s Grammar School for Girls, in Cheltenham itself, which was founded by a prominent Tudor merchant and local politician, Richard Pate, who manoeuvred successfully through the many religious changes in England in the 16th century. One might perhaps see this as a premonition of Viv’s subsequent lifelong devotion to the fundamental unity of Christ’s Church, and her personal quest seems in fact to have begun while she was at Pate’s, where a perceptive Religious Studies teacher successfully encouraged her to apply to read Theology at Kings College London.
When she was admitted there in the early 1960s, during a period of change and some excitement in most if not all denominations, King’s not only taught theology to undergraduates but also trained future clergy for the Church of England, with a strongly High Church, or Anglo-Catholic, ethos, which involved daily worship in the College chapel.
A lot of this was quite a culture shock for Viv, given her background, but she quickly took to London life, including an exploration of the rich and varied religious activities of the area and regular trips across the river to concerts at the Royal Festival Hall.
Her Baptist membership was naturally at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, where she greatly admired, and came to know well, the then minister, the Revd Howard Williams. While she was at King’s, she also came to know the future Archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu, then a postgraduate student there, who vividly represented to her the true nature of apartheid South Africa, as well as the generous, inclusive Gospel.
Having graduated from King’s, Viv went for ministerial training to Bristol Baptist College, and kept in contact with some of her fellow students for the rest of her life. Another culture shock awaited her when she received her first call, as minister of Bethany Baptist Church, in Cannock, Staffordshire. In the late 1960s, this was still a coal-mining area, with brass bands, male voice choirs and a fairly impenetrable accent and dialect for someone with her background, but her deep Christian devotion and pastoral sense clearly got through in any case.
She also continued to have contact with university theology, now at the University of Birmingham, where, in 1973, she became Baptist chaplain in the ecumenical team at Saint Francis Hall, and where I first met her, having been appointed as a Lecturer in History at the University in 1975.
During the 1980s, Viv was active in very many ways and in various parts of Christ’s Church. Her successive dwellings in Birmingham were always hospitable homes, open to students, academic colleagues, and other friends, particularly those involved with Christian arts, which were not yet as fashionable in religious institutions as they are now.
After finishing her term as a university chaplain, she continued to be involved with Kings Heath Baptist Church and Carr’s Lane URC, and also joined a Catholic charismatic group, as well as being active in Birmingham’s Black Pentecostal churches. In the latter connection, Viv helped to establish the pioneering Black and White Christian partnership, based at Birmingham University, even travelling to East Germany with a group of young black Brummies, to visit the Lutheran churches there in what proved to be the last years of the communist regime.
Her work in Christian arts brought contact and friendship with members of various Christian denominations, including Quakers and Roman Catholics, the latter connection leading her to travel four times, with Catholic groups, on ‘penitential’ pilgrimage to the shrine of Station Island on Lough Derg, in County Donegal, ‘St Patrick’s Purgatory’ – a very different environment from her Baptist upbringing! During this time, she was also, for a while, a Religious Studies teacher in Birmingham Catholic schools, and especially at Holy Child Girls School in Edgbaston.
Finally, in this phase of her life, she became minister, for a few years, of People’s Chapel, in central Birmingham.
However, by the time that she and I became engaged, at Easter 1993, she was no longer in this post, but had started to train, and would afterwards practise, as a teacher of the Alexander technique, as well as continuing her work in Christian art, with her dear friend the late Susan Skinner, also supporting the work of artist friends, as she would do to the end.
Viv and I were married on 16 October 1993, the service taking place, by her choice entirely, at the Anglo-Catholic church where I was then worshipping, which was St Alban and St Patrick, Highgate, Birmingham. The church was full of people with various faiths and none, the music being provided by Birmingham University Liturgical Choir, and the sermon preached by my then colleague, the Baptist, Professor Eric Ives.
We lived at first in my house in Moseley, but in 1995-6 I returned to Oxford, as an associate of my old college, Queen’s, and senior research fellow in the Spanish Sub-Faculty. Viv became a member of New Road Baptist Church and was increasingly involved there, while I worshipped at St Mary and St John, Cowley Road (near our house in Divinity Road), and afterwards at St Mary Magdalen’s, in the city centre.
In 2000 we moved to Marston Street, East Oxford, and Viv returned to full-time ministry as Free Church Chaplain, then senior Chaplain, at Broadmoor Hospital. By all accounts she excelled in that demanding work, staying there for eight years, and then, far from retiring, she did a year as Chaplain of the former Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre, Kidlington, which was often a harrowing experience.
For several years she chaired Churches Together in Central Oxford, with me as secretary, and, at this time, she qualified as a spiritual director in the Ignatian tradition, exercising the ministry of spiritual direction until her last weeks.
Finally, she returned in some ways to her roots, as minister of Wolvercote Baptist Church, to which she was utterly devoted until her dying day, this being 16 October 2022, our 29th wedding anniversary, after the sudden devastating arrival of cancer, which she faced with spiritual intensity.
Her diverse ecumenical life was represented not only by her funeral, which was a High Mass of Requiem, at St Mary Magdalen’s Oxford, and her memorial service at Wolvercote Baptist Church, but also by masses celebrated in Birmingham Oratory and the Jesuit College Church at Saint Louis University, Missouri, where we had been together, and even by an Oxford friend lighting a candle for her in St Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai.
All this must more than balance the grief of losing her, though fittingly, and again at her request, her ashes are now buried in Wolvercote cemetery, close to the scene of her last ministry. Throughout her life she followed in Christ’s footsteps, in prayer, carefully prepared but still spontaneous public worship, and ceaseless love and devotion to all God’s creatures, whether of the Church or not.
John Edwards