The Oxford connections
Bernard d'Abrera, a signatory to the Discovery Institute's list of "dissenting" scientists and a resident scholar at the British Museum, is is a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design (http://www.iscid.org ) which appears to be an Intelligent Design front. It includes Jonathan Wells, Bill Dembski, Paul Nelson and Michael Behe amongst its fellows (all four are Discovery Institute fellows). Dembski was one of the founders of the Society.
Other UK-based fellows include John Lennox, a mathematician at the University of Oxford (Green College) and John Roche (History of Science, background in history and physics. Linacre College, Oxford), University of Oxford.
Dr. John Roche, is (or at least was, until recently) Senior Consultant and Administrator, The John Templeton Oxford Seminars on Science and Christianity. A former full member, and outspoken critic of Opus Dei (see
(http://www.odan.org/tw_inner_world_of_opus_dei.htm), he was forced to resign from the organisation in 1973.
The Templeton Seminars are an initiative of the CCCU (Council for Christian Colleges and Universities) – see http://watch.pair.com/cult-scp2.html
Frighteningly CCCU’s Summer Institute for Journalism, held in Washington DC, is largely funded by Fieldstead & Co. It pays for students' tuition costs, airfare to and from Washington, D.C., books, room, board and all program related supplies.
Fine, you may say, but Fieldstead & Co is Howie Ahmanson’s philanthropic (misanthropic) arm. Ahmanson was on the board of the Chalcedon Foundation for the best part of 25 years - that’s the one that has advocated mass murder of non-believers, slavery and whatever.
There is another Oxford connection. This is what Wikipedia has to say: "Howard and Roberta Ahmansons' personal philanthropic organization is Fieldstead and Company, AKA the Fieldstead Institute, an unincorporated entity which has never had an online presence or telephone number. Fieldstead's Senior Program Officer is Steven Ferguson, an expert in public policy funding and a member-at-large of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (OCMS). OCMS is part of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Mission Theologians network (INFEMIT), which previously shared its address with the Ethics and Public Policy Institute. At that time, between 2000 and 2004, the EPPI contributed $357,414 to OCMS and $262,000 to the Network for Anglican Mission and Evangelism (NAME) which was then supporting the secession of American Episcopal dioceses from the ECUSA over such issues as the ordination of a gay bishop. INFEMIT and OCMS, also a recipient of funds from the Ahmanson-funded American Anglican Council (AAC), aim to redefine missionary evangelism among Evangelicals, training them in missions as an activity that can include the normal professional activities of laymen. Ahmanson himself has written for an OCMS publication."
OCMS is not connected to the University of Oxford. It offers degree courses but the University of Wales is the awarding body. However, it is an Oxford-based centre of post-graduate work. Moreover, it appears that the connections between Ahmanson and the Centre run very deep – see http://www.edow.org/follow/part1.html
It seems to suggest that the Centre is deeply influential in the affairs of the CofE in the UK, including the blocking of the Rev Jeffrey John as suffragen Bishop of Reading.
Indeed, this report (from The Tablet) states that the Centre has been a major player in destablising the CoE - http://217.64.113.37/cgi-bin/register.cgi/tablet-00846
One-third of schools in England and Wales are CoE. Moreover the Centre has a direct connection with the Whitefield Institute, (see below). Dr David Cook, founder and director of Whitefield Institute in Oxford, is a "member at large" of the Centre alongside Steven Ferguson.
Dr John Lennox is a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and took his doctorate here in 1970. Then for 29 years he was Reader in Pure Mathematics at the University of Wales from where he has a DSc. Now he is a Research Fellow in Mathematics at Green College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow of the Whitefield Institute.
Lennox is very involved in the science-religion debate, having been active in Christian work since his student days. For example, he gave the Whitefield Institute annual public lecture in 1998 on the topic "Is the watchmaker really blind?" in which he challenged the materialistic atheists (whatever that means – I’ve never figured it out) like Dawkins et al.
In early October 2007 he debated with Richard Dawkins at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Alabama about religion and atheism.
Details can be found through this link: http://richarddawkins.net/article,1707,Debate-between-Richard-Dawkins-and-John-Lennox,Fixed-Point-Foundation-Richard-Dawkins-John-Lennox
According to these web sites, Dr Lennox is a member of the austere and dispensationalist Plymouth Brethren denomination:
http://athensblog.blogspot.com
http://www.believershome.com/html/christian_brethren.html http://www.redcargospelhall.org.uk/missionary/01-10-07.htm
http://elkcreekgospelchapel.org/tape.library/List4/index.html
http://www.ibcm.net/BiE%20Press%20release%205%207%2005%20_2.pdf
As a Senior Fellow of the Whitefield Institute, Dr. Lennox is involved in the frontier areas of Science, Philosophy, and Theology and has lectured on Christian apologetics (particularly on the Science-Religion debate) in many universities and Academies of Science.
During 2007 we received an email from a friend of a friend of Richard Buggs who confirms that he is a young earth creationist. Buggs was the spokesman for Truth in Science for a while from the Autumn of 2006.
Whilst at Oxford he was involved in the Woodstock Road Baptist Church. From my own records, the pastor at this church is a Dr Keith Stokes who is on the Council of Reference of Biblical Creation Ministries.
According to the church’s web site, Stokes has been with the church since 1977. It is believed that his PhD is in geology and is from the University of London. It is also understood that at least until recently, one of the assistant pastors believed in theistic evolution as did many of the congregation even though creationism was taught by the church. However, one source has suggested to us that the Church became more extreme a few years ago.
Woodstock Road Church is a member of the hard-line Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches. Stokes acts as a visitor to FIEC churches in Oxfordshire and surrounding areas (see http://www.wrbc.org.uk/pastors/keith.stm). One of the church elders, David Evans, is a biology lecturer at Oxford Brookes University. It is not known if he is a creationist.
I now have two sources from his days at Oxford who state that Buggs is a religious fanatic – one says he has been since childhood. One, now an academic in his own right, has told me that Buggs “refuses to believe that science (either the method or the result) can be correct if it contradicts a literal interpretation of the Bible. i.e. he will accept scientific results only insofar as they do not contradict a literal interpretation.”
The same academic suggests that his ambition in obtaining what are essentially world class qualifications in the biological sciences, were never to develop a mainstream scientific career but “tout creationism from a position of authority.”
The same source told the author in a telephone conversation that it was well known amongst his colleagues at Oxford that Buggs was a creationist. My other source was somewhat less polite, describing him as “very, VERY mad indeed”. I also understand that Buggs was at one stage interested in getting involved in politics at local government level (often a stepping stone to higher levels).
Buggs is now understood to be working for Soltis Labs of Florida Museum of Natural History where he is a postdoctorial associate. See the Lab's web site at http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/soltislab/Members.htm
Apparently, though, Woodstock Road Baptist Church is not the most mad in Oxford – that title may go the Albert Street Chapel (pastor David Cooke) in Jericho which advertises itself as an independent reformed church “practising restricted communion”. (see http://www.albertstreetchapel.org.uk and also http://www.albertstreetchapel.org.uk/C-Beliefs-appendix.pdf for some of its more reactionary opinions.) Don’t bother turning up if you are gay, have had sex outside of marriage, are divorced, charismatic/Pentecostal or are female and teach males or are female want to be an ordained minister. In this model of morality, Kent Hovind is though, no doubt, welcome when he gets out of gaol.
Pastor David Cooke, not the same person as Dr David Cook of the Whitefield Institute, is believed to be a creationist. See his comments on a Daily Telegraph blog in October 2007 - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/01/nbible101.xml
"So, according to your report, creationism is "not scientifically testable". But on that basis, evolutionism (at least, on the macro- scale)should also be ruled out of science lessons since that too is not scientifically testable!
In fact, of course, the only person who was there to observe in a scientific way the beginning of things was the one who made it all - God himself!"
The church is located very close to the centre of Oxford in a very gentrified and upmarket part of the City. In contrast Woodstock Road Baptist Church is some 30 minutes walk from the city centre in Sommertown. The author has no evidence to suggest that Albert Street Chapel pushes creationism.
One of the elders there was, until 2003, Greg Welty who appears to be a dominionist. He was until 2003 a doctoral student in philosphical theology at Oriel College, Oxford. There is an article by him on the web site of the Chalcedon foundation at http://www.chalcedon.edu/articles/0110/011025welty.php
greg.welty@oriel.oxford.ac.uk.
http://www.swbts.edu/faculty/gwelty
He is a founding member of the Van Til Society and current assistant professor of philosophy at the at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas. It is associated with the fundamentalist Southern Baptist Convention. Welty appears not to have been awarded his PhD.
We are unsure whether Headington Baptist Church is creationist (I’ve had a tip from someone that it is). Headington is a suburb on the east side of Oxford and it is where the main campus of Oxford Brookes University is located (for non-UK readers, this is not part of Oxford University ad really doesn’t have the status.) Its web site says nothing about creationism (see http://www.hbc-oxford.org.uk. Its pastor is the Rev James Bloice-Smith who is also a local councillor and chaplain to Oxford Brookes University.
Headington looks likely to be a regular venue for the professional creationists. Ken Ham was there on 2nd September 2006. Philip Bell, then of Answers in Genesis, was presenting there in 2002 at what was called the Oxford Creation Day. However, it isn’t clear who is inviting them. The 2006 venue appears to be a local state secondary (comprehensive) school (Cheney School). Such schools tend to hire our space in the evenings purely for commercial reasons.
The contact for the 2006 event was a Tim Lazenby of Mt Calvary Baptist Church (www.mcbc-baptist.org) . It is believed to be heavily into creationism and is associated with the creationist West Basingstoke Baptist Church (see http://www.cryer.co.uk/wbbc/faq/fellowshipchurches.htm). Lazenby is understood to be pastor for the church which is based in Botley in Oxford.
John Mackay’s web site claims that in 1991 he addressed the Association of Geological and Earth Sciences at Oxford on the topic "The Evidence for Noah's Flood". However, we can find no trace of this organisation whatsoever (see http://www.creationresearch.net/team/whoAUST.htm and http://www.amen.org.uk/cr/who/index.htm).
