A Tribute to Dr Robert Ellis

A Tribute to

Dr Robert Ellis

At the end of the 2020/21 academic year Dr Robert Ellis will step down as Principal of Regent’s Park College after fourteen years in the role. Reflecting on the considerable legacy he leaves for the College and beyond, alumni pay tribute to a Principal whose wise and gracious leadership will be sorely missed by all.

Ifirst met Rob Ellis at the beginning of Michaelmas Term 1974 when we were both freshers at Regent’s, Rob reading Theology while I was a lay student studying Geography. Assisted no doubt by much late-night coffee drinking and his mother’s much-appreciated home-made Welsh Cakes, we quickly became good friends, developing a firm friendship that continued beyond our time together at Regent’s through to the present day.

As undergraduates enjoying the collegiate life of Oxford, we both somehow got elected to the Junior Common Room Committee, Rob as JCR Secretary and myself as Treasurer, before we each held the role of JCR President, myself in 1976/77 and Rob as a postgraduate in 1980/81. But, despite both achieving these ‘lofty heights’ of college life, I can’t say it ever entered my mind, while studying at Oxford, that forty-three years later, I would be writing this tribute to mark the retirement of Dr Robert Ellis after serving fourteen illustrious years as the Principal of Regent’s Park College.

My visits to the Principal’s house to talk with Rob as a friend have proved much less daunting than the weekly discussions I attended there as JCR President over forty years ago with the formidable Dr Barrie White, College Principal between 1972 and 1989. To describe those meetings (ostensibly about life within College but, more often it seemed to me, about the meaning of life) as challenging would be something of an understatement. But I remember them now with much fondness, often pondering about their possible influence on my eventual career choice as a psychotherapist.

But what of the possible influence of my friend, Dr Robert Ellis, on the countless number of students and lives that his lectures, tutorials, sermons and writings have touched over his years as the Principal? Certainly, I’ve never encountered another theologian who has inspired so much thinking about the ‘interface of belief and practice in theology, religion and sport’, nor one who has written and taught about the intersectionality of theology, cinema and film. Sport and cinema, in my humble opinion, are an important strand in the lifeblood of a very sizeable proportion of humanity. They provide not just accessible fora for experiencing hope, aspiration, success and failure, but also avenues for pondering the meaning and significance of themes such as loyalty, tradition, the breaking of records and new ground, and of our own understanding of our place in the world.

It seems abundantly clear to me that, in addition to encouraging both ministerial and lay students to reflect on the wider significance of their beliefs, Dr Ellis has also achieved considerable success, as a tutor and as College Principal, improving general access to and outreach from the College, both to college alumni and to university applicants. This has led to many lay students applying directly to Regent’s where, via a now much broader range of disciplines, they are challenged both to reflect on the potential of their own lives and to consider what they can each contribute to the world.

Those of you who have shared the privilege of knowing my friend Rob will also no doubt agree that, in addition to his undoubted intellectual acuity and creativity as the Principal of Regent’s Park College, he has also conducted his own life with kindness, warmth, humanity and an endearing sense of wit and good humour. Enjoy your retirement, Rob... live long and healthily... you deserve no less.

Rod Thomas is an alumnus of the College (Geography, 1974), now a counsellor and psychotherapist.

Although myself a former student at Regent’s, I know Rob almost exclusively from our common work in the Faculty of Theology and Religion. The kind of acquaintance resulting from such collegiality is often not too exciting. Encounters occur in long meetings discussing seemingly identical problems in endless iterations. Everyone arrives at the last minute and hurries away with the final whistle if not before. This leaves little time for personal interaction, and when we do meet elsewhere, it is often easiest to continue a conversation from the latest meeting.

This is not to say, however, that there is nothing to learn about your colleagues from these meetings. There are those whose contributions are dreaded either for their abrasiveness or their opacity. Others never say a word. And then there are the few whose interventions everyone follows because their speeches are short and to the point, motivated not by a desire for selfpromotion but a genuine concern for the shared responsibility of organising a Faculty of Theology. Rob was one of this small group, equipped for this role by a unique combination of grace and wisdom. I cannot remember an occasion when his words were not met with many nods around the table and a generally shared sense that they really and truly moved our discussion forward.

This was my acquaintance with Rob until 2014, the year I became Chair of the Faculty Board. Over the next three years, our working relationship became much closer simply because Regent’s is such an important partner of the Faculty. Throughout this time, I encountered Rob as the Faculty’s loyal but critical friend, whose sharp discernment and conciliatory temper were invaluable at times of shared success but even more in moments of difficulty.

After years of discussion, the Faculty decided in 2014 on a radical reform of its undergraduate curriculum putting the study of theology on a part with religious studies for the first time. It fell to me to oversee its introduction. Although adopted with a large majority, the new syllabus met considerable opposition. Parts of the national media chose to paint the caricature of a Faculty falling prey to secularism. Closer to home, however, the challenges were real and nowhere more so than at Regent’s with its unique team of theology tutors. Unavoidably, the more diverse nature of the new curriculum would alter the way the College had successfully operated for decades; ensuing tensions were palpable in many meetings at the time.

In the situation, I could not have hoped for a better counterpart than Rob. He spoke clearly and articulately about areas of difference and even conflict but did so invariably with kindness and a level-headed pragmatism that seeks consensus, not confrontation. I doubt we solved all arising problems, but the solutions we did find owed much to Rob’s irenic yet principled stance.

From the Faculty’s perspective, Rob leaves great shoes to fill for his successor. I wish him and his family well for the next phase of their life.

When seasons change it is good to make the most of the opportunity to pause, reflect and give thanks. I am delighted to know that Rob’s upcoming retirement as Principal of Regent’s Park College will be no exception!

Whilst Rob has been Principal, he and I have worked together with others to offer leadership in the national life of Baptists Together. For some time, Rob represented the College Principals on what was the Baptist Steering Group; latterly Rob has become a member of the new Core Leadership Team. This also has meant that Rob has been part of our Council too. I suspect that Rob was selected to represent his College Principal peers by dint of the fact that he lived closest to the venue where we most frequently met! Physical proximity was, of course, by no means his sole qualification for the role! Rob has always brought a spirit of careful listening to our gatherings. He has not been a frequent contributor to discussions, but his timely, gracious, wide and perceptive interjections have often created very significant moments for us all. His ability to really hear what is being said and felt, to reflect theologically on the underlying issues at hand together with his pastoral sensitivity have all been such a blessing to me and our colleagues.

Rob has also made valuable contributions at key points in our journey in recent years. He wrote an important, accessible, theological piece about the nature of ministry to form the basis for the work of the Ignite review, a report which sought to capture our hopes, vision, energy, prayer, and practical experience to enable us to set our course ahead as Baptists Together.

He has also enabled and stretched our thinking with regard to young adults. Added to this he has served the wider Baptist family through participating in numerous groups and working groups over the years, including many years serving on our national Ministerial Recognition Committee.

At a personal level, I have always appreciated Rob’s warm, relational approach and I have appreciated him so much as a colleague and a member of our national team. I shall certainly miss working with Rob in this way, but look forward to seeing what God has got in store for him and his family in this new season of opportunity.

The Revd Lynn Green is an alumna of the College (Theology, 1991), now the General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain.

Johannes Zachhuber is an alumnus of the College (Theology, 1994), and now Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology, and Fellow and Tutor in Theology at Trinity College, Oxford.

If you would like to share your own good wishes or words of congratulation with Dr Robert Ellis, please email these to development@regents.ox.ac.uk