Surprised by Oxford

 I have always loved to read. When I was a boy, I built a treehouse in the persimmon tree outside our kitchen window, a haphazard assembly of used boards that made a comfortable platform between the limbs where I sat concealed and shaded above the roofline of our house.  I spent hours in that tree reading. It was like a time machine, transporting me to distant places, past and future.  I still read constantly and enjoy a pretty wide spectrum.  I appreciate a good book.  

 A few weeks ago, a good friend, a retired physician, suggested a book he thought I should read.  On the strength of his recommendation, I downloaded a copy of Surprised by Oxford by Carolyn Webber. Carolyn grew up in Canada.  Her mom raised her and her sister in a single parent home after her father’s alcoholism destroyed the marriage.  Her home life was poor, but Carolyn emerged as a particularly gifted and brilliant student.  Upon graduation she was awarded a full scholarship to study literature at Oxford University.

 She arrived in Oxford, a starry-eyed freshman with a healthy case of skeptic agnosticism. She says she grew up in a loosely European Catholic household.  The last thing she expected to discover in her studies at Oxford was faith.  She says of herself, “I had been so focused on the head that I did not see what was coming for the heart or, perhaps for all of me. … I had no real need for believing in men, God incarnate or otherwise.” 

 Years ago, my young nephew asked to meet with me.  He was in college and had chosen to study literature. He said he discovered that most great English literature makes constant references to Scripture.  He said he felt at a loss.  He had never studied the Bible and knew little about it.

 In the context of her literature studies at Oxford, Carolyn Webber began to read the Bible. She says, “I found it the most compelling piece of nonfiction I had ever read. … It unwinds and recasts the world and our perception of it: that the Holy Grail is more likely to be a wooden carpenter’s cup than the golden chalice of Kings.”

 In her book, Surprised by Oxford, Carolyn Webber articulately and honestly describes the journey that led her not only to MPhil and DPhil degrees at Oxford, but to a genuine discovery of abundant faith, a faith that other Oxford scholars have known, including C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

 She wrote, “To be one person one moment, lost. Then to be another person the next moment, found. It is the difference, as they say, between night and day. Outwardly, I seemed the same, but inwardly everything had changed.”

  She went on to teach Romantic Literature at Seattle University.  She also taught at Westmont College, University of San Francisco and Oxford University.  She was the first female dean of St. Peter’s College, Oxford.

 Her book won the Grace Irwin Award , the largest award for Christian writing in Canada.  Surprised by  Oxford was made into a movie and released in theaters in September 2023.