When Perkins sought the priesthood

This article, written by Mark Dawes, was first published in The Gleaner on Tuesday, March 4, 2003.

LOOK CAREFULLY at the picture taken 51 years ago of a batch of divinity students at the now-defunct Anglican theological training school, St Peter's College. Do you recognise anyone? You can hardly be expected to. After all, it was 51 years ago.

In the front row, at left, is Father James Murray, former rector of St Dorothy's Cure in Old Harbour, St Catherine. Also in the front, at right, is Canon Weeville Gordon, former rector of St Matthew's Church in Allman Town, Kingston. Now, take a look at the person at the extreme rear. The tall gentleman in glasses who is looking away from the camera. Can you guess who that is? That is journalist and talk-show host Wilmot 'Motty' Perkins.

No, it is not a joke, that is indeed the sometimes acerbic, humorous, combative, critical, iconoclastic, perceptive and incisive Wilmot Perkins.

St Peter's College was located on Caledonia Avenue in Cross Roads, St Andrew, at the spot now occupied by Church House, the headquarters of the Anglican Diocese of Jamaica. St Peter's College was destroyed by fire. However, the arch, before which the picture was taken, is still standing. St Peter's was first known as Jamaica Church Theological College and was established in 1877. It underwent a name change in 1918 to St Peter's College, after the Apostle Peter - its patron saint.

Reminiscences

Last week, Father Murray, Canon Gordon and Mr Perkins shared their reminiscences of the ace talk-show host's life in the early 1950s.

Father Murray and Mr Perkins both grew up as children and lived close to each other in Buff Bay, Portland.

"From the early days, he was known as 'Motty'. His father was an overseer of a property at Spring Garden, a little district a mile from Buff Bay. Motty used to come down to Buff Bay almost every day. I lived in the town of Buff Bay. So we saw quite a lot of each other - almost daily in Buff Bay. Then I left for Kingston to attend Southermere Prep School in Half-Way Tree and Motty eventually went to Calabar," Father Murray recalled.

"I went to St Peter's College in 1949, myself and Canon Gordon entered on the same day. Motty entered sometime later. How he got there, I don't know. Motty was there for just one academic year. What happened was that Motty was a man who held strongly to his views even if they were opposite to the warden's.

Canon D.S. Curry was the warden (the headmaster) of the college. If Canon Curry said "A", Motty would say no - it had to be "C". And Canon Curry would become quite vexed and have a tussle sometimes.

Motty was perceived to be a rather disputatious kind of person who was not happy unless he disagreed with you. In other words, he tried to show that he knew more than you did. And even when he realised he was talking nonsense, he did not like to be seen as somebody who was an underdog - even if he were going up against a person (like Canon Curry) with a Master of Arts in theology from Oxford. Canon Curry was a brilliant theologian. He and Motty were always at loggerheads in lectures," Father Murray said.

According to Canon Gordon, "If Canon Curry was giving a lecture and made a point that didn't stick with Motty, he would knock his finger on the desk - and have a long argument about that particular point. Sometimes the lecture would be finished and we would not have got anywhere in the lesson.

"People might have had an impression of him then as one who was always trying to oppose. But I did not find him that way. I found him to be a person who was always trying to fully understand. And if he did not fully understand, then he would possibly try to oppose. I would not at that particular time have regarded him as a great oppositionist," said Canon Gordon.

Said Father Murray: "Canon Curry and Motty were always at loggerheads in lectures. It reached the stage where the warden felt this man can't stay here. He is the fly in the ointment - sort of.

Gleaner: He would be bringing down the name of the school?

Father Murray: Yes.

Gleaner: And the school could not graduate somebody like that?

Father Murray: Right.

"The point is, all this is perception. Sometimes perception is not the same thing as reality. But if you give a perception strong enough and long enough, people begin to label you as an obstructionist. I think that was Motty's problem. He was a very astute thinker, but on the negative side as you hear him now. Because of his disputatious approach, he did not fit in very well with the rest of us. It tended to discolour relationships. People didn't tend to get close because here is a man giving a lot of trouble in the place and giving the college a bad name," Father Murray said.

• PERKINS' SIDE

Mr Perkins tells a different story. By his recollection, he did two full academic years at St Peter's before he withdrew from that institution.

Gleaner: Is it true you did not get along with Canon Curry?

Perkins: That is not true. I can't remember ever having problems with Canon Curry. Canon Curry and I, as far as I can remember, got along very well. To the best of my recollection, I had no big quarrel that I can remember while I was at St Peter's.

Gleaner: Did you have any problems with the other lecturers?

Perkins: I can't remember any great problems.

Gleaner: Did you enjoy your time while you were there at St Peter's College?

Perkins: Yes, I think so.

Gleaner: What subjects did you enjoy most?

Perkins: I enjoyed all my subjects.

Gleaner: Did you do well in your subjects; were you a good student?

Perkins: Well, that is for someone else to judge.

Gleaner: You did two full years of theology, I mean, you should open your monologue in the mornings with a word of prayer, don't you think?

Perkins: Well, Deacon (Thwaites) does that - enough to cover us all. If it can cover Deacon, I don't know what it won't cover.

• Perkins in no man's land

Father Murray related his version of the circumstances behind Mr Perkins' failure to complete his theological education.

"During the summer vacation, everybody would have to leave the college. The academic year began in October and ended in June. The college would be closed from July to September. During that period, the matron is gone. The cooks are gone. Probably the groundsman is still there. Nobody was allowed to stay there because nobody would be there to look after you. Motty refused to leave. Either because he did not have anywhere to go or he just wanted to be alone - I don't know. Next door to St Peter's was Bishop's Lodge where the bishop lived - a Bishop Dale. When he heard that Motty was over there, he said to him:

Bishop Dale: "Perkins, you can't stay here."

Perkins said: "Why not?"

Bishop Dale: "Because there is nobody to look after you."

Perkins: "I don't see why I can't stay here."

"And so they literally had to run him out. How would he get meals?! He couldn't buy meals. Who would wash his clothes. I mean he was in no man's land," said Father Murray.

"I don't know where Motty finally wound up. But I think that episode turned him off from the church. He felt in some way that the church did not want him. And so, in his curious way of thinking, he decided now to let the church have it. Anything regarding church, he would knock down. Swat it down like a fly. And he transferred that to his general philosophy of life," Father Murray said.

"I was personally very sad when I went back to college after the break and found that he was not coming back. He was a very, very good friend of mine and we got along in an excellent manner," said Canon Gordon.

But the ace talk-show host remembers differently. He was fuzzy about his reason for entering this quiet seminary whose student population never exceeded 12. He recalls, however, being sick with typhoid as a four-year-old boy and was not far away from death. Children around him were dying of the disease. He survived. He wondered why he had lived when others had died. Somehow that experience became a contributing factor that caused him to enter the seminary.

Disconcerting theology

Nobody chased him out of St Peter's. He came and left on his own accord. Prefacing his explanation of his departure, he asked: "Have you ever been doing anything and then got the impression that this isn't where you want to be?"

He explained that he found aspects of the history of the Church, Christian theology and denominationalism to be at best disconcerting.

He explained that the following were the general direction of this thoughts while at St Peter's, though they might have been in embryonic form while he was there:

That aspect of Christian theology which states that God holds humanity accountable for the sins of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Increasingly, he was seeing people through denominational labels.

Denominational leaders showed too much regard to denominational distinctives which, if these distinctives were important to salvation, most of the ordinary churchgoers within these denominations would be going to Hell. This to him was absurd.

The history of the Christian Church where persons who held different or opposing views were burnt at the stake or otherwise killed troubled him.

Mr Perkins explained that he did not discuss these disconcerting thoughts with either faculty or his fellow students, but when he was thinking of leaving, he met with Bishop Percival Gibson who discouraged him from abandoning his studies. Mr Perkins left anyway in 1953.

Read Part 2 of this article in tomorrow's Sunday Gleaner.