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background, he gained a BA at Birmingham University in English Literature followed
by an MA on Coleridge, with a view to a teaching career. But Leslie Tizard, influential minister of Carrs Lane Congregational Church, Birmingham, encouraged a religious vocation and Stanley changed course. He trained for the ministry at New College, London and was awarded the London BD.
His primary calling was as a teacher of Theology and he saw a need to strengthen the teaching of apologetics in the church. So, as a Dr Williams’ scholar, he embarked on studies for the DPhil at Mansfield College and delighted to relate how, having read all the books on the subject in Oxford, he had to spend a final year at Edinburgh University. His thesis, ‘A Study in Augustine and Calvin of the Church Regarded as
the Number of the Elect and the Body of the Baptized’ reflected on baptism and predestination to show how the tension between faith and doctrine might be reconciled. Lasting friendships were made during this time.
On obtaining the DPhil, Stanley left Mansfield in 1959. Ordination followed, and his first pastorate at Oundle and Weldon, but after three years he was encouraged by a fellow Mansfield man, Jack McKelvey, to join him as Tutor in Adams United College, South Africa.
Jack introduced him to Pam, the college secretary, and later presided at their wedding. But under apartheid, the college was suspect because of its liberal ethos, and in 1967 Stanley decided to return to the UK with his growing family. For the next eight years he ministered at Zion, Wakefield, and briefly at Streethouse and Flanshaw, steering the congregations with determination through the often difficult debates that culminated in their joining the United Reformed Church. In 1976 Stanley was appointed to the newly created post of Tutor in Systematic Theology at Northern College Manchester, where he remained until he retired.
A member of the Society for the Study of Theology, Stanley was respected by the theological guild for his strong grasp of the Reformed tradition. He published a variety of articles on theological and ethical topics,
chiefly in the Scottish Journal of Theology. He had a high view of preaching and continued to serve the local and national church faithfully.
Stanley didn’t waste words, and his style
as a lecturer could be hard to follow. But students also recall with appreciation and affection his clarity of insight, the simplicity of his sermons at services of ordination,
his dry sense of humour and his dislike of pomposity. Friends were left in no doubt that after theology, cricket was his passion.
In latter years, as Pam’s health deteriorated, Stanley devoted himself single-mindedly to her care, supported by their daughters, Jean and Catharine.
Revd Fleur Houston
Ian Hopwood
English, 1964
27 November 1944 – 27 February 2020
During his time at Mansfield, Ian served
on the JCR Committee and, being good
at hitting small balls hard, played for the College at tennis and table tennis. Ever the individualist, Ian is the young man in the black sweater amid a sea of white, featured
in a photo of the tennis team of that time displayed in the College Crypt café/bar.
He occupied a room at the top of the Champneys Tower with a commanding view of the College grounds and played a role
in an impressive, memorable stunt when a bicycle was strung high on a rope suspended between the Tower and the Chapel.
After graduation Ian worked for IBM until 1975 when he became President of a small software house in America. After his return to the UK the following year he was invited to rejoin IBM – something unheard of at the time as that firm had a reputation for never rehiring. He finally left IBM at the end of 1991 to join my parents in buying out my father’s partner, thus affording Ian the opportunity to fulfil a long-held wish and run a family business, joined by myself and in later years by our daughters, from which he took much pride and delight.
Sadly the latter years were very difficult
as the unseen and unrecognised frontal temporal dementia wended its silent way through our lives, rendering him unable to function and robbing him of his speech.
Oh the irony, that someone for whom words were so important and who was so eloquently articulate, should spend his last years virtually mute. It seems unspeakably cruel. Despite inevitable behaviour changes that caused him to be sectioned, the nurse’s words three years before his death held true: ‘Your husband is a gentleman, and however bad things get he always will be.’ A good, decent man much missed.
Lyn Hopwood
Thanks go to Ian’s best man, Roy Foster (Geography, 1964), who set this obituary in motion and who wrote most of the
first paragraph. Roy adds: ‘I have much personal gratitude to Ian and Lyn because at their engagement party very soon after graduation, I met a friend of theirs, Lesley, who became my wife!’
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