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Context
The context in which you do theology impacts on the way that you do it. The strength of Mirfield is that it gives several contrasting contexts. The most obvious is that of a worshipping Eucharistic community. The Community of the Resurrection provides both stability and momentum for the spiritual life of the college.
Study is something that grows out of our worship and life: day by day we hear the scriptures, we sing the psalms, we celebrate the Eucharist, we meditate on the Gospel of Jesus Christ - and we wrestle with the questions that arise, reading the Fathers of the Church and contemporary theologians, talking through with each other the pressing social and political issues of the day.
Placements in the local area, with all its diversity, ensure that the pastoral task is kept in sight, while the partnership with the
Northern Ordination Course
and wider international links keep the idea of the church catholic always before us.
There is also the dual sense of the College as a busy, contemporary community, and, at the same time, a community stretching through time, as former members are remembered and prayed for day by day. Just as study cannot be separated from prayer, so becoming a pastor cannot be separated from the attentiveness to one another that is at the heart of a shared life.
Leeds University
From its beginning, the College has been an affiliated college of the
University of Leeds, so Mirfield students have the unique experience of two complementary ways of engaging with theology: in the one of the UK's largest universities and alongside a monastic community.
College students take a proportion of their modules in the
Department of Theology & Religious Studies,
benefiting from its strengths in areas like New Testament studies, the study of religions, including Islam and religion in Africa, systematic theology and the sociology of religion.
The College enjoys close co-operation with the Department and the University, sharing their learning and teaching resources and research culture. Students of the College who are following undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes are also registered with the University of Leeds and therefore have access to all its facilities, including the
University Union, libraries and computer clusters (see also
Facilities).
The Northern Ordination Course
The third element in the Theology and Pastoral Studies partnership is the
Northern Ordination Course, based in Manchester. Much of the NOC's teaching takes place at Mirfield, College students have the opportunity to take some NOC modules, and there is some co-teaching by tutors from the two institutions. An important event in the academic year is the College and NOC Joint Weekend. Recent themes have been:
- Sacramental Theology
- Racism Awareness
- Death and Dying.