New College

His first ministry in that troubled country was at a parish in the Alexandra Township, and he then went on to become a researcher with the Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights.

He completed his PhD at New College Edinburgh, doing fieldwork with the communities which had been forcibly removed from ancestral lands under apartheid.

During his work in South Africa, he met Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu.

I've been asked how I got on with Nelson Mandela, said Stuart.

So it was a very exciting time for me to be studying him there.

And then in the 1980s, I c- I came up to Scotland and studied at New College in the University of Edinburgh.

Did a couple of theology degrees there.

And during that time, I began to think, using, really building on what I had learned of Aquinas.

Okay.

This school, uh, it started out in its original form in around about 1845, and we were in the building next door, which is called New College.

And it's a much bigger building because it was built, uh, in, at the time of Thomas Chalmers, who was the spearhead of The Disruption, and he led 450 ministers out of the established church in 1843 in the event that was known as The Disruption.

And so that really amounted to a new denomination, a new Presbyterian evangelical denomination in Scotland, and in order to train ministers, there had to be a seminary.

I'm not good with dates, by the way, but I think it's, uh, I think it was opened around about 1846.

Okay.

And so that was the original Free Church of Scotland college next door, a place called New College next door.

Now it's more like Old College.

And then obviously the dissection itself was also a public event.

affair that went on and it was actually done at Edinburgh New College, I think, rather than Old College.

It's not very new.

And they just had absolute riots of students trying to attend this lecture.