‘Look at people’

On a journey from mental health nursing to practical theologian and King’s Chaplain, Jackie Macadam learns about the life and calling of the Rev Professor John Swinton.

“ONE of the most painful things that people with mental health challenges or disabilities experience is stigma.”

The Rev Professor John Swinton is talking about his experiences as a minister, a mental health nurse and a hospital chaplain. Though he now teaches at Aberdeen University, and is a King’s Chaplain, he is still conscious of the problems mental health difficulties can cause and the impact they can have.

“Stigma is when you take one part of a person and make it the whole of them. For example, you might get a diagnosis of schizophrenia. When that happens you become, in the eyes of others, a ‘schizophrenic’. But what on earth does that mean? What is a ‘schizophrenic’? Is it like a Spaniard, a Glaswegian or an Aberdonian? Stigma hides the person from us and when that happens people become excluded and unloved. In my role as community mental health chaplain, my job was to try to break down this kind of stigma within religious communities and help create places of belonging for all people.”

As a child, John was adopted into the family of Janet and Alan Swinton, a Church of Scotland minister in Cumbernauld.

“I was adopted when I was three weeks old. It’s funny really. I’m adopted, my brother and sister are adopted, and my cousins are adopted. Four of my five children are adopted. So adopting is kind of the way in which we do family. We’re in good company of course. Jesus was adopted by Joseph. I’m always surprised at how little attention Christians give to the significance of adopting children. In a country where there are literally thousands of children looking for families, it seems strange that Christians don’t emphasise this way of doing family more strongly.”

In spite of being adopted into the manse, John wasn’t completely enamoured of the church.

“I spent my early life living in and around the Glasgow area. My father was a Church of Scotland minister in Cumbernauld, so I was always exposed to church life. Mind you, being a minister’s son can bring its own blessings and curse. When you have to go to church every week and then get into trouble for talking during the sermon it kind of conditions you to think of church in rather negative terms. And I did for a lot of my early life. I wasn’t really interested.

“Then a strange thing happened. I had been on a night out in Aberdeen with some friends from up the coast. It was a typical 20 year out wild night with all that that entails. A few months later I was visiting the same friends in their home town. To my great surprise I discovered that they had become Christians! That made me think. I knew a lot about the theory of Christianity, but it wasn’t until I saw that ‘theory’ work itself out in transformed lives that I really began to understand that following Jesus might be a real and exciting thing.

“I am forever grateful to my parents who, despite my early rebelliousness played a central part in my spiritual formation. It took a while, but their hard work and patience paid off, eventually!”

“I am forever grateful to my parents who, despite my early rebelliousness played a central part in my spiritual formation. It took a while, but their hard work and patience paid off, eventually!”

As a young man, John drifted from job to job, looking for something that satisfied him.

“My first job was as a marine scientist at the Marine Laboratories in Aberdeen. I’m not quite sure how I managed to get there. I am no scientist, and I can’t for the life of me do statistics so you can see that there was an obvious problem. The Marine Laboritories also saw that there was a problem and ‘let me go’ after a year. I then drove a delivery van for a while. I really liked that! No pressure, no responsibility and miles of beautiful north east countryside to drive around. But I knew I didn’t want to do that forever. So, what do I do?

“My good friend at the time, David Adams had just become a mental health nurse. I thought: ‘I’ll do the same!’ I did. I trained first in psychiatry and then retrained in the area of learning disabilities. I loved nursing. I had definitely found my vocation.”

John continued to nurse for 16 years. He found mental health nursing to be challenging and full of spirituality. The insights and understandings that he gained there continue to inform his current work.

“During my research, I heard of a young man called Allen, who lived with schizophrenia. He talked about the day he formally discovered he had schizophrenia. He had been feeling strange for some time. Voices, delusions, feelings of being picked upon. At one point he became so miserable that he decided he would end his life. His mum encouraged him to seek help. Allen made an appointment to see a psychiatrist at his local mental health hospital. He told her about his experiences She said: ‘Allen, you have schizophrenia. It is a lifelong condition. You will have to take medication for it and indeed you will have to for the rest of your life. But it is manageable, and we can help you.’ Allen was shocked. He never really got past the words: ‘You have schizophrenia.’ He, like many of us within society, was terrified by the idea of schizophrenia. ‘Does that mean I am completely mad?’ Schizophrenia is a heavily stigmatised condition. It is filled with false cultural stereotypes of madness, split personality, violence, danger. Of course, these types of caricatures and stereotypes are inaccurate, but that doesn’t mean they are not socially powerful. ‘My life is over …’

“On the bus going home Allen sat down beside a woman he had known for some time and told her his story. As soon as she heard the word ‘schizophrenia’ she stood up and got off the bus. They never spoke again. Allen made his way home. When he got to house his mum noticed that he was looking sad. ‘What’s the matter Allen?’ she asked. Allen told her his story. She looked at him. She smiled. ‘Allen, you might have schizophrenia. But you’re not a “schizophrenic.” You are Allen, and I love you.’ Allen told me that was a real turning point in his life. He knew he was always going to have to live with schizophrenia. He could accept that as long as he could find hope. His mum gave him the gift of hope. More than that, his mum had reminded him that his name was Allen. People might choose to name him according to his diagnosis, but his mum chose to name him as her son whom she loved. This strikes me as exactly the kind of attitude that Jesus would have, and precisely the kind of attitude that the church needs to develop in response to the presence of people perceived as different.”

He adds: “Allen’s mum’s response strikes me as a very good example of the kind of person-centred approach I have tried to develop in my work over the years. In order to know people and to overcome stigma and stereotypes we need to go back to basics. People-are-people first and foremost. Yes, we might all be different and some of these differences may well be difficult of us. Nevertheless, when it comes down to it, all of us want to be seen for who we are, not for what people might assume us to be. All of us want to be loved. All of us need friendship and companionship. This way of thinking resonates in important ways with Paul’s image of the church as the body of Christ. The thing that marks out the body is diversity. It is not that we are all the same or that one should try to be like the other. Diversity matters. It is only when we come together with all of our differences and challenges that we can understand what it means to be Jesus’s body. That is the radical vision of the gospel. The first step in achieving this kind of community is to look at people, rather than people’s diagnoses, physical shape, race, gender, or whatever. It’s not that things like disability, gender, race etc are unimportant. They are. It’s simply that in order for us to see and respect people properly we need to begin from a position of simplicity: Love your neighbour as yourself.”

“I nursed for 16 years or so and then decided, for no real reason, that it was time to change career. I wasn’t fed up with nursing. I just felt it was time to do something different.”

But John’s calling was not yet complete. God had more for him to do.

“I nursed for 16 years or so and then decided, for no real reason, that it was time to change career. I wasn’t fed up with nursing. I just felt it was time to do something different. I decided to go to university and study theology. My original intention was to become a hospital chaplain. It seemed like a natural progression from nursing and obviously chaplaincy was a part of my family’s history. I did work as a chaplain for a while I was studying and training as a minister. I loved that as well! I was a community mental health chaplain, working with people coming out of longterm psychiatric care, and trying to find them a spiritual home. It was fascinating and a little depressing. Churches can be equally as stigmatising and excluding as any other community, so discovering that was disappointing. But trying to help people overcome exclusionary attitudes was energising and deeply formative of my later academic work.

“But it turned out God wasn’t calling me to chaplaincy in the longer term. It was strange, but I knew as soon as I started studying theology that I wanted to teach and research in practical theology. And that is what I did. I finished my degree, did my PhD, got a lecturing job in Glasgow and then another in Aberdeen where I have been since 1997.

“Most of what I write and think about now as an academic theologian emerges from my past experience. The questions I ask of theology all emerge from this kind of experience: What does it mean to love Jesus when you have forgotten who Jesus is? What does it mean to be profoundly disabled, and to be beautiful and loved just as you are without the need to change? Why does God allow evil and how do we respond to it? My previous vocations were the place that I was shaped and formed to think about these kinds of things in the way that I do.

“All of this has taught me a lot about vocation. I have worked in four different professions – nursing, chaplaincy, academic theology and ministry in the Church of Scotland - and each one has been a vocation at the time. Sometimes we think about vocation as a single thing: “God has one path for me and I have to find it!” But vocation is not like a career path. Vocation relates to the place that God puts us at any moment in time in order that we can share and participate in God’s neighbourly love. Vocations change over time. What God asks from you when you are 20 is not the same thing he asks you to do when you have retired and are not able to do the things you used to do. You can have multiple vocations over a lifetime. For me, vocation has been doing what I’m told and opening myself up to surprises that I couldn’t have envisioned on my own.”

To John’s surprise, this rebellious, adopted youth found himself invited to become a Queen’s – now King’s -Chaplain earlier this year.

“I knew that my name had been put forward by the Chapel Royal (an establishment in the Royal Household which serves the spiritual needs of the sovereign and the Royal Family). I discovered I had been accepted when I received a letter from Buckingham Palace, confirming my appointment and telling me to get fitted for my royal red robes! Now it’s actually funny. I’m a pretty informal person and I never wear robes or any liturgical gear. So, the idea of me swanning around in a bright red cassock brought tears of joy to my 98-year-old mum, and tears of laughter from many people who know me. Indeed, when Aberdeen and Shetland Presbytery formally congratulated me on my appointment the Moderator took great pleasure in pointing this out. It was the funniest letter of congratulations I’ve ever had! My first engagement was at the Holyrood Garden Party this year (2022). I met Prince, now King Charles III there.”

“Nevertheless, when it comes down to it, all of us want to be seen for who we are, not for what people might assume us to be. All of us want to be loved. All of us need friendship and companionship.”

John has played guitar since his high school days and still has hopes of being a rock star. Until then, he’s happy to live in Aberdeen with his wife Alison, and their five children.