Celebrating +Michael Ramsey
+Michael RamseyToday would have been +Michael Ramsey’s birthday. It is a pity that the day is not commemorated in the Anglican Church Calendar. He was the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury, having been, in succession, Bishop of Durham and Archbishop of York. A priest in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, he was also a scholar and a theologian, serving as Van Mildert Professor of Divinity at Durham and Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. He was the author of some seventeen books, including “The Gospel and the Catholic Church” (which should be required reading for every priest). He was also my friend, my confessor and the reason I became an Anglican.
I first met Bishop Michael in 1980. He had retired to Durham and we met after an Advent service in the Cathedral. I was on my honeymoon in the UK and considering where to study for a PhD. In our conversation I mentioned that I had recently had my first book published and Bishop Michael asked if I would send him a copy. When I did, he wrote back and encouraged me to come back to Durham. I did, and for over three years he was a presence in my life. I was an Evangelical free churchman at the time, but he agreed to be my confessor (“spiritual director” being a much too modern term!). He encouraged me in my research, he taught me how to say the Daily Offices and, when I prepared to leave the UK to return home, he gave me his blessing… on the condition that I should seek Holy Orders upon my return. His wife, Joan, merely smiled…
We continued to write each other and I saw him on return journeys. I wept when I received the news of his death in 1988. I now think, however, that it was sorrow not merely at his passing, but of the passing of an era in Anglicanism.
His epitaph, taken from Irenaeus, is more truly applicable to Bishop Michael than anyone I have ever encountered:
“The Glory of God is the living man; And the life of man is the vision of God.”
I would encourage those of you who are searching for another way to understand the Christian faith to read the book Duane mentioned…it changed my thinking dramatically…
Duane,
Thank you for sharing this! I was very skeptical of anything “high church” when I first came to faith, and then I discovered John Stott and CS Lewis, and I realized that there was another flavor of Anglicanism that I hadn’t been aware of. Two of my aunts were Episcopalians, checking in for Easter and Christmas, along with weddings and funerals. I don’t think they had a real relationship with God. One of them loved Bishop Pike, and I read one of his books to humor her, but I found it very strange. I’m glad you have such fond memories of Bishop Ramsey.
Beautiful
A rare breed indeed and one well worth emulating…a reverent, robust Anglo-Catholic piety mixed with what were then – and today – highly controversial notions in that community of decriminalizing homosexuality, ordaining women, opposing apartheid and the Vietnam War, etc.