THE
P RTAL
July 2012
Michael
Ramsey
Page 7
Anglican
Luminary
by Fr Keith Robinson
It would be wrong to suppose that all significant Anglicans lived in the distant past! Indeed there is
one whom many of us will remember (and remember fondly) whose work has contributed in more than one
way to our being where we are today.
Pope Paul VI with Archbishop Michael Ramsey in St Peter’s
Square during his visit to Rome in 1966
Arthur Michael Ramsey was a pastoral academic
whose bright personal faith and simplicity of style
commended the Christian faith to many of his
contemporaries. His first book was published in 1936.
He was born into a Congregational ist family in
Cambridge in 1904, and educated at Repton, and
Magdalene College in his home city. In the university
environment he came under the influence of several
prominent Anglo-catholics, which in due course led
to him sensing a vocation to the ordained ministry
and going to train at Cuddesdon theological college.
He was ordained in 1928 to a curacy in Liverpool,
and then became Lecturer (to ordinands) in Lincoln.
The first of many books was published in 1936. After
parish ministry in Boston and Cambridge, he took
up a canonry in Durham attached to the Van Mildert
Professorship of Divinity.
He moved to become Regius Professor of Divinity in
Cambridge, but after a mere two years was recalled to
Durham to become its Bishop. Within his first year as
bishop he acted as one of the Supporters of the Queen
at her coronation. In 1956 he became Archbishop of
York, and in 1961 Archbishop of Canterbury. It was in
this role that his influence beyond academia became
most important
Secular government over the church
for put crudely, it led to an assumption that Truth is to
be discovered on the basis of votes!
a committed ecumenist
Perhaps partly due to his background in
nonconformity, he was always a committed ecumenist.
In 1966 he had the famous and very fruitful encounter
with Pope Paul VI in Rome, which led immediately
to the setting up of the Anglican Roman Catholic
International Commission. It is hard to imagine that
we should have the Ordinariate today without the
extremely valuable work done by the early ARCIC
theologians. The Pope gave the Archbishop his own
episcopal ring, which quite rightly was regarded as a
gesture of extreme significance.
another step on the way
Michael Ramsey’s importance can well be summed
Ramsey strongly and rightly resented the power of up by the atheistic historian David Starkey, who puts
secular government over the church, and oversaw the it like this: “The church made the lethal mistake when
setting up of the General Synod, though it was not his Michael Ramsey was appointed archbishop by Harold
initiative. Long ago, before it was at all obvious, he Macmillan. It rediscovered Christianity, and that was
had prophesied the dividing of the Christian churches fatal”. Quite a nice tribute really!
along the lines of conservatives and liberals, and
sadly, we have seen this happen. But although gifted
I am personally grateful for the many sermons I
with prophetic insight, he can hardly have foreseen heard him preach as a student, which drew me from
how quickly the Synod would change the Church of nonconformity to that very attractive, reasonable,
England, actually opening it up to secularist influences catholic version of Anglicanism where so many of us
rather than protecting it from them. It would certainly used to feel at home. It was, of course as we now see,
appear that synodical government has been the but another step on the way. But it was an important
principal cause of the present crisis within that church, one.