Jeffrey John

The Very Revd Dr Jeffrey Philip Hywel John, SCP , (born 10 February 1953) is a Church of England cleric, and the current Dean of St Albans. He made headlines in 2003 when he was the first openly gay person to be nominated to be a Church of England bishop. Owing to the consequent controversy, he was forced to stand down before he took up the bishopric.

He was born in Tonyrefail in South Wales, in 1953, and studied at Hertford College, Oxford, where he gained a first in classics and modern languages in 1975. He subsequently studied theology at St Stephen's House, Oxford.

After a curacy in Penarth, Llandaff, he returned to Oxford in 1980 to read for a doctorate in Pauline theology. He became chaplain at Brasenose College, before in 1984 being appointed dean of divinity at Magdalen College, Oxford.

Dr John is a founder member and a trustee of Affirming Catholicism, a group formed in 1990 promoting catholicism within the Anglican church, and which supported the campaign for the ordination of women.

He was Vicar of Holy Trinity, Eltham, (in the Diocese of Southwark) in south London from 1991, and in 1997 he became canon chancellor and theologian of Southwark Cathedral.

On 20 May 2003 his appointment as the new Bishop of Reading, a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Oxford, was announced.

His nomination led to controversy both in the Church of England and in the wider Anglican Communion, despite his having ceased sexual activity with his partner several years before (in accordance with the guidelines of the CofE). He has for many years been a campaigner for gay rights.

Some conservative, evangelical, and traditionalist churches in the United States and Africa were prominent in their threats to split from the Anglican Communion should Dr John's consecration proceed.

Concerns over the potential for division within the church led the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Dr Rowan Williams, to request Dr John to step down. On 6 July 2003, he withdrew from his appointment to the bishopric.

In spite of the withdrawal of Dr John, the differences in views of homosexuality within the Anglican church continued to cause controversy in 2003 following the appointment of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in the Episcopal Church USA.

On 19 April 2004, 10 Downing Street announced Dr John's appointment to the Deanery of St Albans. He was invested at a ceremony at the cathedral on 2 July 2004.

Although many conservatives were outraged at the thought of any preferment for Dr John, and although many liberal advocates were equally outraged at the way he had been treated, less interested observers viewed the eventual solution as a masterstroke: by appointing him to the deanery of a famous cathedral, the Prime Minister (who, in consultation with the Archbishop of Canterbury had the final say in the matter) was able to give him a position of equal or even greater prominence and prestige, but without the hierarchical authority over others which gave conservatives within the Diocese of Oxford grounds for complaint.

In August 2006, Dr John entered into a civil partnership with his long-term partner, Grant Holmes.

In Lent 2007, Jeffrey John, in a Radio 4 Lenten address, denied the doctrine of penal substitution, saying that it 'made God a psychopath'. He was vehemently opposed by the Bishops of Durham and Lewes.

References

This article is based on a GNU FDL LGBT Wikia article: John Jeffrey John

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