Bishop Simon Barrington-Ward

In Memoriam

Simon Barrington-Ward, KCMG
Honorary Fellow

The Rt Revd Simon Barrington-Ward, KCMG, MA. Born 27 May 1930. Educated at Eton (Scholar), Magdalene College (Matric 1950, Scholar), Historical Tripos, Pts 1 & II; Westcott House, 1954–56; National Service (Pilot Officer, RAF Regiment), 1949–50; Lektor, Free University of Berlin, 1953-54; Chaplain of Magdalene College, 1956–60; Assistant Lecturer in Religious Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, 1960–63; Fellow and Dean of Chapel, 1963– 69; Principal of Crowther Hall, the Church Missionary Society College at Selly Oak, Birmingham, 1969–74; General Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, 1974–85; Honorary Canon of Derby Cathedral and an Honorary Chaplain to the Queen; Bishop of Coventry, 1985–97; Prelate of the Order of St Michael & St George, 1989–2005; knighted 2001 (KCMG); Honorary Assistant Bishop, Diocese of Ely and Honorary Assistant Chaplain of Magdalene College, from 1997. Married to Dr Jean Taylor, 1963; two daughters, Mary and Helen. Honorary Fellow from 1987. Died on Easter Saturday, 11 April 2020, aged 89.

If Simon had not been so hopeless at maths, he would never have come to Magdalene as an undergraduate. His family had close Oxford connections, and young Simon was desperate to go to his father’s old college there. His Eton tutor, however, was convinced that Oxford would reject him for failing maths, and after long and difficult discussions persuaded him to try for Magdalene Cambridge. Simon won an Open Scholarship in History here in December 1948, and then had to complete eighteen months of National Service with the Royal Air Force before coming into residence in October 1950.

Simon had a famous father, Robert (Robin) Barrington-Ward, DSO, MC, a First World War hero, who became Editor of The Times in 1941. He married Adele Radice, of Italian descent; Simon was the middle of three children. RBW died suddenly from an insect-bite when travelling to Dares-Salaam in February 1948, when Simon was seventeen. Simon always regretted that his father died just when he himself was of an age to appreciate and learn from Robert’s political ideas, but he was aware that his father was supportive (controversially for The Times) of the post-war Labour Government’s social welfare reforms and promotion of Indian independence, and had long believed in evolutionary policies and ‘liberating truths, at whatever cost to conventional opinion’ and however painful. These formed the bedrock of Simon’s social philosophy.

He was a popular History undergraduate, ‘a good mixer’ with many friends in different spheres. Shortly after the beginning of his second year, he decided to submit himself as a candidate for ordination, supported by the Chaplain, Tony Pearce, and his Tutor, Francis Turner, whose recommendation stressed that he was ‘a man of marked intellectual ability, lively mind, wide interests, and personal charm’. However, before starting theological training at Westcott House, he spent his first year after graduation in 1953 as a Lektor at the Free University of Berlin. This was a profoundly important experience, exposing him not only to German language and literature, but also to its religion and philosophy, and especially to the influence of Hegel and the influence of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the pastor and theologian hanged only eight years before, whose inspirational writings were starting to be published.

As Simon was finishing his training at Westcott House in the summer of 1956, Tony Pearce as Chaplain of Magdalene was spectacularly successful in being elected to a University Lectureship in Divinity. Naturally enough, he hoped and indeed expected that this 13 could be combined with promotion to a fellowship at Magdalene. The College authorities, however, hesitated to make a tenured appointment and worried about his ‘high church’ Anglicanism; they denied him a Fellowship. Pearce therefore decided to resign as Chaplain and to leave Cambridge for Australia, where he became a distinguished Canon of Perth Cathedral. The College was likely to be left without a chaplain for the beginning of the new academical year, but realised that Simon was due to be made a Deacon on 30 September. He could therefore be appointed Chaplain from 1 October 1956, before his ordination as a priest, which took place the following year. If this was a gamble for the College, it was nothing less than a privileged and exciting opportunity for the youthful new Chaplain. Simon later recalled:

From the start I loved it. I was virtually an ordained undergraduate, close to those amongst whom I was working. The Chaplain was a figure accepted by everyone…. The Chapel was almost as much part of the College’s life as Hall. It was packed out every Sunday evening… Everyone wore one of the surplices that hung in the Ante-Chapel.

This and most of the other old traditions were still in operation. All undergraduates had had to declare their religion on their application form. It was not difficult being Chaplain in such a community, and it was hugely enjoyable, joining High Table every night, and talking among others to C S Lewis as a Professorial Fellow.

In 1960, with Simon’s five-year appointment drawing to a close, he accepted an Assistant Lectureship in Religious Studies at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. This was another formative step for him, opening up the exciting world of Africa, of African religion, and Anglican mission. But in 1963 the College decided to try to tempt him back with the offer of a fellowship and the post of Dean of Chapel which had long been vacant. Simon accepted eagerly, and all seemed to be arranged. Then came the news that Simon was getting married. A shocked and agitated Master (Sir Henry Willink) announced this to the Fellows, suggesting that they could hardly say they didn’t want him after all, just because he was no longer unmarried and wouldn’t live as a bachelor chaplain in College. The Fellows learned that he had married Dr Jean Caverhill Taylor, who was practising in Nigeria, the daughter of Dr 14 Hugh Taylor, a medical missionary who had served in China. When Simon and Jean first met, they discovered that each of them had furnished their rooms with identical curtains designed by John Piper. It was a Sign, surely?

The College was about to witness an unprecedented double pastorate. At their home in the newly-converted Northampton Street cottages, with the paired Piper curtains now on facing walls, Simon might be in the living room giving spiritual comfort and guidance to one undergraduate, while Jean was in the kitchen dispensing medical and psychological aid to another: these rooms could be entered separately, so complete privacy was assured to students seeking their complementary but equally warm-hearted and understanding practical help. But although many individual members of the College were thus helped enormously, Simon was acutely aware that the overall role of the Chaplain was much diminished. The College was quite suddenly entering a time of rapid and disconcerting change, the beginnings of an aggressive reform movement known to history as ‘the Students’ Revolt’. As he recalls:

I had returned to a transformed scene. The cultural shock was far greater than anything which the vital spiritual turmoil of Africa had confronted me with…. Amid the welter of cults, enthusiasms, Utopian passions, Chapel had no place. I was part of the rejected ‘Establishment’…. The faith I had articulated seemed now too bland and glib. What is more, I realised I had become estranged not only from many of those I was trying to reach, but even from my former self.

It was a crisis for his ministry. He began to see the limitations of that older comfortable world which had shaped him. The framework he had relied on seemed to be falling apart around him. He began to sense something of the impatience of the rebels, to accept the need for evolving change, the need for a genuine ‘death and resurrection’ in the world and in Magdalene.

For a start, he embarked upon a radical redesign for the Chapel, encouraged by his friend Jim Ede of Kettles Yard. Out went the last of the Victorian panelling; the ornately carved Edwardian altar was evicted and put into storage, replaced by a serviceable table rescued from an 15 undergraduate room; the walls were repainted in uncompromising ‘brilliant’ white. Simon wanted to get rid of the Victorian glass windows which made the Chapel dark and dreary, and fill all of them (except the Pugin east window) with plain glass. This would be a major alteration, requiring Governing Body approval. The College’s Architect-Fellow, David Roberts, a Welsh Nonconformist, supported him, arguing that the Chapel was the chaplain’s work-space and he should have as light and modern a facility as possible. The Governing Body was not persuaded (eventually a sensible compromise was adopted, involving the radical modification of the two worst windows, those at the sanctuary end).

As the Students’ Revolt intensified, Simon thought he might usefully act as a go-between, a moderating, reconciling influence. However, a new Master and a traditionalist Bursar were nervous and sceptical about this. It was suggested to Simon that he might like to move on and further his ecclesiastical career.

Thus it came about that in 1969 Simon moved to Birmingham to become the first Principal of Crowther Hall training college at Selly Oak, the start of his momentous connection with the Church Missionary Society, of which he was appointed the General Secretary in 1974. He joined an historic line of leaders of the CMS, all of whom had biographies written about them, in recognition of the importance of their role. Simon was now right at the centre of reconciling modernisation, rejecting the old missionary authoritarianism and devising an evolving ‘partnership in mission’. He travelled the world, writing a striking series of newsletters about what he found: thoroughly characteristic, stylish reflections, their regular arrival eagerly awaited. They have been published as an anthology, Love will out (1988), hailed as one of the finest statements of ‘mission theology’ for the late-twentieth century. As the General Secretary, he and Jean lived in a CMS semi-detached house close to the riverside at Twickenham and the bridge to Richmond. It was here that their daughters Mary and Helen spent most of their childhood.

If the General Secretaryship marvellously fitted his talents, enthusiasms and experience, the same was hardly less true of his appointment as Bishop of Coventry in 1985. It was greeted with something like a general acclamation. He received nearly 500 letters of congratulation, including, it seemed, greetings from almost everyone who was anyone in the Church of England, and many others besides. His openness to all things German, and competence in its language, was of 16 especial value in developing Coventry’s links of reconciliation with Dresden Cathedral, while his experience of Coventry itself resonated with his own spiritual vision of brokenness followed by redemption and renewal. ‘Reconciliation’ was now a central theme of his ministry: it was something which called for ‘the sharing of the gift of forgiving love with others’. If it sometimes called for an unpopular stance in opposition to the government, he took it: his father would have been proud of him. He attacked unconscious racism, opposed the Thacherite poll tax and policy towards apartheid, and joined Archbishop Desmond Tutu in calls to free Nelson Mandela. As Bishop he chaired the International Affairs Committee of the General Synod Board for Social Responsibility, and the Partnership for World Mission, together with various other bodies.

Magdalene was the cherished thread which ran through seventy years of his life. Simon spent a sabbatical term as Bishop living in Mallory Court. His links with the College were decisively renewed and strengthened with election to an Honorary Fellowship in 1987. When the question of the admission of women to the College became a live issue he seized the chance to set out his vision of what he hoped Magdalene would become by ‘transposition’. He wrote as follows:

I am sure that it is important that the College can demonstrate that its real character and quality are able to be translated effectively into contemporary terms without being in any way distorted or diminished…. a mixed community in which still, more than ever even, the truly Magdalenian virtues, of humane, Christianly-rooted relationships, of a valuing of the whole person and not just of the intellect, can be cherished and realised, through…. continuing resilience, imagination and readiness for fresh exploration.

It was no surprise when Simon and Jean decided to retire to Cambridge in 1997, and live as close to the College as they could. A house in Searle Street was found for them by Rosemary Boyle. They got to know a whole new generation of appreciative students and Fellows. During a term’s interregnum in the chaplaincy, Simon was the acting Chaplain.

Simon was a man of almost unlimited imaginative insight and cultural breadth and refinement. Many will remember his joyful bursts of song, or his clear calligraphic handwriting, which remained 17 unchanged throughout his life since his early teens. He had a childlike sense of fun, and could sometimes be seen in full ecclesiastical rig, speeding down Castle Hill into Magdalene Street on his drop-handled racing bike. Inevitably his shortcomings were the obverse of his virtues. The fluency and spontaneity sometimes meant an absence of focus and intellectual control: the sermons that went on too long, the important monographs on Nigerian religion, or contemporary spirituality, which never got written, the muddle that might overtake social engagements. But he made even vagueness seem endearing. He was in some ways a stern and committed pastor, but of great human sensitivity and sympathy, a genuine intellectual with considerable powers of critical judgment and understanding. He had an instinctive gift for kindly, unembarrassed and cheerful friendliness, and he developed into an inspirational figure who could reach out to all sorts and conditions of men and woman. There was a sheer joyful abundance in what he was able to share lovingly with so many others. It was always a joy to see Simon, whether for a long and stimulating conversation, or just briefly in passing, for you could always be sure he would greet you with his unquenchable good humour and enthusiasm.

‘He was, in the fullest meaning of both words, a Catholic ecumenist, with more than a trace of the mystic.’ – Canon Paul Oestreicher.

By Dr Ronald Hyam (1960)
First published in the Magdalene College Magazine 2019-20