The Times obituary, November 14th AD2003

‘Flying bishop’ who gave valuable pastoral care during the Church’s crisis over the ordination of women

ishop John Richards exercised a brief but extraordinarily effective ministry as one of the Church of England’s first two “flying bishops”. He was Bishop of Ebbsfleet between 1994 and 1998, and he and his northern counterpart, John Gaisford, Bishop of Beverley, established a model of episcopal care which gave direction, hope and confidence to the considerable number of Anglicans for whom the ordination of women to the priesthood had been profoundly unsettling. It may yet prove an example which the Church of England and the Anglican Communion in general will need to follow in the future.

After the General Synod’s final vote authorising women’s ordination in 1992, the House of Bishops acknowledged that a period of reception and a degree of impaired Communion would exist in the Church of England. The Act of Synod, prepared before the first ordinations in 1994, established the principle of extended episcopal care. Some parishes felt strongly that their sacramental tie to a diocesan bishop was compromised if he ordained women to his college of priests. The mutual recognition of ministries was no longer guaranteed. So the Act of Synod allowed parishes to petition for another bishop’s sacramental ministry, acting within the jurisdiction of the diocesan bishop.

The Act of Synod established three bishoprics, suffragan to the Archbishops’ sees, to act as “provincial episcopal visitors”. The Bishop of Beverley was to look after parishes in the Province of York, the Bishop of Richborough the eastern side of the Province of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ebbsfleet the western part.

John Richards became the first Bishop of Ebbsfleet in 1994. However it was to be a year before the first Bishop of Richborough was appointed. From his house in Staffordshire, Richards travelled all over England south of the Trent, driving huge distances after services hundreds of miles from home.

He very quickly came to be greatly loved by clergy and laity alike. At a confirmation, induction or ordination, his easy pastoral style was evident from the moment he greeted the young servers to the farewell thanks offered to those washing up. It came as second nature to a man who had spent 25 years in parish ministry.

At the time of his appointment, feelings were running high. Some Anglo-Catholics were slightly wary of what they considered an Establishment background. Certainly other names were better known. To some people, the appointment of archdeacons in their sixties seemed unadventurous. To others it smacked of provisionality. Would they be the first and the last? Other people were furious that flying bishops had been appointed at all.

Richards soon quelled these suspicions. He was widely respected among his fellow bishops. The support of Dr Carey meant much to him. He was given a formal position in most of the dioceses in which he worked, and he attended their staff meetings. Although unwavering on his fundamental principles and more than capable of fighting his corner, he insisted on courtesy to those with whom he did not agree. It was an approach that won admirers across the Anglican spectrum. This, and the volume of his hard work, helped to make sure that he was replaced when he retired.

Richards’s personal tradition was that of classical Anglicanism and the best of the Tractarians. The Book of Common Prayer meant a great deal to him. Yet he very quickly became at home with the variety of worship he found in the parishes in his care. Many drew heavily on the Roman liturgy. A parish’s style and needs in inner-city Birmingham, say, were not likely to be the same as those in rural Cornwall. A few of the parishes which looked to him came from the conservative Evangelical tradition. They were cared for equally.

As a pastor to the parish clergy and their families Richards excelled. He was a big man, and his huge hands would be placed on a priest’s shoulder as he said with a West Country burr, “Now, Father, tell me all about it.” He expected his own high standards from the clergy but could treat the occasional sad case who fell short with deep compassion. Nearly 100 parishes petitioned for his episcopal care but a much larger number of priests looked to his guidance in a less formal capacity.

John Richards was born in 1933 and educated at Reading School and Wyggeston Grammar School, Leicester, before reading history and theology at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He did National Service in the Royal Artillery, and was at one point detailed to go to Suez, but hostilities ceased just after his kitbag and toothbrush had been dispatched to the combat zone, never to return. After Ely Theological College he went to serve his title at St Thomas’s, Exeter, in 1959. He was to spend the rest of his ministry in the Diocese of Exeter until he became a bishop.

At St Thomas’s, he came under the mentorship of Robert Mortimer, the Bishop of Exeter and at that point the defining moral theologian of the Church of England. While a curate, too, Richards was involved in the reclamation of a patch of land and a tin hut near St Andrew’s, which he turned into a new church: a great achievement for someone at the start of his ministry.

In 1964 he became Rector of Holsworthy with Hollacombe and Cookbury, where, city-raised, he was excited to work among a thriving farming community, and in 1974 he moved to Heavitree with St Paul’s, Exeter. There he worked as a team vicar for one of the largest parishes in the diocese, while at the same time undertaking the chaplaincy of the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital. The workload was vast, but he found it satisfying and his parishioners flourished. In 1981 Richards moved to Exeter as Archdeacon and one of the residentiary canons, instantly at home with the dignified worship and beautiful music of the cathedral. He already chaired the House of Clergy in the diocese, and soon found himself on General Synod, and was appointed a Church Commissioner.

He was efficient in committees and had a firm grasp of financial business: he could be tenacious and devastatingly plain-speaking in debate. But he was happier preaching and teaching. His strong and well-informed knowledge of the history of Anglicanism allowed him to speak powerfully about how the Church of England’s traditional position had been shaped and formed, but his preaching was always straightforward.

On retirement, Richards returned to Devon to live on the edge of Dartmoor. He spent five active years as an assistant bishop in the Diocese of Exeter. He remained in demand throughout the country for preaching engagements.

He married Ruth Haynes in 1959. She and their two sons and three daughters survive him.

The Right Rev John Richards, Bishop of Ebbsfleet, 1994-98, was born on October 4, 1933. He died on November 9, 2003, aged 70.

© The Times, London, (November 14th AD2003)


Copyright notice
This obituary first appeared in The Times, London (www.timesonline.co.uk) on November 14th AD2003.
It is reproduced here with kind permission under a time-limited licence that expires on July 8th AD2008.
It may not be reproduced elsewhere without the explicit permission of Times Newspapers, to whom application for any such reproduction should be made.

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