Stepney Bishops
The East End of London has produced more than its fair share of ‘turbulent priests’ and thorns in the side of the establishment, and some major figures in the church have either come from east London or made their mark there - among them former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, much lampooned in Private Eye.
The Bishopric of Stepney, based in the Commercial Road, is often a staging post for ambitious priests, and in the last century produced three very different figures who went on to make their mark on the Church and the world.
The Bishopric provided another (fairly) recent head of the Church of England in the shape of Cosmo Lang. Lang, though born a Presbyterian Scot, was headed for a career in the law after his studies at the University of Glasgow but became convinced that he was meant to be a priest: his Anglo-Catholic views (the ‘high’ end of the Church of England) were in stark contrast to those of the Scottish kirk. Lang would become the first Archbishop since the Reformation to actually wear the mitre, previously seen as a very Catholic symbol.
Lang embraced the ’slum priest’ tradition, seeing himself as a missionary working in the toughest parts of the cities, and in 1901 he was rewarded with the Bishopric of Stepney, at the heart of the rundown East End of London. Seven years in this demanding post saw him promoted to Archbishop of York in 1908 (very swift by the standards of the Church) and he was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1928.
Lang had attracted popular abuse during World War I, when he criticised virulent anti-German propaganda. It wounded him deeply but in fact the bishop was moving further and further from his days as a slum priest, and in his days at Canterbury increasingly criticised for being unworldly and out of touch (a barb slung at a few other Archbishops). Now seen as ‘proud, pompous and prelatical’ he became adept at appeasement and laissez faire rather than offering strong lines. In 1930 the Lambeth Conference controversially voted that contraception be permitted - Lang expressed no strong opinion other than that agreement be reached. In 1936 he stood back from the fundamental reforms of the divorce laws - his religious distaste being over-ruled by what would be good for the country. A gifted underachiever perhaps, he ‘could have been St Francis of Assisi [but] chose to be Cardinal Wolsey’ according to one acid appraisal.
Trevor Huddleston, who became Bishop of Stepney around 60 years after Lang, rocked the boat considerably more. Born in Bedford in 1913, he had a long and unusual career before he came to the Commercial Road in 1968. A member of the Community of the Resurrection (an ascetic order within the Church of England), during the forties and fifties he had been a priest in South Africa, and an anti-apartheid activist. In 1955 the ANC dubbed him ‘Isitwaldnwe’ at the Freedom Congress in Cliptown.
Back in England, Huddleston became famous for his continued campaigning against the iniquity of apartheid. He left Stepney in 1978, and his campaigning continued long after he left office. In 1983 he retired from his last post in the Church (Archbishop of the Province of the Indian Ocean) and threw himself full time into campaigning against apartheid, becoming a particular nuisance to then prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Huddleston died in 1998.
The last of our trio, Jim Thompson, succeeded Huddleston in 1978, going on to spend 13 years as Bishop of Stepney. His liberal views on women priest, gay adoption, racism and more were regular heard on the ‘Thought for the Day’ slot on Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme. Like many predecessors, ‘Jim Stepney’ had come to the diocese because of his concern for the poor. That didn’t save him from the opprobrium of the right-wing press, traditionally scornful of Bishops who mix social comment and politics with their preaching.
The ‘Sunday Telegraph’ dubbed him ‘a fathead’ and a ‘clerical Clive James’. His views on racism led to the windows of his house being smashed, from time to time, by right-wing extremists, and Tory politicians nursed a profound mistrust of what they saw as a left-leaning priest. Thompson was nominated for the vacant Bishopric of Birmingham in 1987, but was knocked back by Thatcher, who wouldn’t put his name forward to the Queen.
James Lawton Thompson had been born in 1936 in Birmingham. Like many, his route was a curious one, taking in an early job in accountancy, before National Service in the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment, and then on to Cambridge to read Theology. Above all, Thompson became a ’social priest’. The awareness the press and politicians derided had been aroused working tirelessly with East End parishioners, marrying practical projects with prayer, and developing a profound sense of social injustice. He became joint chairman of Interfaith Network UK and was lauded for his work in bringing the various faiths together. Even those with no religious faith could admire his work in the East End, where he was described as ‘a permanent mayor’. Thompson died in 2003.