Michael Ramsey

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Michael Ramsey bigraphy, stories - Archbishop of Canerbury

Michael Ramsey : biography

14 November 1904 – 23 April 1988

Arthur Michael Ramsey, Baron Ramsey of Canterbury PC (14 November 1904 – 23 April 1988) was and English religious leader and the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury. He was appointed on 31 May 1961 and was in office until 1974.

Politics

Ramsey disliked the power of the government over the church. His support for liberalising the laws against homosexuality brought him enemies in the House of Lords. Ramsey also created controversy over his call for military action against the Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia, and in his opposition to the Vietnam War.

He opposed curbs on immigration to the UK of Kenyan Asians, which he saw as a betrayal by Britain of a promise. He was also against apartheid, and he left an account of a very frosty encounter with John Vorster. He was also a critic of Augusto Pinochet. Ramsey also opposed the granting of aid money by the World Council of Churches to guerrilla groups.

Theology and churchmanship

As an Anglo-Catholic with a nonconformist background, Ramsey had a broad religious outlook. He had a particular regard for the Eastern Orthodox concept of "glory", and his favourite book he had written was his 1949 work The Transfiguration. During the J.A.T. Robinson Honest to God controversy, he published a short response entitled Image Old and New, in which he engaged seriously with Robinson’s ideas. Conscious always of the atheism which his short-lived brother Frank had espoused, he maintained a lifelong respect for honest unbelief, and considered that such unbelief would not automatically be a barrier to salvation. He also made a barefoot visit to the grave of Mahatma Gandhi. However, he declined to become involved in some inter-faith activities. He disliked the theology of Paul Tillich and although he disagreed with a lot of Karl Barth’s thinking, his relations with him were warm.

Following observations of a religious mission at Cambridge, he had an early dislike of evangelists and mass rallies, which he feared relied too much on emotion. This led him to be critical of Billy Graham, although the two later became friends and Ramsey even took to the stage at a Graham rally in Rio de Janeiro. One of his later books, The Charismatic Christ (1973), engaged with the charismatic movement. Ramsey believed there was no decisive theological argument against women priests, although he was not entirely comfortable with this development. The first women priests in the Anglican Communion were ordained during his time as Archbishop of Canterbury and in retirement he received communion from a woman priest in the United States.

Ecumenical activities

Ramsey was active in the ecumenical movement, and while Archbishop of Canterbury in 1966 he met Pope Paul VI in Rome, where the Pope presented him with the episcopal (bishop’s) ring he had worn as Archbishop of Milan. These warm relations with Rome caused him to be dogged by protests by Protestants, particularly Ian Paisley. Ramsey also enjoyed friendship with the orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, Athenagoras, and Alexius, Patriarch of Moscow. His willingness to talk to officially-sanctioned churches in the Eastern Bloc led to criticisms from Richard Wurmbrand. He also supported efforts to unite the Church of England with the Methodist Church, and was depressed when the plans fell through.

Career

Michael Ramsey was born in Cambridge, England in 1904. His parents were Arthur Stanley Ramsey (1867 – 1954) and Mary Agnes Ramsey (1875 – 1927); his father was a Congregationalist and mathematician and his mother was a socialist and suffragette. He was educated at Repton School (where the headmaster was another future Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Francis Fisher), and where author Roald Dahl was a classmate; and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where his father was President of the college. At university he was President of the Cambridge Union Society and his support for the Liberal Party won him praise from Herbert Asquith. His elder brother, Frank P. Ramsey (1903–1930), was a mathematician and philosopher (of atheist convictions) and something of a prodigy, who when only 19 translated into English Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.