Kenneth Leech

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Spouses
  • Brenda Jordan[1]
    (m. 1967, divorced)
  • Rheta Wall[2][3]
    (m. 1970; div. 1993)
  • Julie Wood[2][3]
    (m. 2014)
Children1
Anglican)
ChurchChurch of England
Ordained
  • 1964 (deacon)
  • 1965 (priest)
WritingsTrue God (1985)
Congregations served

Kenneth Leech (15 June 1939 – 12 September 2015), also known as Ken Leech, was an English

Anglo-Catholic
tradition.

Life and career

Leech was born into a secular working-class family in Ashton-under-Lyne in greater Manchester.[5] As a teenager he became a Christian and a socialist at the same time.[6][7][8] A speech denouncing apartheid at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester in 1956 by Trevor Huddleston, a priest of the Community of the Resurrection who had just returned from South Africa, had a particularly powerful impact on him.[7][9] He would remember thinking, "If this faith could drive this man to oppose racism with such passion, perhaps it could drive me too."[7][10]

Leech moved to the

King's College, London.[12] This move, he later wrote, was the real turning point of his life.[13] He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1961[14] and then went to Trinity College, Oxford, from which he graduated in 1964.[15] After theological studies at St Stephen's House, Oxford, he was ordained to the diaconate in 1964[16] and priesthood in 1965.[17] He served in urban London parishes afflicted by poverty and confronted issues of racism and drug abuse. After ordination, he served as a curate at Holy Trinity, Hoxton in the East End of London (1964-67)[18] and then from 1967 to 1971 at St Anne's, Soho.[19]

While in Soho, Leech set up the Soho Drug Group (1967)

St Augustine's College, Canterbury.[5][22] In 1974 he became rector of St Matthew's Bethnal Green[19] where he served until 1979.[23] While at St Matthew's he became deeply involved in the struggle against the National Front and other racist and fascist groups.[24] In 1974, with Rowan Williams (who later became the Archbishop of Canterbury) and others, he founded the Jubilee Group,[25] a network of Christian socialists in Britain and across the Anglican Communion,[26] most of whom were Anglo-Catholics.[27] In 1980 he became Race Relations Field Officer for the British Council of Churches Community and Race Relations Unit.[28] The following year he was named Race Relations Field Officer of the Church of England's Board for Social Responsibility.[29] In 1986 Ken helped city broker Richard Lester who founded and funded Centrepoint's first dedicated hostel with over 100 beds in London which they then opened with previous Centrepoint success story Martin Shaw .[30] He was an honorary assistant curate of St Clement's Church, Notting Dale (1982 to 1988), and of St James' Church, Norlands (1985 to 1988).[3] He was director of the Runnymede Trust, a think tank dedicated to promoting ethnic diversity in Britain, from 1987 to 1990.[12] From 1990 until 2004, when he retired from full-time parish ministry, he was community theologian at St Botolph's Aldgate, a church located at the intersection of the City of London and the East End.[12][31] As archbishop, Rowan Williams awarded him a Lambeth doctorate.[12]

Leech was an advocate of

, and other reform-minded Anglican Christian socialists, but thought them often to be too timid and middle class.

Although Leech was critical of

theological liberalism, unlike some Anglo-Catholics he supported the ordination of women and the rights of gay and lesbian people.[5][12][35][37] His publications include guides to prayer and spiritual direction, autobiographical reflections on urban ministry and theological critiques of capitalism and social injustice. Of his weightiest theological work, True God (published in the United States as Experiencing God), the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre wrote that "there are few other books that state in so comprehensive a fashion what is at stake in believing or not believing in the God of Catholic Christianity."[38]

Leech died of cancer in Manchester on 12 September 2015.[2][39]

Published works

Books authored

Books edited

Book chapters

Journal articles

Other

Notes

  1. ^ This work is a revised edition of Pastoral Care and the Drug Scene, 1970.
  2. ^ Also published by Harper & Row in San Francisco with the title Experiencing God: Theology as Spirituality.
  3. ^ Also published by HarperSanFrancisco in San Francisco with the title The Eye of the Storm: Living Spiritually in the Real World.
  4. ).
  5. ).

References

Citations

  1. ^ Hackney Register September 1967 quarter, Vol 5B, page 1517
  2. ^ a b c Oestreicher, Paul (22 September 2015). "The Rev Ken Leech Obituary". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 13 June 2018.
  3. ^ a b c "Leech, Rev. Kenneth". Who Was Who. London: A & C Black. 2016. Retrieved 14 June 2017 – via Oxford University Press.
  4. ^ "Church Times: "Obituary: The Revd Dr Kenneth Leech", 2 October 2015". Retrieved 31 January 2021.
  5. ^ a b c d Drummond, Terry (2 October 2015). "The Revd Dr Kenneth Leech". Church Times. Retrieved 2 October 2017.
  6. ^ Roberts 2015, p. 114.
  7. ^ a b c Leech, Kenneth (2000). "Socialism, Christianity and East London". Workers' Liberty. Alliance for Workers' Liberty. Retrieved 2 October 2017.
  8. ^ Leech, Kenneth (1994). "Holy Communists". The Witness. Vol. 77. Episcopal Church Publishing Company.
  9. ^ McGrandle 2004, p. 110.
  10. ^ Leech 2009, p. 307.
  11. ^ Leech 2002b, p. 328.
  12. ^ a b c d e f "The Reverend Kenneth Leech, Anglican Priest – Obituary". The Daily Telegraph. 23 September 2015. Retrieved 1 October 2017.
  13. ^ Leech 2009, p. 308.
  14. ^ "Crockford's Clerical Directory: Kenneth Leech". Retrieved 31 January 2021.
  15. ^ Latham 1999, p. 130.
  16. ^ Byrne & Houlden 1995, p. xvii.
  17. ^ Leech 1991, p. 37; Leech 2002a.
  18. ^ "Crockford's Clerical Directory: Kenneth Leech". Retrieved 31 January 2021.
  19. ^ a b Herbert Ferrara 2004.
  20. ^ Woodward 1990, p. vii.
  21. ^ Gould, Mark (16 June 2004). "Community Spirit". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 March 2009.
  22. ^ Leech 1994.
  23. ^ "Crockford's Clerical Directory: Kenneth Leech". Retrieved 31 January 2021.
  24. ^ Leech 1990, pp. 86–98.
  25. ^ Goddard 2013, pp. 23, 35.
  26. ^ "Church Times: "Obituary: The Revd Dr Kenneth Leech", 2 October 2015". Retrieved 31 January 2021.
  27. ^ Croft 2016; Latham 1999, p. 16.
  28. ^ "Crockford's Clerical Directory: Kenneth Leech". Retrieved 31 January 2021.
  29. ^ Wilkins, Richard (1989). "Britain in Black and White". Third Way. Vol. 12, no. 5. London. p. 26. Retrieved 14 June 2018.
  30. ^ "Centrepoint". British Heritage. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
  31. ^ "Farewell to the Days of Birettas and Cassocks". Church Times. London. 23 April 2004. Retrieved 10 October 2017.
  32. ^ Leech 1980, p. 9; Leech 2001, pp. 121–135; Leech 2006, pp. 155–156, 215–223.
  33. ^ a b Townley, Peter (6 October 2015). "Reverend Kenneth Leech: Priest who Worked among the Homeless and with Drug Addicts at Centrepoint". The Independent. London. Retrieved 14 June 2018.
  34. ^ Gladwin, John (1989). "A Catholic Challenge to the Capitalist Monopoly". Third Way. Vol. 12, no. 9. London. p. 11. Retrieved 13 June 2018.
  35. ^ a b Milbank, Alison (2017). Subversive Orthodoxy (docx) (speech). Liverpool: Diocese of Liverpool. p. 1. Retrieved 14 June 2018.
  36. ^ Milbank, Alison (2017). Subversive Orthodoxy (docx) (speech). Liverpool: Diocese of Liverpool. p. 2. Retrieved 14 June 2018.
  37. ^ Latham 1999, p. 89.
  38. ^ MacIntyre 2009, p. 7.
  39. ^ McColman, Carl (13 September 2015). "In Memoriam: Kenneth Leech". A Contemplative Faith. Patheos. Retrieved 1 October 2017.

Works cited

Further reading