ENGLAND: Durham Bishop N.T. Wright announces plan to return to academic world
Episcopal News Service. April 27, 2010 [042710-04]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
Bishop of Durham N. T. Wright said April 27 that he will retire from his diocesan post on August 31.
Wright, who will be 62 this autumn, will take up a new appointment as Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St. Mary's College, the divinity schoolof the University of St Andrews in Scotland, according to an announcement on the Durham diocese's website.
"This has been the hardest decision of my life," Wright, regarded as a leading New Testament scholar, said in the diocesan announcement. "It has been an indescribable privilege to be bishop of the ancient Diocese of Durham, to work with a superb team of colleagues, to take part in the work of God’s kingdom here in the north-east, and to represent the region and its churches in the House of Lords and in General Synod. I have loved the people, the place, the heritage and the work."
However, Wright said that his "continuing vocation to be a writer, teacher and broadcaster, for the benefit (I hope) of the wider world and church, has been increasingly difficult to combine with the complex demands and duties of a diocesan bishop."
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said April 27 that Wright "has given generously of his extraordinary gifts in the life of his diocese and the Church of England at large, and he will be greatly missed by his fellow bishops."
"But we are all delighted that he will have fuller opportunity now to develop the unique ministry of Christian scholarship which has enriched so many minds and hearts across the world," Williams added.
During his time in Durham, Wright introduced the "Big Read" program, which has got people across the North-East of England, and across all Christian churches, reading the Bible together in Lent. The program will expand to a national level next year, with Wright's forthcoming book "Lent for Everyone -- Matthew" as the basic text, the diocese said.
Wright has spoken in the House of Lords on numerous occasions and issues and recently has championed the cause of new underground technology for the clean use of coal from the region's still massive coalfields, according to the news release.
Wright was a member of the Commission that produced the 2004 Windsor Report on the future of the Anglican Communion.
Wright is a frequent contributor in Fulcrum, a conservative evangelical group in the Church of England.
He is also a critic of decisions made by the Episcopal Church concerning the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in the life of the church. For instance, during the church's last meeting of General Convention, Wright wrote in the Times of London that bishops and deputies marked a "clear break with the rest of the Anglican Communion" when they passed Resolution D025 that affirms "that God has called and may call" gay and lesbian people "to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church." He accused the Episcopal Church of considering as "optional" the call to "chastity, universally understood by the wider Christian tradition" to require that all sexual intercourse take place within "lifelong man-plus-woman marriage."