Gilbert Baker Elected Bishop of Hong Kong
Diocesan Press Service. October 7, 1966 [47-7]
The Rev. J. Gilbert H. Baker, an appointed missionary of the Episcopal Church was elected Bishop of Hong Kong and Macao by the Diocesan Synod Sept. 20. He will succeed the Rt. Rev. Ronald O. Hall, who resigned last June on the eve of his seventy-first birthday. The Consecration will be held. Dec. 6.
Mr. Baker, 56, was sent to Hong Kong in June, at the request of Bishop Hall, to serve as director of the Christian Study Center on Chinese Religion and Culture. He has had a long ministry as a missionary in China, serving in Canton, Kunming and Shanghai. After the final withdrawal of foreign missionaries from China, Mr. Baker, a British priest, came to the United States and served at Christ Church, Guilford, Conn. for three years before returning to England.
In London he headed the Overseas Council of the Church of England. He also served for one year as an assistant to then Anglican Executive Officer, Bishop Stephen F. Bayne.
Bishop-elect Baker was ordained in Canton, China 30 years ago by Bishop Ronald O. Hall. In 1941 he married Martha Sherman, daughter of the late Rev. Dr. Arthur M. Sherman, a long-time, distinguished American missionary in China. They have four children.
The Diocese of Hong Kong includes the territory of the British Crown Colony and Portugese Macao, a crowded, multi-racial metropolitan see. It is a key missionary post in the Anglican Communion. There are 10, 000 European and 20, 000 Chinese Anglicans living in the diocese. It is also one of the most densely populated areas of the world due, in large measure, to refugee movements from Communist China.
The diocese is a constituent diocese of the Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui, the Holy Catholic Church in China, but is administratively separated and under the trusteeship of the Church Council of South East Asia. Mr. Baker's election will be subject to the confirmation of the Bishops of the Council.
Previously, Dr. Joost de Blank, former Archbishop of Capetown, South Africa, had been elected to replace Bishop Hall. However, the 57-year-old churchman whose six-year tenure in Capetown was marked by his outspoken criticism of apartheid, decided on the advice of his physician not to accept the post. He is now a residentiary canon of Westminster Abbey in London.