Press release from Number 10
Queen appoints Suffragan Bishop of Ramsbury
The Queen has approved the nomination of the Reverend Andrew Paul Rumsey to the Suffragan See of Ramsbury.
Published 22 October 2018
From: Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing StreetThe Queen has approved the nomination of the Reverend Andrew Paul Rumsey, MA, DThMin, Team Rector of Oxted in the Diocese of Southwark, to the Suffragan See of Ramsbury, in the Diocese of Salisbury, in succession to the Right Reverend Edward Francis Condry, MA, BLitt, DPhil, MBA, who resigned on the 12 May 2018.
There’s more on the diocesan website: New Bishop of Ramsbury Announced. Dr Rumsey will be consecrated on 25 January 2019.
He was on attachment to me when in training. A very lovely man who believes in parishes. I conducted his wedding.
Good to read a personal endorsement
Correction: I preached at, but did not conduct his wedding, I realised. In any event, Andrew was on attachment to my parishes when he was in training and we had a lot of time at that stage a long time ago now. He was the first of a whole series of outstanding students from both Ridley and Westcott who it was my privilege to help form. He is far from being a cookie-cutter evo. A most thoughtful and interesting man.
We are back to getting details of wives and children. It’s a subtle way of highlighting that the new bishop isn’t gay. Maybe I shouldn’t see it like that, but under present circumstances I do.
And a reference to ancestry: “a long line of clergy”. What’s the relevance? And perhaps his children would rather remain anonymous (and indeed should do)?
These announcements are beginning to read like happy smiley church websites. Exclamation marks next.
No Kate… indeed you should NOT see it like that. As a clergy spouse myself I feel very strongly that the church needs to take my ‘personhood’ into consideration – and that it is important to acknowledge that a spouse’s life is affected when a clergy person takes on a new role. if I am expected to move because my husband/wife takes on a new role – then the least that the church can do is acknowledge my existence by ‘naming’ me in any notice relating to my spouse’s appointment. I feel this very strongly because I am only too… Read more »
“and the two will become one flesh.So they are no longer two, but one flesh” There is a lot of emphasis on the Scriptural nature of marriage at present, but the concept of two becoming one doesn’t get much attention. Is this merely teaching about divorce or is it saying something much more profound? I happen to agree with you that Scripturally the wife should be included but I think that is because she should be consecrated to the same status at the same time as her husband – how can only one part of the flesh be consecrated? But… Read more »
Perhaps we will soon read “The Queen [as Supreme Governor of the Church of England] has approved the full exoneration of Bishop George Bell” – or is there more likelihood of seeing ecclesiastical pigs flying over Buckingham and Lambeth Palace?
Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Although I’d be perfectly happy with the same sentiment being expressed by the current occupant of St. Augustine’s throne and the lifting of the “significant cloud”.
An excellent appointment. Salisbury will have a suffragan bishop who is a pastor and scholar, whose deeply-rooted Anglican theology is informed by a poetic and literary imagination, and who will affirm (to borrow Graham James’s helpful aphorism) ‘mission as parish-shaped church.’ Nick Holtam is to be thoroughly congratulated for sticking to his guns and not going with the flow of the current C of E orthodoxy. At last, a bishop who is not connected to the St Mellitus empire or Cranmer Hall. It almost makes me want to buy a house in Devizes!
Minor correction needed. That’s Andrew Rumsey (Bishop of Ramsbury), not Andrew Ramsey (Bishop of Rumsbury)!
(Ed: thanks, fixed.)
Another mistake was that the link to the Number 10 press release was actually to the diocesan announcement. I have now corrected this.
Just one vowel different in the surname from Ramsey. Never mind the “long line of clergy” let’s hope the mantle of Michael and Ian falls upon Andrew, for the current bench is in desperate need of spiritual giants such as they were.
If his signature is sufficiently squiggly he won’t need to change it from Rumsey to Ramsbury at all.
Seems to be entirely too much alliteration in this discussion!
Well who knows what is to come? +Daisy Dover perhaps?
Followed post-June 2020 by ++ Emily Ebor