Colin Bennetts

Colin Bennetts ( September 9, 1940 - July 10, 2013 ) was a British Anglican theologian and Bishop of Coventry .

Life

Colin Bennetts grew up in Cornwall and London . After graduating from Battersea Grammar School, he studied Modern and Medieval Languages at Jesus College at Cambridge University before studying to be a priest at Ridley Hall , Cambridge.

Bennett first served as a priest in Tonbridge from 1965 to 1969 . From Tonbridge he moved to a priestly position in Oxford, where he was initially only responsible for municipal church work, then in student pastoral care and finally from 1980 onwards for both groups. In 1990 he took up a position at Chester Cathedral and in 1994 became suffragan Bishop of Buckingham in the Diocese of Oxford. In 1998 Colin Bennetts became the eighth Bishop of Coventry. In this capacity he was a member of the House of Lords from June 4, 2003 to January 31, 2008 .

Soon after he retired as bishop in 2008, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor . Colin Bennetts succumbed to this condition in 2013.

Colin Bennetts had been married since 1965 and the couple had two daughters and two sons.

Viewpoints

Bennetts stood in the theological tradition of evangelicalism in the Church. His special concern was missionary work in the churches. In politics, Colin Bennetts was particularly against the 2003 invasion of Iraq . He had already visited Iraq in May 1999 as part of a delegation that was supposed to assess the effects of the sanctions against Iraq. He then appeared as a witness on a committee of the House of Commons and reported his impressions. He firmly believed that unsolicited sanctions were ethically unjustifiable as they hit the weakest members of society. In a 2002 Guardian article, he spoke out against an invasion of Iraq because he said there was insufficient evidence to support such a move. In 2006 he and a group of other bishops opposed the British government, demanding that it cease the arms trade.

Trivia

As a student at Cambridge, Bennetts appeared with his future wife as a member of the Cambridge University Musical Society in Coventry Cathedral in 1963 in a performance of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem .

The future Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby was directly subordinate to Bennetts as a priest in Coventry.

swell

• The Rt Rev Colin Bennetts in The Daily Telegraph July 14, 2013, accessed October 2, 2013
• Ex-Coventry Bishop Right Reverend Colin Bennett's funeral on BBC News , July 23, 2013, accessed October 2, 2013

Publications

• Colin Bennetts at Hansard (English)
• Colin Bennetts, Immoral and illogical in The Guardian , August 9, 2002, accessed October 2, 2013

predecessor	Office	successor
Simon Burrows	Bishop of Buckingham 1994-1998	Michael Arthur Hill
Simon Barrington-Ward	Bishop of Coventry 1998–2008	Christopher Cocksworth