Kenneth Skelton

Kenneth John Fraser Skelton , CBE (born May 16, 1918 in London , † July 30, 2003 in Guildford , Surrey ) was a British Anglican theologian and Bishop of Matabeleland and Bishop of Lichfield .

Life

Kenneth Skelton attended Dulwich College and then studied Classical Studies and Theology at Corpus Christi College at Cambridge University . He received his priestly training from Wells Theological College and his first job in a Derbyshire ward . He then returned to Wells as a teacher at the Theological College and then took over priestly positions in parishes in Manchester , Liverpool and the Midlands . In 1962 he was ordained Bishop of Matabeleland in Bulawayo . It was a politically very troubled time in what was then Rhodesia . Skelton was suspected of working for the British secret service MI6 , which he vigorously denied, although he did pass on information without being paid for it, as he later admitted. Kenneth Skelton criticized police measures, the restriction of personal freedoms and the retention of information in Rhodesia. He was an avowed opponent of the unilateral Declaration of Independence of Rhodesia and when it was carried out in 1966 by Ian Smith , he made it his duty as a Christian to resist. The white population mocked him and his personal safety was seen as increasingly threatened as he campaigned for equal treatment for black people. When in 1970 a new constitution and land tenure law proposed by the government were rejected by the Church, he had no choice but to resign as bishop. He himself cited personal reasons as decisive for this step.

Kenneth Skelton returned to England, where he served first as a priest in Sunderland and at the same time as an assistant bishop of Durham . In 1972 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire with the rank of Commander (CBE). Unusual for a former bishop who had returned from a colony, he was reassigned the leadership of a diocese in 1975 with the office of Bishop of Lichfield . He had already been denigrated as a communist in Rhodesia and even after his return to England he showed a politically left-wing stance and resolutely opposed Margaret Thatcher's anti-social policy, as he perceived it . This earned him the nickname "Red Ken". Kenneth Skelton was a member of the House of Lords from 1980 until he stepped down from the episcopate in 1984 .

Kenneth Skelton was a progressive bishop on ecclesiastical issues. The General Synod of the English Church in 1974 initiated the Lichfield Report - Marriage and the Churches Task , which he co-authored and which, published in 1978, dealt with the Church's position on the conjugal community. The report did not become official church policy, but it changed the practice of the church. Divorced people could now marry again in an English church and couples who were only civilly married are no longer considered to be living in sin. Priests whose marriage has broken up are allowed to keep their position and do not have to fear deportation to remote parish offices or subordinate positions.

Kenneth Skelton had been married since 1945 and had two sons and a daughter.

Web links

• The Right Reverend Kenneth Skelton , Daily Telegraph , August 1, 2003, accessed September 2, 2013
• The Rt Rev Kenneth Skelton - Militant clergyman devoted to racial justice who declared it was a Christian duty to resist UDI in Rhodesia in The Guardian , August 4, 2003, accessed September 2, 2013