The Rt Revd Dr Peter Selby writes:
FOR Ronnie Bowlby, the privileges of his background and education were an impetus — not just to be aware of the needs of those for whom those advantages were not available, but even more significantly to learn from those facing very different life challenges, and to allow their experience to challenge his own.
That meant, for example, allowing himself to be addressed by the devastation in Germany which he saw, as part of the occupation army, and then the pressing needs of German families, as well as the hopes of fellow-soldiers pondering their return to civilian life. It meant seeking to understand better the environment and experience of industrial life by working as a fitter in a Coventry factory. In a less public sphere, but just as revealingly, it meant much later on, as a diocesan bishop, allowing himself to be subjected with clergy in Newcastle diocese to the frustrations of a group-dynamics exercise; he would not have wanted to encourage others to engage in training if he did not do so himself, and he made himself vulnerable by being willing to do so in their company.
Always keen to know more about society’s challenges, he regularly sought to be taken into situations in which he could learn more and, therefore, be more prepared to live out his conviction that making some positive difference to the life of the world was a primary claim on himself, and on the life of the Church.
Ronald Oliver Bowlby was born in 1926, the only son of Helena and Oliver Bowlby. His father was a housemaster at Harrow School, and Ronnie was sent away, aged eight, to a boarding school, and then to Eton at 13. Conscription in 1944 interrupted his education, which was resumed in 1948 when he read a shortened history degree at Oxford, before theological education and then a first curacy at St Luke’s Pallion, Sunderland. There, he enjoyed taking young people who had had few opportunities to travel to youth camps in the countryside.
From the shipbuilding environment of Wearside, he moved to Teesside, to St Aidan’s, Billingham, an area dominated by the huge ICI chemical works. Here, his strong interest in industrial life led him into a close and lifelong dialogue with the practitioners of industrial mission. He also experienced at first hand the sense many parish clergy had of being unsupported by those who should have supported them: being told at a chapter meeting by a senior diocesan official that they must just get on with it infuriated him, and he didn’t forgive himself for not protesting. That no doubt played its part in his insistence as a bishop on the priority of the pastoral care of the clergy.
UPPUPP
Croydon, his next assignment as vicar, was a very different experience. While a very mixed area undergoing rapid social change, it was also one where, perhaps, his own background meant that the presence of parishioners of eminence did not arouse either fascination or envy. He could not know at the time that he would be responsible years later for easing Croydon from its place in Canterbury diocese to its more logical home in Southwark, and indeed for creating an area scheme in which Croydon would become the name of an episcopal area extending south into Surrey, under his overall responsibility as diocesan bishop.
He found in Newcastle diocese, to which he was appointed bishop in 1973, much to love in Tyneside and Northumberland, and that affection remained deep within him long after he had moved on. At the same time, he found that clergy and lay training needed attention. Wisely, he did not tackle this head-on, but commissioned an in-depth investigation into the development needs of the diocese. On the basis of that research, he began the process of recruiting a team of advisers in mission, social responsibility, and education to enable and encourage the diocese’s greater engagement with the challenges faced by Tyneside as the winds of Thatcherism began to blow.
Recruiting people for specific purposes was an aspect of his wisdom. He believed strongly that women should be admitted to ordination: on the one hand facing the opposition aroused by the issue with diplomacy and respect, while on the other hand encouraging the formation of NOW (Newcastle for the Ordination of Women), which predated MOW. The fact that the diocese was one of the first to have a woman appointed as its bishop brought him great delight.
In 1980, he became the inspired choice to follow Mervyn Stockwood as Bishop of Southwark, a task that few would have been able to undertake. It gave him the opportunity to build on the radical traditions of the diocese, while promoting a climate of attentive listening and pastoral care. Urban issues were pressing themselves on the Church, not least in south London; Wilfred Wood, later nominated by Ronnie as Bishop of Croydon and the first black person to be consecrated bishop in the Church of England, had been a member of the Commission that produced Faith in the City and the priorities of housing, one of Ronnie’s lifelong interests, and of racial justice required serious diocesan engagement. Ronnie’s strategy was always about creating the groups, appointing the people, and giving the support needed for those priorities to be pursued.
His membership of the House of Lords presented many opportunities to research issues with care and to present his arguments in a way that, because of the careful study which lay behind them, gained a hearing even from those most suspicious of bishops’ political utterances. However passionate he might be about an issue, whether it was in the community in such matters as housing and racial justice, or in the Church in the matter of the ordination of women, he would not dodge the work of understanding or of engaging with those who disagreed; one of his colleagues once suggested the publication of a book of his model gentle-but-firm responses to letters of complaint.
He spoke warmly of how much support Elizabeth, whom he married in 1956, had given him in the moves that his path in ministry had involved, and of her refreshing independence of mind. He was always glad that he retired at 65, moving to Shrewsbury, where he and Elizabeth made new friends, could give time to their garden, and where his curiosity and engagement, now without responsibility, were undiminished. Increasing frailty made residential care necessary, and Elizabeth died in 2015.
They had five children, all of whom show in a rich diversity of areas a legacy of social concern and commitment. There are seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren: Ronnie retained to the end a fascination and a pride in relation to their different achievements, and his longstanding concern about environmental issues showed itself in his oft-stated sense of the responsibility that older generations have to the younger for the world that they will inherit.
In his enthronement sermon in Southwark, he quoted Elizabeth’s having observed, as they stepped out of Bishop’s House, the sign that reads, “Streatham Exhausts”. There was a deep sympathy for all, including, but by no means limited to, clergy, whose life and work “exhaust”. Without florid expression and doubtful about dramatic gesture, Ronnie saw Christianity essentially as work to be done. The concern to make things better for people led this wise and quietly devout bishop to listen, learn, pray, and act. His own spiritual resources were the discipline of a Franciscan tertiary, the attentiveness with which he heard what people came to say, and the constancy of the prayer and care with which he supported them.
The Rt Revd Ronald Bowlby died on 21 December, aged 93.
