Canon Gordon Dey and correspondents write:
THE Rt Revd Peter St George Vaughan, a former Bishop of Ramsbury, came from a medical family full of faith.
Born in 1930 in Shiraz, Iran, to CMS missionaries, he travelled as a baby in his mother’s arms back to the UK. He was schooled in Cheltenham, to which he had been evacuated during the war, and later at Charterhouse. He was not sporty, and his pleasure in school was not one unadulterated. He attended Bash camps, together with Michael Green and David Sheppard. Despite these camps’ focus on muscular Christianity, it was his faith that grew, not his sporting ability.
After National Service, he studied at Selwyn College, and then at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. During holidays, he spent time in his uncle’s parish in Middlesbrough, where he worked in an iron foundry. The least practical of people, he did this so that he could understand everyday working life.
An encounter at a CSSM mission with Elisabeth Parker, a New Zealander, forged a relationship that would undergird future life and Christian ministry. Their contrasting personalities and yet common passionate faith and CMS family backgrounds set the scene for their married life.
As his curacy began in 1957 at St Martin’s in-the-Bull-Ring, Birmingham, under the evangelist Canon Bryan Green, he met Canon John Holden, who says: “Searching for faith, and as a complete newcomer, Peter invited me to meet with him once a week for conversations; it was like a one-to-one Alpha course.”
Peter lived with the four other curates in the rectory. Green joked that, although he himself was regarded as too great a risk to ever be called to the episcopate, most of his curates had become bishops. Here, Peter learnt his trade and his love of mission and challenging environments, and the need for ministry to respond creatively to social trends. This commitment to deprived areas he shared with Elisabeth, reflected in the school at which she chose to teach.
He set up a boys’ club, invited shoppers in the Bullring market to lunchtime services, and had a particular concern for the children in the St Martin’s Sunday school, which was located in what was still then a slum area of central Birmingham. The same commitment led Peter, in retirement, to participate in a project supporting refugees and asylum-seekers in Swindon.
In 1963, Peter, now with Elisabeth, moved to Oxford, as Chaplain to the Oxford Pastorate, and Assistant Chaplain of Brasnose College, where he thrived on lively student debate and High Table discussion. Their two daughters, Sarah and Merle, were born in this period. The urge to engage in overseas mission work was irresistible, however, and, over the next eight years, they took on challenging ministry in Sri Lanka and in New Zealand.
With CMS, he was the last British Vicar of Christ Church, Galle Face, in Colombo, and was delighted that one of his curates succeeded him. He thrived on the multi-faith environment and forged lifelong relationships, returning several times in retirement to lead missions. He enjoyed the culture, and, although he never mastered the language, he did not fear the challenge of it.
When an insurrection broke out in 1970, they remained in Sri Lanka long after the expat community had left. His mother sent him the Church Times weekly and, in its folds, were all the medicines and necessities that were unavailable during rationing. Usually, packages mysteriously arrived empty, but the Church Times proved the safest mode of transport.
After five years, Peter moved with the family, now with son Richard, too, to New Zealand, where he was Precentor of Auckland Cathedral, and experienced a flavour of his wife’s homeland.
Returning to the UK in 1975, Peter was appointed Principal of CMS’s Training College, Crowther Hall, in Birmingham. He followed in the footsteps of Bishop Simon Barrington-Ward (Gazette, 1 May and 22 May). On a campus of several training colleges which boasted 45 nationalities and a collegiate federation, this was a rich environment in which to teach and develop mission partners.
When he moved to Carlisle, to become Archdeacon of Westmorland and Furness, he was involved in the CMS Northern Council. Canon Mark Oxbrow talks of his and Elisabeth’s being “energetic supporters” of Faith2Share, a global network of mission agencies, born within and including CMS.
Bishop Chris Edmondson recalls: “When Peter was Archdeacon, he ‘got’ what I was about in my role as Diocesan Missioner for Carlisle diocese, and I know he prayed for me and was generally a great source of encouragement.” He also travelled miles in the days before SatNav, never once arriving late. He and Elisabeth loved the beauty of the Lakes, and did much fell-walking.
In 1989, Peter became Bishop of Ramsbury, the first bishop to be consecrated in Salisbury Cathedral in 900 years. His greatest pleasure was pastoral care of the clergy. The Archdeacon of Sarum, the Ven. Alan Jeans, recalls: “Although we had different theologies of mission and evangelism, Bishop Peter always gave space for my tradition and understanding, and soon he drew me into the Archbishop’s Springboard Mission Initiative. . . Bishop Peter was an encourager in his humility and graciousness.”
Building on relationships made while with CMS, he forged links, including the diocesan one, with Sudan, and was the Archbishop’s envoy. Confirming hundreds of refugees or ordaining priests, all of whom had walked for days to meet him and his Sudanese colleague, left a searing impression on him. The image of the Sudanese bishop holding the cross high while leading his people to safety through tracts of desert never left him. He also created a diocesan link with Latvia, and remained the Archbishop’s representative with the Church of Ceylon. While in Carlisle, he had forged links with the Church in Zululand.
Instead of retiring in 1998, he felt that he had enough energy for one last post, and was sent to Bradford diocese as a house-for-duty assistant bishop. This, again, was a post that he made pastoral, but he also immersed himself in parish life with me, the Vicar. He was as comfortable chatting to people, peeling carrots in the day centre on a large urban estate, as he was in getting to know people in the more prosperous little village.
Retirement when it came was in Lechdale, where he, now into his mid-eighties, regularly took the Sunday-evening services; he particularly enjoyed leading gatherings at the pub.
Peter’s ministry was greatly enhanced by his marriage and the life and vision that he and Elisabeth shared for 58 years. It was she who cared for him during his last years of growing dementia. These years were ones of gentle mental and physical decline. Spiritually, however, there was no decline, and he was often able to provide wise counsel. When asked to pray, he seemed to be fully aware of the real needs of those around him. His gracious kindness was reflected in his last days, as he thanked the nurses who washed him, despite the pain and discomfort that this caused him. He was a man who lay his talents at the foot of the cross and used what he had to God’s glory.
Peter died on 4 April, aged 89. His request for his funeral was simple: “It must be a Resurrection event.” Those who made up the intimate number sensed that they were surrounded by a “cloud of witnesses” who shared in thanksgiving for a man who claimed nothing for himself, but in whom we constantly saw the resurrection life of Jesus being lived.
