Suffragan Bishop of Sherborne: Karen Marisa Gorham
From: Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street
First published: 26 November 2015The Queen has approved the nomination of Venerable Karen Marisa Gorham to the Suffragan See of Sherborne in the diocese of Salisbury.
The Queen has approved the nomination of the Venerable Karen Marisa Gorham, BA, Archdeacon of Buckingham in the diocese of Oxford, to the Suffragan See of Sherborne in the diocese of Salisbury in succession to the Right Reverend Graham Ralph Kings MA PhD, on his resignation on the 15 July 2015.
Notes for editors
The Venerable Karen Gorham (age 51) holds a BA from the University of Bristol and trained for the ministry at Trinity College, Bristol. Prior to ordination she worked as an administrator with BTEC and the Royal Society of Arts and as a Pastoral Assistant in Essex and Hull. She served her title at Northallerton with Kirby Sigston in the diocese of York from 1995 to 1999. She was ordained priest in 1996 and in 1999 went on to become Priest-in-Charge of St Paul’s, Maidstone in the diocese of Canterbury. During this time she was also Assistant Director of Ordinands and Area Dean of Maidstone.
In 2006 she became an Honorary Canon of Canterbury Cathedral. She took up her current role as Archdeacon of Buckingham in 2007. Karen has been a member of the Church of England General Synod for 12 years, and for the last 2 has served as a member of the Panel of Chairs.
Her interests include travel and walking, the coast and Celtic spirituality. She enjoys days out with friends and an occasional visit to a good restaurant to sample the taster menu. Fxopen was not too famous or popular broker. Now it’s one of the biggest companies on forex markets. At these days broker offers different bonuses without deposit or only after deposit for old clients. You may not make the money deposit if you want to get the fxopen welcome bonus for new clients, which registered the trading accounts at the broker platform. To pass the verification of docs at Fx open site, you should upload copy of your passport and copy of utility bill wth your name on it. These will be enough for verification. If you have own forex strategy, then all ok. Karen has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts since 2012.
The Salisbury diocesan website has this: Karen Gorham to be New Bishop of Sherborne, and Oxford has this: Archdeacon Karen to be Bishop of Sherborne.
The new bishop will be consecrated on 24 February 2016.
The previous Bishop of Sherborne resigned on 15th July 2015. His successor will be consecrated on 24th February 2016 – a mere seven month vacancy. It seems that the Church of England can act speedily when it wants to but how long has the Suffragan See of Dunwich in Suffolk been vacant for now? Also the Archdeacon of Buckingham has been serving for some considerable time in the See of Oxford which has for many months now been without a Diocesan Bishop.
David — we are expecting an announcement re: Dunwich very soon, and that process will have only started (indeed can only have started) after the new diocesan’s arrival in May.
It would be more fair to say that the church can move speedily when it both wants to and it is possible. No Dunwich could have been appointed during the lengthy vacancy in the diocesan See.
“I also enjoy creative writing, poetry and Celtic spirituality.” I thought the last had been exposed as sentimental bunkum.
I can endorse DBD’s reply to Father David. Bishop Martin started the consultation process for appointing a new Bishop of Dunwich in July, interviews were held on 6 October 2015, and Bishop Martin hoped that an announcement of the name of the new suffragan bishop could be made by St Edmund’s Day (20 November). At the Diocesan Synod meeting on 14 November he informed us that it was now more likely to be just before Christmas when the announcement would be made, or possibly not till early in the new year.
Bishop Clive Young retired as long ago as 12th May 2013. He has since sadly died after all too short a retirement in Herefordshire. I recall once having a brief conversation with him as together we crossed Prebends Bridge in Durham. He seemed to me to be a charming man. But an interregnum of two and a half years seems to be a terribly long time! I know that the previous Diocesan was whisked off to assist the Archbishop at Lambeth and his successor needed time to settle in but even so, a quarter of a decade is surely far… Read more »
Bishop Clive Young retired as long ago as 12th May 2013. He has since sadly died after all too short a retirement in Herefordshire. I recall once having a brief conversation with him as together we crossed Prebends Bridge in Durham. He seemed to me to be a charming man. But an interregnum of two and a half years seems to be a terribly long time! I know that the previous Diocesan was whisked off to assist the Archbishop at Lambeth and his successor needed time to settle in but even so, a quarter of a decade is surely far… Read more »
Graduate of Trinity College, Bristol! Does this mean another woman bishop in the Church of England who might favour the status quo re the treatment of the LGBTQ membership of the Church?
“Does this mean another woman bishop in the Church of England who might favour the status quo re the treatment of the LGBTQ membership of the Church?”
Along with many other recent episcopal appointments, it’s impossible to tell as Karen Gorham has, apparently, never expressed an opinion on the subject that has reached the internet.
Father Ron Smith – possibly not if you know the history and make-up of Trinity College, Bristol in the past few decades, and scan the House of Bishops for its alumnae.
Karen is the second woman so far from + David Gillett’s Pastoral Group at Trinity in the mid 1990s to be appointed a Bishop this year.
Ron Smith The principal of Trinity at that time, Bishop David Gillett was and is a supporter of the LGBTQ community. The evangelical community in the CofE is more diverse than ever on what you call the ‘status quo.’
Fr Ron, has a single woman bishop so far challenged publicly the official policy of the C of E toward its LGBTQ membership? Of course not. They would never have been appointed had they indicated that they would do so – like the majority of their male counterparts.
Father Ron, I don’t pretend to know what views Karen Gorham has with regard to “LGBTQ” issues but I do know that for all the time she has ministered as Archdeacon her closest clerical colleague has been none other than Alan Wilson, Bishop of Buckingham and he is noted for his outspoken views on this particular topic. Although his personal Blog has had nothing placed upon it for months now. I wonder if he has been leaned upon by a higher authority to rein it in?
Laurence Cunnington, at the hustings for Synod in the Oxford Diocese, this year, Karen Gorham’s answer is on record to the question, “Given there are such strongly held differing views on the issue of human sexuality in our Church, how do you think the Church of England should approach the issue in the next five years?” She says: “General Synod will need to receive a report on the diocesan Conversations before each of its members engages in a similar exercise themselves. It will then depend, probably on the House of Bishops, what comes before Synod. I think the church sometime… Read more »
Given the rather bizarre way in the House of Bishops appears to be operating and the directions given to the CNC about who can and can’t be considered as bishops and the make of the CNC, I am not surprised that no woman have made any strong comments in favour of the LGBTQ community. Presumably when a proper debate is held in the General Synod then they will have the opportunity to express their views. Until then their relatively new ministries could be greatly inhibited by the loony right – who know how to cause damage and are very convinced… Read more »
Given the person responsible for appointing her, I think we can be utterly shocked if the new Dunwich is not ‘she’.
May I suggest to the many readers of this page lamenting the lack of LGBT-friendly bishops that they read the Bishop of Salisbury’s contribution to the new Stonewall publication, ‘Christian Role Models for LGBT Equality’.
Thanks to those who responded to my question about the attitude – towards LGBT people – of a recent female appointee to the House of Bishops in the Church of England. One still wonders whether anyone who has publicly expressed support for the blessing of the Church on Same-Sex mongamous relationshops will, in future, be welcomed by the CNC as candidates for the episcopate? As has been noted, so far none of the more recent prospective appointees has been known to have been outspoken supporters of this sector of the Body of Christ. In the light of this fact, one… Read more »
Whether or not the ‘Conversations’ make any substantive or immediate difference to policy, in terms of the appointment of bishops, we must pray that they will make a very significant impact on how we live together in one church. The ‘Conversations’ lead into two full days of agenda for General Synod next summer and we must live in the hope that the Holy Spirit will have some influence on the process.
Indeed, Fr Ron Smith. I think the ‘Conversations’ are broadly a good thing (having been involved, with initial high reservations in the Southwest rounds), but they are undermined (and have been for years) by attempts to cleanse ordained ministry of LGBQ people and their allies. Many of us have been barred from discerning vocation since the early nineties for refusing to agree to live with in Issues in Human Sexuality; while the Bishop of Maidstone is appointed to nurture vocations from a decidedly un-affirming wing of the church. Arbitrary discrimination against gay clergy is well documented, priests publically in same-sex… Read more »
“The ‘Conversations’ lead into two full days of agenda for General Synod next summer and we must live in the hope that the Holy Spirit will have some influence on the process.” – Nigel Lloyd –
Indeed! And that the General Synod members – especially those from the H.o.B. – will have “ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church”
Nice to see a single person.
Fr William, the new priest at my former parish was heavily into “Celtic spirituality,” which usually seemed to involve having us all stand around a fire reading some earnest but clumsy liturgy that she had written herself in which we did things like honor the life force in the seed and confess our failure to recognize the divine in one another.
That’s why the parish is my former one.
As far as I can tell, “Celtic spirituality” is Celtic in pretty much the same way that Pizza Hut is Italian.