Press release from Number 10
Queen approves appointment of Dean of Salisbury: 27 March 2018
The Queen has approved the nomination of the Reverend Canon Nicholas Charles Papadopulos to the Deanery of Salisbury.
Published 28 March 2018
From: Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street
The Queen has approved the nomination of the Reverend Canon Nicholas Charles Papadopulos, MA, Canon Treasurer of Canterbury Cathedral and Director of Initial Ministerial Education 2 in the Diocese of Canterbury, to be appointed to the Deanery of Salisbury, following the resignation of the Very Reverend June Osborne, BA, on 14 July 2017.
The Reverend Canon Nicholas Papadopulos is aged 51. He studied History at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and Law at City University, London. He was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple in 1990 and practised at the criminal Bar for seven years. He trained for ministry at Ripon College Cuddesdon, and subsequently studied for his MA at King’s College, London. He served his title as Assistant Curate at St Mark Portsea in the Diocese of Portsmouth from 1999 to 2002. From 2002 to 2007 he was Senior Chaplain and Press Officer to the Bishop of Salisbury, and from 2007 to 2013 Vicar of Pimlico St Peter with Westminster Christ Church (St Peter’s Eaton Square) in the Diocese of London. Since 2013 he has been Canon Treasurer at Canterbury Cathedral and Director of Initial Ministerial Education 2 in the Diocese of Canterbury.
Given the safeguarding situation, the promotion of a former criminal barrister looks to be a good thing, bringing useful skills and experience to the Deanery.
Not all C of E appointments revolve around an obsession with safeguarding, despite the horrors of the past. Actually, this is a good appointment not because he is a criminal lawyer; but because (a) Nick is not an evangelical; (b) he understands the importance of musical excellence and intellectual gravity in making cathedrals attractive; (c) will develop the life of Salisbury Cathedral without resorting to the lowest common denominator. This is a good day for Salisbury – and for those who work at the Cathedral in particular.
Cheers Mike, that’s really useful extra information
Mike Nolan’s approach to CofE appointments appears to revolve around an obsession with a personal caricature he has of evangelicals. We can safely presume the job profile was a little broader than his criteria. Is he aware that the previous Dean trained at an evangelical college?
Our prayers and good wishes to Canon Nicholas on his appointment to the Deanery of Salisbury. He simply is a good man, and a dutiful priest. Somewhat of a rarity it would appear today.
I last heard him preach at Mass in Canterbury cathedral on the Sunday before Candlemass. We remember the service well, a very positive experience.
Salisbury will welcome him.
Fr John Emlyn
“Mike Nolan’s approach to CofE appointments appears to revolve around an obsession with a personal caricature he has of evangelicals” It may be a little blunt, but it’s hardly some sort of idiosyncratic personal view. Try a few *hours* reading through #Howtoevangelical on Twitter: he’s not the only one with a question mark when it comes to the ‘e’ word by an almost infinitely long chalk. The important question one needs to ask, if this isn’t just one person’s idiosyncracy, is ‘why’? A lot of people (most?) react very negatively to evangelicalism (apart from the Corbinized minority who crowd out… Read more »
‘cult coffer’????
Have fun in your echo chamber, folks. I’m done trying to build bridges with this group.
It was the end of a long day. I should not have risen to it. But within this rich and stimulating community called Thinking Anglicans are a significant number of folk who own the word ‘evangelical’. We are in the room here. Without always getting it right I aspire to being a ‘critical friend’ within my own tradition (and some have disowned me for this) – and in my engaging with others. Fr Andrew when you suggest ‘most’ people you really mean people who think and share your preferences. (If we talked I think you would find that I very… Read more »
David & Tim, It’s never easy to communicate nuance on this board, but I certainly had no intent to give the message ‘evangelicals not welcome.’ Evangelicalism is a tradition which I admit brings me no joy (a perception that the C of E was such a church kept me out of it for a long time) and- as a gay man- much misery *but* I don’t dispute its existence as a long tradition within Anglicanism with much to share and to teach. I’ve learned from my sisters and brothers in that tradition, and though that learning has often been dialectical,… Read more »
I couldn’t have put it better, Mr Runcorn. Smiling. jeans-wearing evangelical ditty singers simply have “bad taste”!
A cab driver reaches the pearly gates. St. Peter gives him a gold staff and a silk robe and he h axs into Heaven. A priest arrives next and St Peter says he will let him in, but gives him a sack cloth robe and rickety wooden staff.The priest is shocked and asks why he is being treated poorly. St. Peter says, “This is Heaven. We are only interested in results: when you preached, people slept; when the cabbie drove his taxi, people prayed.” It is a joke, of course. But I think it would be foolish to believe we… Read more »
I’m with David R on this one – and I think we would be very nervous about the C of E becoming monochrome. I do remember the days – nearly 30 years ago – when some of us wrote to our diocesan bishop when there was an archdeacon vacancy, pleading for an evangelical to be appointed as there were not any among the three bishops, three archdeacons and one dean in our diocese (and hardly any among the rural deans!) How things have changed!
Fr Andrew To be honest it is hard hear welcome when described as a ‘cult coffer’ – but I too aspire to robust engagement across the church traditions. Indeed for most of my ministry that has been a key part of my job.
Pastoral hunch here – the next time you are meeting evangelicals for some dialectical learning do invite FrDavidH along. Reading between the lines I think he is quite interested.
I do try not to be partisan, but it is wearying when so many new bishops and deans are being appointed from the ‘evangelical’ end of the spectrum. I know that many, probably most, of them appreciate the breadth of Anglican tradition and some could justifiably describe themselves as ‘Catholic Evangelicals’. But it was not a healthy time for the Church when, as Charles Read says above, nearly all the clergy in senior appointments could be labelled Liberal Catholics. Nor would it be healthy if they were all Evangelicals (liberal or otherwise). Those who don’t understand the nuances of a… Read more »
An interesting discussion. Too much labelling goes on IMHO. I’ve been the victim of it: AC, 1662 nerd, dresser up, ritualist, and much more. All inadequate. The label that I feel more and more at home with is Wesleyan: compassionate, enthusiastic, evangelical, catholic, patristic, inclusive, humsnity-affirming and heart-warming. I’ve celebrated mass in full fig, in mufti and all stations between. In my 19th cent Bodley-decorated AC barn, the full works says something wonderful about the human response to the Divine. In my elegant 18th century town centre church, Wednesday’s BCP with surplice and scarf feels exactly right. The breadth of… Read more »
“it is hard hear welcome when described as a ‘cult coffer’ ‘ Rhetoric / metaphor is what that is (and mild I would have to say). It’s like when a friend points out to you that your dress sense is doing them no favours. It’s not nice to be told but it might be worth taking what they’re saying on board. Again there is a serious point in that, what I understand of, (at least some streams in) Evangelicalism is the theological dichotomising of believers/ non-believers, the notion of the gathered church/ the elect, the importance of personal conversion: these… Read more »
This has proved to be a most extraordinary thread. It concerns the appointment of the next Dean of Salisbury, who I don’t know, but if I was to consider his ministerial background, which is broad, the last question I would have considered is whether he is an ‘evangelical’. Mike Nolan lit the blue touch paper by making a lot about, for his personal reasons, the fact that, in his view, one of the features of his appointment is that ‘Nick is not an evangelical’. Really? You mean he doesn’t preach the Good News of Jesus? I doubt it. Of course… Read more »
Fr Andrew. One last thought. It boils down to what we want to achieve. If I say I want to engage with people I strongly differ with but address them and their views with names they do not recognise or even find distorting and insulting, no real meeting is going to happen. I may tell them then they are being thin-skinned. But who is the measure of that? It is possible it is me that has hardened up. And the right to speak as an honest friend has to be earned. If I really want to meet such folk then… Read more »
Gosh. What a hare I have set running. It might help if I say that I thought not being Evangelical was a good thing in relation to the Salisbury appointment simply because too many senior appointments over the past few years have made the Church of England predictably monochrome. That Nick Popadapulos fits what might be called a ‘traditional profile’ for a Dean is as refreshing as it is welcome. I don’t know whether he is part of the ‘talent pool’ or has been on the MBA training. But I do know that he preaches with intelligence and humanity, and… Read more »
“The discernment process is quite different” If the discernment process was working, we wouldn’t have monochrome periods (either way) based on the latest fashion. It’s why I think Discernment in Obedience is a joke. It’s not discernment at all. At the best it is saying “These are candidates we don’t mind, any preferences?” but because discernment is so difficult, it’s doubtful we achieve even that much. I am not getting into the tribalism on this thread, but I am certain that discernment isn’t working. If it was, we would have an equal number of female bishops by now, some prominent… Read more »
“Discernment isn’t working. If it was, we would have an equal number of female bishops by now…” The fact that we do not have equal numbers of female bishops is, I would suggest, a sign that discernment *is* working. We are not appointing someone just because of their gender, or whatever aspect of their identity chimes with the current obsession. Rather, I would dare to hope that the reason we do not have equal numbers of male and female bishops at this early stage of admitting women to the episcopate is that we are taking a long hard look at… Read more »
It is good to know that churchmanship doesnt play a material part in appointments..though i doubt if it plays no part at all. But churchmanship is none the less a feature of the C of E and this is often seen in relation to pastoral re- organisation for instance. One of my sadnesses is that in many ways the traditions in the C of E have moved further apart in my lifetime and to the interested outsider the C of E does appear “tribal”.
“AC, 1662 nerd, dresser up, ritualist, and much more” – you say that like it’s a *BAD* thing. I think you may just have written my new Twitter bio.
” It might help if I say that I thought not being Evangelical was a good thing in relation to the Salisbury appointment simply because too many senior appointments over the past few years have made the Church of England predictably monochrome.” I think you’ll find that this doesn’t ‘fit’ Salisburys profile. If it’s about balance or representation then the evangelical constituency has been under recognised, being much larger than presented, and the senior staff hugely monochrome on the liberal side. +Graham was a passing difference. I know Nick P, he’s a nice thoughtful guy, but he won’t be different… Read more »
Mr Lynch, others used those terms as insults. I relished and relish them.
“Surely, we are not in the business of patronising women by giving them the top jobs just because they are women?” Well the current incumbents have the top jobs *just* because they’re men, so what’s the difference? I wonder who decides what the criteria are for ‘skills and capability’ for the job? Cis white heterosexual men. Hey, what a surprise, look who gets appointed. I mean, if our current ‘leaders’ are the best of the bunch we’re completely and utterly stuffed. Yes, many are nice people but I would wager that if the CNC appointed just random women & LGBT… Read more »
The racism and sexism and homophobia in the appointments process is •structural• and so it’s never going to be the case of ‘the best person getting the job’ while those lopsided structures are in place.
“The racism and sexism and homophobia in the appointments process is •structural• and so it’s never going to be the case of ‘the best person getting the job’ while those lopsided structures are in place.”
Yes! Exactly. The call of not appointing women just because we’re women is abhorrent and patronizing. As if there isn’t an army of women who are exceedingly well equipped for the job. And as Fr. Andrew said, they could not possibly do it worse than the current lot.
Having just watched a repeat of “Canterbury Cathedral” on BBC2 Canon Nicholas figured significantly – especially when he received the telephone call to say that the bid for £12 million had been successful. It would seem that Sarum is about to receive a formidable Dean.
A few final comments on this interesting thread which has strayed somewhat from the good news of the appointment of the new Dean of Salisbury. I cannot agree with Kate on her view of discernment, but this is not the place to unpack Professor O’Donovan’s report. Discernment has nothing to do with signing up “God and attempting to make [Him] responsible for the discrimination in appointments,” even if such exists, which I doubt. It does however have much to do with co-operation with the Holy Spirit. As to women bishops, the Church of England has done extremely well. It was… Read more »
Reading this thread, I am struck by not so much as what is said as to how it is said and I am stung by Tim Chesterton’s comment ‘I am done trying to build bridges with this group’. I hope he won’t stop contributing but perhaps we ought to build bridges with him. I too have no idea what a ‘cult coffer’ is. T. S. Eliot spoke of the ‘language of the tribe’ and the discourse on this site is often coded and referential – for example, readers need to know what ‘1662’ or even ‘1928’ signifies. It might help… Read more »
Daniel Lamont’s mention of Gary Bennett has caused me to revisit John Habgood’s chapter on “The Crockford Preface”in his book “Confessions of a Conservative Liberal” where he writes – “The Preface had three main strands: 1. A critique of the Anglican Communion for avoiding hard questions about authority; 2. Criticisms of the General Synod and its committee structure for failing to provide a coherent policy for the Church of England. 3. The identification of a powerful liberal establishment determined to upset the traditional balance of the Church.” It seems to me that Gareth Bennett was something of a prophet who… Read more »