Press release from the Prime Minister’s Office
Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral
The Queen has approved the nomination of The Very Reverend Andrew Tremlett, Dean of Durham Cathedral, for election as Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral.
From: Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street
Published 30 March 2022
The Queen has approved the nomination of The Very Reverend Andrew Tremlett, Dean of Durham Cathedral, for election as Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in succession to The Very Reverend David Ison following his resignation.
Background
Andrew was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge and Queen’s College, Oxford and trained for ministry at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. He served his title at St Matthias, Torquay in the Diocese of Exeter and was ordained Priest in 1990.
In 1992, Andrew was appointed Assistant Chaplain at St Mary’s Rotterdam, based in the Diocese of Europe and to The Mission to Seafarers. From 1995, Andrew served as Team Vicar of St Columba, Fareham and in 1998 he became Bishop’s Chaplain in the Diocese of Portsmouth. In 2003, he was appointed Vicar of Goring-by-Sea, in the Diocese of Chichester, and in 2008 he became Residentiary Canon at Bristol Cathedral. He was additionally appointed Acting Dean in 2009. In 2010, Andrew served as Residentiary Canon and Rector of St Margaret’s, Westminster Abbey and, additionally, in 2014 he became Sub-Dean and Archdeacon of Westminster.
He took up his current role as Dean of Durham Cathedral in 2016.
I hope this will be seen as a good appointment and one that will be about consolidation and stability. Andrew strikes me as someone who appreciates the inherited quality of cathedrals, with their capacity to be places of innovation and tradition, who will be an encourager to the Cathedral and those who work there, without any pressure to ‘prove’ himself. David Ison came to St Paul’s at a difficult time, when nettles needed grasping and tempers needed to be calmed. Of course, he rattled a few cages along the way (was his appointment of a lay Canon Chancellor just virtue… Read more »
Perhaps the appointment of Dr Gooder was more about highlighting that there are intellectually gifted lay people in the Church of England! And maybe about affirming Reader ministry when it is not valued in many places.
Theological excellence and priestly calling don’t necessarily go together. Two of our best theologians at the moment – Paula Gooder and David Ford – are Readers. Both surely called by God,but not to sacramental ministry.
Or we could entertain the rather counter-cultural notion that Paula Gooder was the person God called to the role?
Couldn’t Paula’s appointment be seen as both “the person God called to the role” and “affirming Reader ministry”?
And entirely in line with Pope Francis’s recent changes in the Roman Catholic Church – Praedicate Evangelium, To quote the Tablet Magazine “Along with making structural changes, the aim of the constitution is to ensure that the Roman Curia, the oldest bureaucracy in the world, is geared towards missionary evangelisation. This cannot, the document makes clear, be left solely to the Vatican’s monsignors, bishops and cardinals. “The Pope, the bishops and other ordained ministers are not the only evangelisers in the Church,” the constitution’s introduction explains. “The reform of the Curia, therefore, must include the involvement of laymen and women, also… Read more »
Yes indeed. For the avoidance of doubt I was just reacting to the suggestion that Dr Gooder’s appointmment was either virtue signalling or the absence of academically gifted clergy.
It seems extremely sensible that the recruitment process for a new Dean began well before the retiring Dean’s departure – I think he leaves at the end of the summer or in September. Why the C of E can’t do this with every post, especially some of the more challenging situations ( eg Winchester Diocese) astonishes me. Long vacancies and the vacuums created can often be unhelpful and damaging.
The fact that Dean Ison gave about a year’s notice helped in this instance.
Mostly if you want to get a quick turnaround, it’s the housing that slows it down. Getting the ingoing works done while Covid lays waste to the builders has been a bit of a challenge, as my successor has found out!
As a regular worshipper at St Paul’s Cathedral, I don’t want to get into the discussion about about whether (or not) you affirm the distinctive character of either ordained or lay ministry by clericalising lay people, or even signalling that scholarship is somehow incompatible with priestly ministry (which it manifestly is not). However, I do want to highlight something that no-one else seems to have mentioned and which, I would suggest, is significant in this appointment. Andrew Tremlett has previously served on the Chapter of Westminster Abbey. Even a cursory comparison between St Paul’s and the Abbey usually throws up… Read more »