Press release from the Prime Minister’s Office. There are more details on the York diocesan website.
Appointment of Suffragan Bishop of Hull: 29 June 2022
The Queen has approved the following appointment.
From: Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street
Published 29 June 2022
The Queen has approved the nomination of The Right Reverend Dr Eleanor Sanderson, Assistant Bishop, in the Diocese of Wellington, to the Suffragan See of Hull, in the Diocese of York, in succession to The Right Reverend Alison White following her retirement.
Background
Eleanor was educated at Bristol University; the University of Wellington, New Zealand; and Otago University, New Zealand. She trained for ordained ministry in the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, and was ordained Priest in 2006.
Eleanor’s ordained ministry to date has been in New Zealand. She served her title in the parish of Northland Wilton, and became Canon in Residence at Wellington Cathedral in 2007. She was appointed Vicar of the Parish of Eastbourne in 2013, whilst additionally serving as Chaplain to the Anglican Wellesley College. In 2014, she was appointed Fellow for Public Theology at the Centre for Anglican Communion Studies, Virginia Theological Seminary.
In 2017, Eleanor was appointed to her current role as Assistant Bishop in the Diocese of Wellington.
It is particularly pleasing to note that Dr Sanderson is going to one of the sees named in the Suffragan Bishops Act of 1534.
What does this appointment say about, and to the clergy in the Church of England when the person appointed is coming from the other side of the world?
Possibly some fresh insight? In any event, she was born in Yorkshire, so there is that connection, and brought up in the family home in Derbyshire. There’s much more information on the linked York Diocese website.
That thought went through my mind. Sometimes appointment committees seem unaware of the impact on morale. I would be interested to know how such a person would end up on the long list for a suffragan post.
Short memories. Helen-Ann Hartley very similar situation.
Is this not a good thing, though? For many decades the traffic was almost entirely one-way, but in the other direction (and in the case of NZ, the shadow of colonialism was so pronounced that it only ceased to call itself the Church of England as recently as 1992). Moreover, we have recently seen the Church in Wales have bishops imported from England: a painful reversion to practice common before the third quarter of the nineteenth century, when it was customary for bishops to be English imports, who could not (or would not) learn Welsh. This point was especially neuralgic,… Read more »
I’ve heard it said that the church in NZ is an easier place for women in ministry. It allows women to learn, flourish and grow in a way that isn’t possible here. So it does seem to be a route to identifying women for senior leadership positions. There have been a few others. It’s one way of doing it, but I wish the underlying issue were also addressed.
Among Kiwi Anglicans serving in senior positions in the C of E, I would predict that Jo Kelly-Moore will prove a worthy successor to Jeffrey John as Dean of St Albans. Archbishop Sir David Moxon was recently a distinguished and wise ABC’s representative to the Holy See for five years. Bishop Selwyn was translated to Lichfield in 1867, Bishop St Barbe Holland moved from Wellington to be Dean of Norwich in 1946 and + Vincent Gerard came from Waiapu in 1947 and served as Assistant Bishop of Sheffield for a number of years. And of course there’s the legendary Canon… Read more »
Bishop Eleanor’s family live in the north of England and I know she has close connections with the OHP sisters in Whitby. ++Stephen will likely have spent time with her and got a feel for what’s going on in the Diocese of Wellington when he spent a week as keynote conference speaker there in 2019.
It’s an even closer connected world, isn’t it? Brendon McCullum seems to have started well as England cricket coach, working with NZ-born and raised captain Ben Stokes.
Me: Cricket! Ye Gods, I’d rather watch paint dry.
Stranger next to me: Excuse me. but I can tell you that watching paint dry is absolutely fascinating.
He was a professor of polymer chemistry.
The old ones are the best, I suppose. Which is better for the health of the nation – cricket or the C of E? Or drying paint?
Like several others here, I wondered why the ‘talent pool’ in the C of E had been overlooked in favour of someone from outside. And then I imagined Stephen Cottrell perusing the Preferment List, with all the (frankly) dull and theologically mochrome people, in all likelihood part of a cohort at Cranmer Hall, and saying to himself ‘we can do a lot better than this.’ I hope that this appointment will bring a degree of outside influence that challenges the mentality of the Episcopal tribe, a much-needed fresh perspective – as well as a willingness to call-out the collusion with… Read more »
As the C of E moves from being an established national church whose defining ecclesial model required it to serve the entire community into a Congregational church building its base by assembling worship groups it is hardly surprising it is importing episcopal leadership from provinces whose modus operandum is exactly that. I fear the dye is cast.
Once again, that is an extremely misleading caricature of those of us (the majority of the Anglicans in the world, actually) who live and work in non-established churches. You make it sound as if we have no care for the community around us. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, as we build our base by growing our churches, we strengthen our ability to serve the entire community, because we have a growing body of disciples who can join in that work. The two objectives are complementary, not contradictory.
Spot on from Tim.
Peter, your comments in relation to Wellington Diocese are extremely wide of the mark. Do have closer look at the life and ministry of Wellington diocese and you’ll discover that in their corner of Christendom they’re doing exactly what Tim speaks about in his part of the Communion.
Dear Tim and Simon I have been a regular visitor to the diocese of Wellington for over 20 years visiting clergy relatives. I do take your point that historically parish priests there have gone about their ministry in a classically Anglican fashion and have reaped the benefits. I witnessed very same whilst working in the diocese of Johannesburg East back in the 80’s. But I do wonder whether the model now advocated will actually touch the lives of people whose pastoral needs require more from ministry than that which appears to be based on a series of attractive evangelistic events.… Read more »
I’m treading carefully here, but I notice that quite a bit is made of the need for CofE priests moving to, say, Wales or Scotland to be sensitive to the very different nature of Anglican ministry there. I suppose the same works in the opposite direction.
And even within the Church of England the regional difference are not insignificant. Woe betide anyone moving to Guernsey or Jersey, and thinking that the islands are like the Isle of Wight.
Less than one hundred years ago, all three islands were in the Diocese of Winchester; now none of them is. “Time like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away …”
Attending to the local context is one of the great strengths of the CofE, and no doubt other Anglican churches. Perhaps that is one reason why many national and diocesan strategies struggle to get traction and are short lived, they do not map easily onto the needs and opportunities of our communities. Hopefully our bishops and senior teams are beginning to see this, but of course without a diocesan vision and strategy document it is hard to get money from the grant making bodies within the church.
I’m not claiming that we have gone about our parish ministry in classical Anglican fashion; that would be a mistake, as we’re not living in a classical Anglican culture. I’m saying that to focus on growing our churches and helping disciples grow into maturity helps us minister to the neighbourhoods around us. Classical Anglican ministry seems to depend mainly on the parish priest functioning as chaplain to the neighborhood. But focussing on growing our people into mature discipleship multiplies the number of people who can carry out Christ’s mission in our communities. A few years ago the mayor of Edmonton… Read more »
From a quite different perspective from other comments above: I know Ellie Sanderson personally. She and I were neighbours when we were both involved in post graduate study at St John’s College Auckland, and we worked together on a number of projects, notably worship with children. She has made an outstanding contribution as Assistant Bp of Wellington, and Hull and York are very fortunate to have found her. She is a very insightful theologian, and will make a great contribution to the College of Bishops (Have I got the title right for the group that includes suffragans?) Wellington will be… Read more »