Canon Eric James obituary

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/06/canon-eric-james-obituary

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Canon Eric James, who has died aged 87, was for many years recognised as one of the most fluent and charismatic preachers on the liberal wing of the Church of England and, as a regular Thought for the Day broadcaster on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, one of its best-known voices.

A large, bushy-eyebrowed figure, James was a guiding influence among the church's progressives. He was a prime mover behind the Church of England's controversial 1985 report Faith in the City, which indicted the effects of Thatcherism in inner-city areas, and the subsequent setting up of the Church Urban Fund to support its mission in disadvantaged and impoverished communities. Though he never attained the bishopric or deanery that many thought he merited (he was too impulsive in some of his judgments for that and had too many strategically placed critics on the bishops' bench) he was an inspirational figure wherever he served.

James was born into a middle-class family, grew up in Dagenham, east London, and left school at 15. His background was an unlikely one for someone who later became a Cambridge college chaplain, preacher to the barristers and judges of Gray's Inn and ultimately – and perhaps unlikeliest of all, given his political views – one of the Queen's chaplains. The red hankie always in his breast pocket represented a small token of his allegiance.

His views were firmly on the left – although Norman Tebbit went too far in describing Faith in the City as a Marxist document – and, in a move that might have occasioned even more outrage in the Church of England now that the issue is such a febrile one than it did then, he publicly outed himself as gay in a television programme following his retirement in 1990 while dressed in the scarlet cassock of a royal chaplain.

James, the youngest of four children, was musically gifted but initially went to work as a clerk in the wartime London docks. There he gravitated to hear lunchtime concerts and have organ lessons at nearby Southwark Cathedral. His growing vocation for ordination was encouraged by the provost there, Cuthbert Bardsley, later bishop of Coventry. He studied theology at King's College London – only narrowly passing – and then served his curacy at St Stephen's, Rochester Row, in Westminster under another future bishop, George Reindorp, who subsequently recommended him to become chaplain at his old college, Trinity, Cambridge.

At the university, James gained a reputation as a pastor and preacher and fell under the influence of a third future bishop, Mervyn Stockwood, vicar of Great St Mary's church, and a fellow chaplain, John Robinson, dean of Clare College, who as bishop of Woolwich would later publish the seminal, church-shaking book Honest to God. When Stockwood became Bishop of Southwark, Robinson and James both followed him to the diocese: an ecclesiastically progressive trio, campaigners for church reform and renewal and founders of what became known as "South Bank religion".

James followed five years as an inner-city vicar in Camberwell between 1959 and 1964 by taking over the running of a reformist group called Parish and People while serving as a canon at Southwark Cathedral. In the early 70s, however, there was a bitter falling-out with both Stockwood and the new suffragan bishop of Kingston, another rising church star Hugh Montefiore, over diocesan education policy. James wanted church schools to become less elitist and more inclusive and rashly declared himself in a sermon to be a victim of persecution. Amid unsavoury internecine gossip about the row, James resigned and was recruited instead by the future archbishop, Robert Runcie, then bishop of St Albans, to become a canon and preacher in the diocese there.

He also served as director of Christian Action, another reformist group, originally founded by the radical Canon John Collins. When the church's general synod in 1972 rejected moves towards unity with the Methodists, James noisily resigned from the body, declaring that he did not wish to waste any more time with it.

James's charismatic preaching skills led him to become a prolific author and frequent broadcaster – though he fell out with Thought for the Day producers on at least one occasion as they attempted to tone down his radicalism.

Characteristically, he chose a lecture at Westminster Abbey, one of the so-called Royal Peculiars, under the monarch's rather than the church's patronage, in 1998 to denounce the hereditary monarchy as a lottery and suggest that it ought to become elective instead: his outspokenness was one explanation of why he never achieved higher office in the church. George Carey did, however, award him a Lambeth doctorate, an honour in the gift of archbishops of Canterbury, in 1993. It was said that James enjoyed being in on privilege and power, but had a prophetic ministry to denounce it.

Among his books, which included collections of sermons, was a biography of Robinson, A Life of Bishop John AT Robinson (1987). A gossipy figure and raconteur, James was also a member of the Reform Club and a music, Shakespeare and cricket lover. He spent his final years in failing health at the Charterhouse in the City of London.

• Eric Arthur James, priest, writer and broadcaster, born 14 April 1925; died 1 May 2012