John Rowe (1923-2017)
John dedicated the bulk of his ministerial life to the calling of the worker-priest. He was a friend and an inspiration.
OBITUARY Church Times, London | PDF of publication
No other priest has impressed me so much by the coherence of belief and action than John Rowe, who has died at the age of 94. John was born in the former colony of British Guiana where his father was the Archdeacon of Demerara. His experience there of inter-racial education established in him an early awareness of discrimination and helped foster “anti-colonial sentiments but also…socialist ideas”.
He served in the Guiana Police (1942-45), then studied Philosophy and English at McGill (1945-48) and Theology at the Montreal Diocesan Theological College (1948-51). During this period he became involved with the Student Christian Movement and the Society of the Catholic Commonwealth, being heavily influenced by the teachings of Fr Hastings Smyth.
He was ordained Deacon in Montreal in 1951 and came to England on a student exchange with his wife, Isabel, where he completed a further degree in Philosophy at Cambridge (1951-53). He served his title at Trumpington before being priested at Ely in 1952. He took up the post of stipendiary curate at St. Luke’s Burdett Road (later to become St Paul’s, Bow Common) in London’s East End between 1953 and 1956.
During this time he began to experience a growing sense of contradiction between the status of parish clergy and the people of the parish. Having heard reports of the worker-priests in France, he made the decision to follow their example and resigned his post to take up work at Truman’s Brewery in Spitalfields where he trained as an electrician and remained for thirty years. He remained as Hon. Assistant Curate at St Paul’s Bow Common between 1956 and 1984.
John’s primary motivation in such a radical and costly move was not to win converts amongst the workers - “I wish simply to share in their way of life as much as I can, for they are no less God’s people than those who go to church” - but to challenge what he perceived to be the self-satisfied structure of the church itself.
In all this he had the active support of his wife Isabel, a professional nurse and herself the daughter of a missionary bishop. John authored the 1965 book Priests and Workers, a Rejoinder which set out the case for worker-priests within the church and which was the subject of a Church Times feature. The couple’s wish to live rather than simply recite or reference the Gospel led to the establishment of the Pigott Street Community in Limehouse (1956-64).
He gave up his licence (but not his priesthood) in 1984, explaining in detail his reasons in a letter to the Bishop of Stepney. Over the years he came to see the limitations of the church in its organisational forms, which he felt compromised the calling to follow the Jesus of the Gospels for both clergy and laity.
In a 2010 essay he concluded, “So, knowing myself, I am not likely to abandon altogether either the Church or my favourite causes. However, I am on the lookout for some better way of affirming the Good News than “by word and sacrament”, or by public demonstration - some authentic and unromantic way of joining those who, being society’s rejects, are, unknown to themselves, the passport-holders of the Kingdom of God.”
John is survived by Isabel* and his children Marguerite, Jack, Annette, Paul, Kate and Jim
* Isabel died in 2022
Hugh Valentine
See also STATEMENT OF A GROUP OF CHURCHMEN, PRIESTS AND LAY, WHO HAVE CHOSEN TO BE AGE-WORKERS IN INDUSTRY AS AN EXPRESSION OF THEIR FAITH [February 1959] - John was a signatory and the main drafter of this. See also press reporting from the 1950s/60s about John, here
OBITUARY Church Times, London | PDF of publication
No other priest has impressed me so much by the coherence of belief and action than John Rowe, who has died at the age of 94. John was born in the former colony of British Guiana where his father was the Archdeacon of Demerara. His experience there of inter-racial education established in him an early awareness of discrimination and helped foster “anti-colonial sentiments but also…socialist ideas”.
He served in the Guiana Police (1942-45), then studied Philosophy and English at McGill (1945-48) and Theology at the Montreal Diocesan Theological College (1948-51). During this period he became involved with the Student Christian Movement and the Society of the Catholic Commonwealth, being heavily influenced by the teachings of Fr Hastings Smyth.
He was ordained Deacon in Montreal in 1951 and came to England on a student exchange with his wife, Isabel, where he completed a further degree in Philosophy at Cambridge (1951-53). He served his title at Trumpington before being priested at Ely in 1952. He took up the post of stipendiary curate at St. Luke’s Burdett Road (later to become St Paul’s, Bow Common) in London’s East End between 1953 and 1956.
During this time he began to experience a growing sense of contradiction between the status of parish clergy and the people of the parish. Having heard reports of the worker-priests in France, he made the decision to follow their example and resigned his post to take up work at Truman’s Brewery in Spitalfields where he trained as an electrician and remained for thirty years. He remained as Hon. Assistant Curate at St Paul’s Bow Common between 1956 and 1984.
John’s primary motivation in such a radical and costly move was not to win converts amongst the workers - “I wish simply to share in their way of life as much as I can, for they are no less God’s people than those who go to church” - but to challenge what he perceived to be the self-satisfied structure of the church itself.
In all this he had the active support of his wife Isabel, a professional nurse and herself the daughter of a missionary bishop. John authored the 1965 book Priests and Workers, a Rejoinder which set out the case for worker-priests within the church and which was the subject of a Church Times feature. The couple’s wish to live rather than simply recite or reference the Gospel led to the establishment of the Pigott Street Community in Limehouse (1956-64).
He gave up his licence (but not his priesthood) in 1984, explaining in detail his reasons in a letter to the Bishop of Stepney. Over the years he came to see the limitations of the church in its organisational forms, which he felt compromised the calling to follow the Jesus of the Gospels for both clergy and laity.
In a 2010 essay he concluded, “So, knowing myself, I am not likely to abandon altogether either the Church or my favourite causes. However, I am on the lookout for some better way of affirming the Good News than “by word and sacrament”, or by public demonstration - some authentic and unromantic way of joining those who, being society’s rejects, are, unknown to themselves, the passport-holders of the Kingdom of God.”
John is survived by Isabel* and his children Marguerite, Jack, Annette, Paul, Kate and Jim
* Isabel died in 2022
Hugh Valentine
See also STATEMENT OF A GROUP OF CHURCHMEN, PRIESTS AND LAY, WHO HAVE CHOSEN TO BE AGE-WORKERS IN INDUSTRY AS AN EXPRESSION OF THEIR FAITH [February 1959] - John was a signatory and the main drafter of this. See also press reporting from the 1950s/60s about John, here
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Belief is reassuring. People who live in the world of belief feel safe. On the contrary, faith is forever placing us on the razor's edge. Jacques Ellul
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