The Rev Kenneth Leech
Anglican priest who found his ministry among the urban poor and set up the charity Centrepoint
THE REVEREND KENNETH LEECH, who has died aged 76, was unique among the Anglican clergy of his generation in combining orthodox Christian faith, high churchmanship, a deep spirituality, radical socialism and unwavering commitment to the welfare of the underprivileged – mainly in London’s East End. He was also a prolific writer.
There was nothing trendy or superficial about this. He strongly opposed the liberal theology originating in the 1960s and the more recent outburst of evangelicalism. He was a profound thinker and believed that only the inherited Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation and its sacramental consequences could sustain a Christian involvement in political and social action.
“Subversive orthodoxy” was his own description of his position. He believed that “an alliance between prophetic Christianity and progressive Marxism” offered “the last human hope of mankind”. For him New Labour came nowhere near to providing such a hope and he said that while there was overwhelming evidence of Tony Blair’s faith there was no evidence of his socialism.
In some ways Leech was a throwback to the 19th-century Anglo-Catholic priests who ministered heroically in the slums of East London and other cities and became politically radical. He acknowledged their inspiration but denied a romantic attachment to their example and was in fact driven by powerful intellectual forces. An enduring monument to his work is Centrepoint, which he founded as a Soho curate in 1969 to help homeless young people who had migrated to London. The Princess of Wales was its first patron. It is now a national charity and has so far helped over 11,000 young people.
Kenneth Leech was born in Ashtonunder-Lyne in Greater Manchester on June 15 1939. His working-class parents had no church connections but as a teenager he attended an Anglo-Catholic church in nearby Hyde.
The turning point came in 1956 when he went to Manchester’s Free Trade Hall to hear Father Trevor Huddleston, recently returned from his epic witness against apartheid in South Africa. This convinced him of the unbreakable link between Christian faith and social action and drove him in the direction of Holy Orders.
In 1958 he went to King’s College, London, to read Modern History and during this time lived with a Franciscan community in Cable Street in the East End of London, where Victorian slums remained and the friars were exercising a ministry to prostitutes. He soon became aware of wider social needs.
Leech next went to Trinity College, Oxford, to read Theology and completed his ordination training at St Stephen’s House. A curacy at Holy Trinity, Hoxton, from 1965 to 1967, took him back to East London and to a neo-Catholic church where the tradition of ministry to the poorest continued. This led to a move to St Anne’s, Soho, and what he called a “loitering ministry” on streets where social problems of many sorts abounded. The foundation of the Soho Drugs Group and Centrepoint was his response.
After four years he became chaplain and tutor at St Augustine’s theological college, Canterbury, where he was able to share his experience and ideas with a new generation of ordinands and wrote Youthquake (1973). This was designed to alert the churches to the radical changes taking place in youth culture and the rise in drug abuse. It was also widely read in the field of social work.
In 1974 Leech returned to parish ministry as Rector of St Matthew’s, Bethnal Green, where the challenge now was the existence of the harassed Bangladeshi and Bengali communities in and around Brick Lane. During the next six years he closely identified himself with their life and came to be regarded by them as a friend and spokesman. At the same time he was involved in protest marches and demonstrations against the National Front and other extreme Right-wing organisations.
He also founded, in 1974, the Jubilee Group, which became a national network promoting the cause of what he called “Sacramental Socialism”. When a manifesto was needed he turned for assistance to Rowan Williams, at that time an Oxford college chaplain. The future Archbishop of Canterbury became an enthusiastic member for the next 10 years. The group folded in 2004 and Leech was one of its few members who supported the cause of women priests.
In 1980 he joined the staff of the British Council of Churches and then of the General Synod’s Board of Social Responsibility as a field work officer. He was also a curate in Notting Hill, an area which still had many race and poverty problems. He then spent three years, from 1987 to 1990, as director of the Runnymede Trust, concerned nationally with the promotion of ethnic and racial harmony. He commented, often critically, on government policies and travelled widely, including in North America, to give lectures.
From 1990 until his retirement in 2004 Leech was an honorary curate of St Botolph’s, Aldgate, on the border between the City and fast-changing Whitechapel. As a “Community Theologian”, financed by the Christendom Trust, he believed that true theology is produced not in the ivory towers of academia but on the streets, where Christian thinkers engage with human life and need. For Leech this involved close identification with the Muslim community as well as others “living outside the gates of affluent British life and the churches”. In Doing Theology in Altab Ali
Park (2006) he provided a stimulating, challenging account of his project.
A quietly spoken, somewhat shy man, Leech could have never been mistaken for anything other than a priest. There was a deeply spiritual, contemplative element in his character that sustained his demanding ministry and attracted others for counselling and help with prayer. His publications Soul Friend (1977), True Prayer (1980) and The Eye of the Storm: spiritual resources for the Pursuit of Justice, which won the 1993 Harper Collins Religious Book Prize, were widely read.
He neither expected nor received any preferment in the Church and in the 1970s said that bishops were “state nominees, charming and pleasant, but bear the marks of the Beast”. He was, however, awarded a Lambeth DD by Archbishop Rowan Williams.
He is survived by his wife, Julie, and by their son.
The Rev Kenneth Leech, born June 15 1939, died September 12 2015