The Right Reverend Neville Chamberlain
Bishop of Brechin who sought the help of Desmond Tutu to resolve a little local difficulty in Dundee
THE RIGHT REVEREND NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN, who has died aged 78, was Bishop of Brechin in the Scottish Episcopal Church from 1997 to 2005, known for his dedication to social outcasts and the poor and for his high-profile campaigning against oppression and inequality.
In 1999, however, he earned unwelcome publicity after becoming caught up in a rancorous bust-up with the Provost of St Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral, Dundee, the mother church of the diocese of Brechin; it was a rift that was eventually healed following the intervention of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
The saga, which could have come from the pages of Trollope, began in August 1998 when Chamberlain appointed the Rev Miriam Byrne, a twice-married former nun, as Provost of the cathedral after the previous incumbent, Michael Bunce, resigned having been convicted of embezzling £44,000 from a church-led fund set up to help the unemployed. The new appointment was designed to heal the wounds left by the scandal, yet within weeks a petition was circulating at St Paul’s demanding Bunce’s return.
The arrival of a feminist divorcee as the first clergywoman to take charge of an Anglican cathedral in Britain (and one with a predominantly elderly, conservative congregation), upset traditionalists. When, on her first Sunday in the pulpit, she introduced a modern liturgy to replace the 1662 Prayer Book, all hell broke loose. Dubbed “Attila the Nun” for her alleged “Thatcher-like” behaviour and attempts to introduce “happy-clappy” forms of worship, she was accused of heresy in removing the phrase “God the father and son” from certain services.
The cathedral’s honorary chaplain resigned, taking about a dozen members of the congregation with him, followed by the choirmaster. Others refused to receive Holy Communion when she presided. The choir moved to a different church. Others were sacked, including the cathedral administrator and organist.
To begin with, Chamberlain gave Miriam Byrne his full support, even when the vestry committee wrote to him pleading for her resignation, declaring himself “saddened and ashamed” by the row, saying it was “undermining Christianity”.
As the atmosphere became increasingly poisonous, another bishop, called in to examine complaints against the provost, found no case to answer and requested a “cooling-off ” period. But there was more to come.
It had been agreed that the house which came with the provostship needed an upgrade. However, Miriam Byrne was accused of overspending by up to £19,000, including on the unauthorised installation of an expensive Aga cooker.
In October 1999, following a vote of no confidence lodged by the Cathedral Chapter, Chamberlain announced that he no longer wished to conduct services at St Paul’s, adding that he had lost confidence in Ms Byrne.
She was not prepared to go, however, and she had supporters. In May 1999, as the threat of bankruptcy loomed, an anonymous benefactor had stepped in with a £250,000 donation for the upkeep of her ministry. Subsequently a new vestry committee gave her its full backing. But Chamberlain refused to release the donation and the committee was forced to reach into its own pockets to pay her wages. Then, in December, the College of Bishops of the Episcopal Church decreed that her ministry was no longer sustainable and lawyers acting on Chamberlain’s behalf offered her £85,000 to go quietly. She rejected it as a “bribe”.
In January 2000 Miriam Byrne was suspended by Chamberlain and charged with 69 unspecified breaches of church discipline. Her supporters retaliated by obtaining a court order banning the bishop from interfering with the cathedral and demanding he account for the withheld donation.
Over the previous Christmas, however, Chamberlain had read Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s account of his work on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and it subsequently occurred to him that Tutu’s success in healing bitter political divisions might have an application to his own predicament. In February he asked Bishop Richard Holloway, Primus of the Episcopal Church and a personal friend of Tutu, to arrange a meeting with the archbishop, himself and Miriam Byrne.
Tutu agreed and in February 2000 the warring parties flew out on separate planes to Atlanta, Georgia, where Tutu was a visiting professor, and stayed in separate hotels before engaging in a series of meetings with Tutu. After little more than 48 hours they re-emerged pledging their commitment to a new beginning and to finding a way of working together. They returned to Britain on the same flight and dropped their outstanding claims against each other “for the greater good of the cathedral and the diocese”. Reinstated by the College of Bishops, Miriam Byrne was cleared of all charges.
Neville Chamberlain was born in Salford on October 24 1939. The untimely death of his older brother led Neville towards the religious life. From Salford Grammar School, where he showed promise as a footballer and athlete, he took a degree in Theology at the University of Nottingham, followed by an MA in Applied Social Studies and a Diploma in Public Administration at the University of Oxford.
Trained for the ministry at Ripon Hall, Oxford, Chamberlain was ordained in the Church of England in 1964 after taking up his first appointment as an assistant curate at St Paul’s, Balsall Heath, Birmingham, where he shared a small salary and dilapidated house with another priest, Malcolm Goldsmith, who became his lifelong friend. After two years as a curate at the Church of the Ascension, Hall Green, Birmingham, in 1966 he was appointed Priest-in-charge at St Michael’s Anglican-methodist Church in Hall Green.
In 1964 he married Diana Hammill Brabban and in 1967 they moved to a parish in Maryland in the US, where Neville became involved in the Civil Rights movement, marching alongside the Reverend Jesse Jackson and Dr Andrew Young.
Back in Britain, after three years as Vicar of St Michael’s, Hall Green, during which time he built a new church, seeking new challenges he moved his family to Louth, Lincolnshire, and worked for two years as a probation officer in Grimsby before becoming head of Social Responsibility in the Diocese of Lincoln.
Appointed a Canon of Lincoln Cathedral, he worked part-time as chaplain in Lincoln Prison, founded a halfway house for ex-prisoners, hostels for female victims of domestic violence, shelters for the homeless and the first hospice in Lincolnshire for the terminally ill.
In 1982 he was appointed Rector of St John’s Episcopal Church, Princes Street, Edinburgh, where he established the Scottish Peace and Justice Centre and the One World fair-trade shop – the largest in Scotland. He also created a “mural ministry” consisting of temporary murals painted outside the church commenting on social and political issues of the day.
One featured a naked woman on a cross alongside a black asylum seeker and a frail pensioner – with Britain’s party leaders gazing up at them. At Easter 1996, at the height of the BSE crisis, there was controversy when one mural depicted a cow on the cross in protest at the proposed cattle cull. Chamberlain sparked anger by comparing the impending slaughter of animals to the Holocaust.
Other initiatives included a Third World Hospitality Scheme whereby asylum seekers, such as exiled Swapo guerrillas and discharged prisoners from apartheid South Africa’s Robben Island, could come for respite. He also created a safe environment in which former political prisoners from around the world could tell their stories.
Despite his involvement in politics, Chamberlain was also an old-fashioned minister, ready to visit members of his flock in crisis at all hours of the day and night, a commitment which won him a devoted following and enabled him to revitalise St John’s with a new nave altar, modernised liturgy, and a major restoration of the stonework (for which he ran the Edinburgh marathon twice to raise funds) and stained glass. He also became a regular contributor to Thought for the Day and BBC One’s Late Call.
During his time as Bishop of Brechin he launched a series of lectures to draw attention to injustices throughout the world. A supporter of CND, in 2001 he announced his resignation from the Labour Party after 40 years’ membership, in protest at Tony Blair’s government’s failure to condemn Israeli attacks on Palestinians.
On his retirement as Bishop in 2005 Chamberlain was appointed Master of Hugh Sexey’s Hospital at Bruton, Somerset.
His wife, Diana, died in 2009 and he is survived by three sons and one daughter.
The Rt Rev Neville Chamberlain, born October 24 1939, died October 8 2018