Canon Michael Green
Leading Evangelical theologian who taught George Carey and whose adoption of charismatic forms of worship caused some surprise
CANON MICHAEL GREEN, who has died aged 88, was in his time one of the Church of England’s leading Evangelicals and was known and valued worldwide as an outstanding preacher and teacher.
He had much in common with Billy Graham, the American evangelist, but had not quite the same charisma, and lacked an organisation that would mobilise huge crowds to hear him.
None the less, his influence was considerable since he combined evangelical gifts with those of a scholar. He trained many future clergymen – one of whom, George Carey, became the Archbishop of Canterbury – and from 1975 to 1987 he was ector of St Aldate’s, the most dynamic church in Oxford, attracting to its life several generations of undergraduates.
He was also a compulsive and lively writer who expressed his beliefs in more than 50 books. These had arresting titles such as You Must Be Joking (1976); I Believe in Satan’s Downfall (1981) and Lies, Lies, Lies! Exposing Myths About the Real Jesus (2009). Several were bestsellers.
An autobiography, Adventure of Faith (2001), combined his life story with a wide-ranging analysis of the problems and opportunities facing the world church at the beginning of the
21st century.
This revealed his essentially conservative approach to Christian doctrine, and he was strongly opposed to homosexuality, believing it to be a condition from which individuals could by faith and prayer be delivered. On the other hand, he changed his mind in favour of the ordination of women and was open to changes of the most radical sort in the life of the church, including the encouragement of “speaking in tongues”.
He declined at least two invitations to become a bishop, feeling that his vocation was to remain a free-ranging evangelist. From 1992 to 1996 he was an adviser on evangelism to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and this made all the more surprising the revelation in 1996 that during his time at St Aldate’s he and his wife had sometimes exchanged physical blows. Their marriage had gone through a stormy period in which he had once given his wife a black eye and she had broken one of his teeth.
Edward Michael Bankes Green, the son of an Oxfordshire country parson, was born on August 20 1930 at Shenington, near Banbury. He was sent to a prep school in Devon, run by an uncle, and from there won a scholarship to Clifton College, Bristol. As a result of attending secret Sunday afternoon meetings organised by some senior boys in the cricket pavilion, he had a religious conversion experience that was to influence his life – the immediate effect being that he gave up swearing.
Another scholarship took him to Exeter College, Oxford, where he took a First in Greats, was much involved in the religious life of the university and became president of the Christian Union. Although he had not originally felt called to follow in his father’s footsteps to the priesthood, during the latter part of his time at Oxford he was drawn increasingly in this direction. First, however, there was National Service, which he much enjoyed as a Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery.
On his return to civilian life in 1955, Green went to Ridley Hall, Cambridge, to prepare for Holy Orders. As a member also of Queens’ College, he took a First in the Theological tripos and won the Carus Greek Testament Prize. During his National Service he had fenced for the Army and the Combined Services and at Cambridge won a fencing Blue.
From 1957 to 1960 he was a curate at Holy Trinity Church, Eastbourne – a lively parish where, during the summer months, he conducted open-air services on the beach for holidaymakers. He then joined the teaching staff of the evangelical London College of Divinity at Northwood in Middlesex. Apart from George Carey, his pupils included Janani Luwum, who as Archbishop of Uganda would be murdered on the orders of President Idi Amin.
Green himself took a Cambridge BD and, seen as a rising star, was invited in 1963 to join the newly established Archbishops’ Doctrine Commission. He also took part in official Anglican-presbyterian unity negotiations, which came to nothing owing to the unwillingness of the Church of Scotland to have bishops.
In 1969 Green was appointed Principal of the London College of Divinity, with the responsibility of organising the move of the college from Northwood to Nottingham, a move which proved to be a huge success.
Renamed St John’s College, Nottingham, and served by a strong teaching staff, the college expanded rapidly, attracting students from America and Africa, as well as increasing number of English ordinands flowing from the Billy Graham Crusades. Green also accepted women students and ensured that the brightest members of the college read for Nottingham University degrees.
Besides teaching the New Testament and exercising overall leadership, he was director of Pastoral Training, and soon after the move to Nottingham, and largely as a consequence of visits to America and Singapore, Green joined the charismatic wing of the Evangelical movement – something he had hitherto strongly resisted.
Soon he was exercising healing power. At a conference in Malawi, an immobile clergyman was reported to have been enabled immediately to walk, then to run. A woman in an Oxford hospital said to be on the verge of death was found to be in “good form” and cured of her grumbling disposition after a visit from Green. A mentally disturbed woman was among many diagnosed by Green as being possessed by an evil spirit, which was promptly exorcised. He also frequently felt moved to speak in unintelligible tongues at church services.
Less dramatically, he became Canon Theologian of Coventry Cathedral in 1970 and joined a Church Unity Commission in 1974. In the following year he left Nottingham to become Rector of St Aldate’s, Oxford. The church already had a large and active “town and gown” congregation, served by a sizeable clergy team, and under Green’s leadership it became even larger and more vigorous, with standing room only at the Sunday services.
The worship became less formal; baptism was sometimes administered in the River Isis; a dance group was formed, and also mission teams. Cabinet ministers came to share in debates and groups were formed to cater for agnostics, Christian beginners and those contemplating ordination or mission work abroad. The place was humming with life and Green described his time at the church as “12 glorious, demanding and tumultuous years”.
It was, however, a time when his marriage came under severe strain. He had married Rosemary Wake (née Storr) in 1957, shortly before his ordination, and she used her considerable gifts as a teacher and counsellor to share happily in his ministry. But bearing four children, and being excluded from much of the life of a theological college, had created problems. These were exacerbated by the hectic life of St Aldate’s and the unpredictable expressions of her husband’s charismatic spirituality.
Rosemary suffered a breakdown and it later emerged that the marriage was saved only by a year of intensive counselling. It then resumed its happy course. This was assisted by Green’s decision to leave Oxford in 1967 to become Professor of Evangelism at Regent College, Vancouver, in Canada.
Although this was an institution with an international reputation, and was loosely attached to the University of British Columbia, it made fewer demands than St Aldate’s and Green felt free to take over responsibility for a local church – the congregation of which soon doubled. He was also free during vacations to travel the world, conducting missions and addressing conference.
The growth of this aspect of his ministry was accompanied by increasing frustration at what he regarded as the overbureaucratic character of Regent College. So in 1992 he returned to England to become Archbishops’ Adviser in Evangelism.
During the previous year Dr George Carey had become Archbishop of Canterbury and persuaded his colleague at York, Dr John Habgood, and others, to become involved in a Decade of Evangelism. Green and Bishop Michael Marshall, who had recently returned from America, were asked to create a small team, to be known as “Springboard”, that would travel the country to train the clergy and their congregations in evangelism.
This developed over the next four years and the project enjoyed some success, but it never really caught on and made no noticeable impact on the decline in church membership that occurred during the 1990s.
In 1996 Green and Marshall withdrew from the leadership of “Springboard” and Green became a Senior Research Fellow of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford where he shared his missionary zeal with future clergy. He also continued to travel in the cause of evangelism, though he came to believe that the day of the largescale crusade was over. From 2008 to 2010 he was Chaplain and Tutor at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.
In 2015 Green and his wife lost their entire life savings to a telephone phishing scam.
He continued to write prolifically, publishing two books (Radical Leadership and Christian Foundations) in his final year.
He was awarded an honorary DD by Toronto University in 1992 and a Lambeth DD in 1996.
Michael Green is survived by his wife and by two sons and two daughters.
Canon Michael Green, born August 20 1930, died February 6 2019