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.
I would like to pay tribute to Ken whom I knew for a time in my Anglican past in the 1980s through the Jubilee Group. He was an incisive thinker, and that rare thing, a theologian with deep roots in the everyday reality of the priest or pastor’s life. So much academic theology is an intellectual game. By contrast Ken could think and write in way that made you think, but was also earthed in real life.
Looking back, though, I wonder at the optimism we felt, the sense that there were answers to questions. As the item above about an opinion poll survey makes clear, since then the UK has slipped further and further away from its Christian faith.