Bishop Prefers To Be Addressed As “Father”

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30779, 17 June 1965, Page 11

Bishop Prefers To Be Addressed As “Father”

"The Press" Special Service WELLINGTON, June 15. The Bishop of Wellington (the Rt. Rev. H. W. Baines) has invited his clergy and people to address him as “Father” instead of “My Lord,” reports the Anglican newspaper “Church and People.” .He asks: “How much does ‘My lord’ lock the Bishop in a subChristian leadership?” Writing in his monthly pastoral letter, the Bishop says that historically there is plenty of evidence for the ancient use of “Lord” to a bishop simply as an address of respect, and very little reason for associating it with the English House of Lords. “Now, however,” he says, “it is sometimes given and received by Anglicans in a sense remote from the Good Shepherd, and often causes non-Anglicans to associate us with out-of-date ways and proud stomachs.

“ ‘Father,’ on the other hand, has the authority of the Book of Common Prayer and was originally the title of bishops. In personal pastoral relations between a bishop and his clergy or his people, does not ‘Father’ both arouse and express a Christian relationship? “I am not trying to get out from under my personal responsibilities as leader. There are times when a title of respect and loyalty is in place towards the Bishop as such. But ‘Father’ could well be used for that, as I hope my children would use it to me.

“So let me say that for the sake of the Good Shepherd and to remove a possible cause of misunderstanding among Christians, 1 hope that you, my people, will feel free to address me as ‘Father’ while retaining the traditional ‘My Lord’ for synodical and other formal occasions."