Derek Alec Rawcliffe OBE (8 July 1921 – 1 February 2011) was an English Anglican bishop and author. He served as the Bishop of the New HebridesMelanesian Anglican and the Scottish Episcopal Church's Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway.Amongst other books he wrote The Meaning of it All is Love (2000), Seasons of the Spirit (2003), Pilgrimage to Melanesia (2005) and Gethsemane to Calvary (2006). British Library website accessed 18:05GMT 20 December 2010
Life and ministry Rawcliffe was born in Manchester, the son of a tobacconist, on 8 July 1921. He was brought up in Gloucester and educated at Leeds University.Who's Who 2008: London, A & C Black, 2008 He was ordained deacon in 1944 and priest in 1945.Crockfords, 1947-48 Oxford, OUP, 1947 After a curacy at Claines St George, Worcester, between 1944 and 1947, he became a teacher in the Solomon Islands until 1953, when he became Archdeacon of Southern Melanesia and the New Hebrides. He was Assistant Bishop of Melanesia between 1974 and 1975, and then became the first Bishop of the New Hebrides, serving from 1975 to 1980"Derek Rawcliffe: Church of England bishop who blessed same sex marriages" Obituary The Daily Telegraph Issue no 48,429 (dated 15 February 2011) when he was translated to Glasgow and Galloway, in the Scottish Episcopal Church on 20 January 1981 in Scotland. He retired on 28 February 1991.
After retirement he was made an honorary assistant bishop in the Diocese of Ripon, where he became the first bishop in the Church of England to announce that he was gay, after disclosing his sexuality on television in 1995. Rawcliffe later argued for the age of consent for homosexual relations to be reduced to 14.
Rawcliffe died on 1 February 2011 at the age of 89.
Archives Rawcliffe's papers are held by SOAS Archives.
References
External links Link to information on Rawcliffe's archived papers