Michael Ramsey - Career

Career

Michael Ramsey was born in Cambridge in 1904. His parents were Arthur Stanley Ramsey (1867 - 1954) and Mary Agnes Ramsey (1875 - 1927); his father was a Congregationalist and mathematician and his mother was a socialist and suffragette. He was educated at Repton School (where the headmaster was another future Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Francis Fisher) and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was President of the Cambridge Union Society and where his support for the Liberal Party won him praise from Herbert Asquith. His elder brother, Frank P. Ramsey (1903–1930), was a mathematician and philosopher (of, incidentally, atheist convictions) and something of a prodigy, who when only 19 translated into English Wittgenstein's Tractatus.

During his time in Cambridge the young Michael came under the influence of the Anglo-Catholic dean of Corpus Christi College, Edwyn Clement Hoskyns. On the advice of Eric Milner-White he trained at Cuddesdon, where he became friends with Austin Farrer and was introduced to Orthodox Christian ideas by Derwas Chitty. He was ordained in 1928 and became a curate in Liverpool, where he was influenced by Charles Raven.

After this he became a lecturer to ordination candidates at The Bishop's Hostel in Lincoln. During this time he published a book, The Gospel and the Catholic Church (1936). He then ministered at Boston Stump and at St Bene't's Church, Cambridge, before being offered a canonry at Durham Cathedral and the Van Mildert Professor of Divinity in the Department of Theology at Durham University. After this, in 1950, he became the Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, but after only a short time, in 1952, he was appointed Bishop of Durham. In 1956 he became Archbishop of York and, in 1961, Archbishop of Canterbury. During his time as archbishop he travelled widely and saw the creation of the General Synod. Retirement ages for clergy were also introduced.