John Mantle (bishop) - Ministry

Ministry

John Mantle trained for ordination at the Edinburgh Theological College and was ordained deacon in Brechin Diocese in 1969, and priest the following year. He served in the Scottish Episcopal Church until 1980, and thereafter in the Church of England until he returned to Scotland on his elevation to the episcopate. In 1980, he became Chaplain of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, moving to become staff tutor and Vice Principal of the Canterbury School of Ministry in 1986. He served as Director of Adult Education for the Diocese of Chichester from 1994 to 1999, and was then the Archbishops’ Adviser for Bishops’ Ministry in the Church of England for six years before his election as a bishop in 2005.

Mantle did not begin life as an academic, and was ordained as a non-graduate, subsequently taking a degree in theology from the University of St Andrews. In 1990 he was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Kent and in 1998 he completed his Ph.D. with the University of Leeds, writing a dissertation on British worker-priests in the early 1950s and 1960s (later published by SCM).

He was consecrated Bishop of Brechin on Saturday, October 8, 2005, aged 59 and retired, due to ill health, in October 2010, dying only a few weeks later.