Feature describing the revolution begun by the Southwark Ordination Course 60 years ago. The course was the first in the Church of England aimed at new forms of training for priests doing secular work.
Read MoreFor a Living prodcast: Talking about Tony & Worker Priests
It was a pleasure being interviewed on the in-depth podcast ‘For a Living’ that focusses on our working lives. The 90 minute interview, full of insightful questions, centres on Tony’s life as a worker priest, the history of the worker priest movement and the activities of worker priests today. You can listen here
Podcast: Worker Priests offer "refreshing approach to faith"
On the podcast this week, Hugh Williamson talks about the distinctive ministry of worker priests/Ministers in Secular Employment (MSEs), which are the subject of a cover feature that he has written for this week’s Church Times.
Hugh’s father, Canon Tony Williamson, was an Anglican worker priest in a car factory in Oxford for 30 years (Obituary, 22 March 2019), so Hugh has long had an interest in this ministry. In his feature this week, he talks to a priest who is a full-time hairdresser, another who, until recently, was a checkout worker at a supermarket, a priest who is a carer, and another who works in a café.
“Talking to them, and others like them, reveals a refreshing approach to faith, focused on how we express and support faith in everyday settings, not only in church buildings,” he writes. “And it challenges the Church to reflect on what ministry means.”
Priests on the Payroll
Hugh Williamson meets ministers whose places of secular work are their mission fields
Read More“Managers see us as a number, we don’t really matter”
How worker priests from Germany, the Netherlands and France experience their precarious work, in their own words
Read MoreThe shop-floor secret mission
Feature on the wartime ministry that put French priests into Nazi factories — and mortal danger
Read MoreWorker priest urges more support from Church of England
Rev Hugh Lee recently retired from his role as Bishop’s Officer for Self-Supporting Ministers and Ministers in Secular Employment in Oxford Diocese, a post he held for 30 years. This article is a longer version of a news story in Church Times.
Read MoreRemembering Canon Tony Williamson: “The noise of machinery, the smell of oil”
My blogpost marking the first anniversary of the death of my father, Canon Tony Williamson. The post shares his speech to Southwark Diocesan Conference in November 1961 on his life as a worker priest in Oxford.
Clocking on: the world of the worker priest
Hugh Williamson speaks to the heirs of this movement about being part of an increasingly precarious labour force
Read MoreTony Williamson: Life of a Trade Unionist
Tony Williamson saw his role as a trade unionist as a central part of his life as a worker priest
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The Rev Tony Williamson in 1960, at work in the Pressed Steel car factory, Cowley, Oxford. Photograph: Courtesy of Oxford Mail
Rev Tony Williamson obituary
My obituary of my father in the Guardian
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