page_title: Hensley Henson
section_title: Dean and bishop
hierarchical_section_title: Hensley Henson / Life and career / Dean and bishop
caption_attribution_description: English: Hereford Cathedral as viewed from the north-west in Herefordshire, England.
context_page_description: Herbert Hensley Henson was an Anglican priest, scholar and controversialist. He was Bishop of Hereford, 1918–20 and Bishop of Durham, 1920–39.
  The son of a zealous member of the Plymouth Brethren, Henson was not allowed to go to school until he was fourteen, and was largely self-educated. He was admitted to the University of Oxford, and gained a first-class degree in 1884. In the same year he was elected as a Fellow of All Souls, where he began to make a reputation as a speaker. He was ordained as a priest in 1888.
  Feeling a vocation to minister to the urban poor, Henson served in the East End of London and Barking before becoming chaplain of an ancient hospice in Ilford in 1895. In 1900 he was appointed to the high-profile post of vicar of St Margaret's, Westminster and canon of Westminster Abbey. While there, and as Dean of Durham, he wrote prolifically and sometimes controversially. The Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church took exception to his liberal theological views, which some regarded as heretical, and sought unsuccessfully in 1917 to block his appointment as Bishop of Hereford.
context_section_description: In 1912 the Dean of Durham, George Kitchin, died.  The Bishop, Handley Moule, hoped the prime minister would appoint Henry Watkins, the Archdeacon of Durham, but Asquith chose Henson. On 2 January 1913 Moule presided over Henson's formal installation at Durham Cathedral.
  The five years Henson spent as Dean of Durham were marked by further controversy, including his objection to the existing divorce laws as too favourable to men and unfair to women. He was hostile to changes aimed at giving the Church more control over its own affairs; he regarded establishment and parliamentary control as safeguards against extremism. He opposed William Temple's "Life and Liberty movement", which campaigned for synodical and democratic government of the Church, and he was against the establishment of the National Assembly of the Church of England in 1919. To Henson, the essence of Anglicanism rested on parliamentary enforcement of the rights of the laity of the Church against the bishops and priests, and the inclusion of both clergy and laity in all matters under the rule of the monarch as Supreme Governor of the Church.
  Among other views for which Henson was known were his disapproval of teetotalism campaigners and of socialism, and for his disbelief in social reform as an ally of religion. When the Kikuyu controversy erupted in 1913 Henson once again found himself at odds with Gore. The question was whether two colonial bishops had committed heresy by taking part in an ecumenical service. Gore and his ally Bishop Weston of Zanzibar led the charge, and appear in Henson's journal as "devoted, unselfish, indefatigable, eminently gifted, but ... also fanatical in temper, bigoted in their beliefs, and reckless in their methods." Together with Bishop Moule, Dean Wace of Canterbury and other leaders, Henson strongly, and successfully, supported the accused bishops: "The Church owes a deep debt of gratitude to the Bishops of Uganda and Mombasa."
  Henson spoke out strongly, and ultimately unsuccessfully, against the proposed disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Wales. In doing so he addressed many nonconformist gatherings; the historian Owen Chadwick suggests that this may have commended him to David Lloyd George, who became prime minister in 1916. A serious doctrinal row within the Church seemed to many to put Henson out of the running for elevation to a bishopric. He had defended the right of clergy to express doubts about the virgin birth and bodily resurrection. He was, as most of his critics failed, or refused, to notice, doctrinally orthodox on the resurrection, and content to accept the tradition of the virgin birth, but his contention that other priests had the right to question them was intolerable to the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church, led by Gore.
  Archbishop Davidson had no doubts about Henson's doctrinal soundness, and persuaded him to issue a statement of faith to silence his critics. Davidson stated publicly that no fair-minded man could read consecutively a series of Henson's sermons without feeling that they had in him a brilliant and powerful teacher of the Christian faith. Gore and his followers were obliged to call off their protests. Against Davidson's advice for caution, Lloyd George appointed Henson to the vacant see of Hereford in 1917. Gore and others, including Cosmo Lang, now the Archbishop of York, failed to attend the consecration service. Their attitude hurt Henson, offended lay opinion in the Church, and was sharply criticised in The Times. Henson was consecrated bishop in Westminster Abbey on 4 February 1918 by Davidson, assisted by twelve supporting bishops. He was enthroned at Hereford Cathedral eight days later.
  Although Henson's elevation was controversial chiefly among factions of the clergy – in general lay people supported his appointment – it nevertheless gave fresh impetus to the idea of taking away from the prime minister the power to choose bishops. Gore attempted to promote the idea at the Convocation of Clergy in May 1918; Henson abandoned restraint and in Chadwick's words "stripped Gore's arg
caption: Hereford Cathedral
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