Andrew Shanks
about me . . .
I’m a retired Church of England priest; a philosopher, ‘Neo-Hegelian’ in orientation; politically however (more and more) a sort of anarcho-pacifist.
Born in 1954, I spent a year, 1971 – 72, working as a teacher in the Asere Hawariat School, Addis Ababa: a formative inspirational experience. I have written a tribute to the charismatic educational pioneer Asfaw Yemiru, who founded the school; which is amongst the documents accessible from this site.
Later, I also spent two years teaching at a school in Qena, Upper
Egypt, for VSO.
I’ve worked as a lecturer in various British universities, both alternating and overlapping with church jobs. I must say, I found the church jobs, on the whole, more interesting than the academic ones: by virtue of the intimate connections they involved, with such a wide range of contrasting communities. I was a parish priest at St. Martin’s in Chapeltown, Leeds, a multi-ethnic inner-city neighbourhood, the scene of major riots whilst I was there; then, at Christ the Saviour church in Swinnow, a white working-class neighbourhood on the western edge of Leeds; then, in the parish of Upper Ryedale, five lovely little churches on the North York Moors. Finally, I spent ten happy years as Canon Theologian at Manchester Cathedral, until ill health compelled me to retire. (And I’m proud to remain Canon Emeritus of that cathedral.)
My wife, Dian Leppington was one of the very first women ordained priest in the Church of England, in 1994.
In 1983 – 84, I spent a year, funded by that admirable organisation the World Council of Churches, at Marburg University, researching the role of the German churches in relation to the anti-nuclear peace movement of those days. This led incidentally (a) to my discovering the poetry of Nelly Sachs, which I’ve been translating, on and off, ever since; and (b) to my participation in a solidarity-project of the Dutch Inter-Church Peace Council, bringing together Western European church-related peace campaigners with Central European church-related human rights activists. In the course of which, I also discovered the work of the great Czech philosopher Jan Patočka, co-founder with Václav Havel of the Charter 77 movement; another significant influence on my later thinking.
Accessible here are various odds and ends, samples of my work as a writer.
