Derek Rawcliffe

Who was Derek Rawcliffe?

Derek Rawcliffe OBE was an English-born bishop and author. He served as Anglican Bishop of the New Hebrides and the Scottish Episcopal Church's Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway.

Rawcliffe was born in Manchester, the son of a tobacconist, on 8 July 1921, brought up in Gloucester, educated at Leeds University, and ordained in 1944. After a curacy at Claines St George, Worcester he was a teacher in the Solomon Islands until 1953 when he became Archdeacon of Southern Melanesia and the New Hebrides. He was the first Bishop of the New Hebrides from 1975 to 1980 when he was translated to Glasgow and Galloway, in the Scottish Episcopal Church. In Scotland, where he notably gave positions to a number of gay clergy, his limited organisational ability led to difficulties for the diocese. He retired in 1991.

After retirement he was made an honorary assistant bishop in the Diocese of Ripon, where he became the first bishop in the Church of England to announce that he was gay, after disclosing his sexuality on television in 1995. Rawcliffe later argued for the age of consent for homosexual relations to be reduced to 14,

Rawcliffe died on 1 February 2011 at the age of 89.