Oxford job ad creates stir

“Not poets but clergymen hastened to meet
Thy redden’d remorselessness, Cardigan Street”

St Barnabas, Oxford, John Betjeman

On 4th September 2018, the Diocese of Oxford posted the notice of a clergy vacancy for the Vicar of St Barnabas and St Paul, with St Thomas the Martyr, Oxford. At the end of the month,  the BBC (and others) ran a story  Male only vicar job advert ‘misogynistic’, based upon the reaction of a local councillor. The possibility of a “male-only” incumbent should not be a surprise to those cognizant of the procedures of appointing clergy in the Church of England, and they need read no further. Continue reading