John Richardson died aged 63 at the end of March. John was held in great affection by many across the divides of churchmanship. Physically he had a ‘benign essential tremor’, which could at first be mistaken for timidity. Yet he was widely admired for his tenacity, and unshakeable in his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and in his stand for Anglican orthodoxy.
He was brought up a good Bible-reading, creed-reciting Anglo-Catholic which, he once told me, was ‘a good grounding in what you were supposed to believe, but not a very good grounding in why you were supposed to believe it.’ He dated his conversion to August 1971, in the summer before his final year at Keele University (where he studied biology, psychology, and philosophy). It took him a year to understand what evangelicals in the Christian Union were really talking about, and a further two years to be persuaded of it. He was invited to be publicity officer for the CU, before he had even joined it!
In his early days as an evangelical he was very much a charismatic, and trained for ordained ministry at St John’s College, Nottingham. From there he served in a Birmingham parish before becoming chaplain of North East London Polytechnic. In 1993 he spent 10 months studying at Moore College in Sydney, and thoroughly enjoyed the rigours of the course, which turned him into something of an evangelist for the study of Hebrew and Greek. Keep reading
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