George Bell, Bishop of Chichester: Church, State, and Resistance in the Age of Dictatorship

by Andrew Chandler

Overview

The story of a significant British church leader who fought for justice and freedom
during World War II

It was to George Bell, an English bishop, that Dietrich Bonhoeffer sent his last words before he was executed at the Flossenbürg concentration camp in April 1945. Why he did so becomes clear from Andrew Chandler's new biography of George Kennedy Allen Bell (1883–1958).

As he traces the arc of Bell's life, Chandler reshapes our perspective on Bonhoeffer's life and times. In addition to serving as bishop of Chichester, Bell was an internationalist and ecumenical leader, one of the great Christian humanists of the twentieth century, a tenacious critic of the obliteration bombing of enemy cities during World War II, and a key ally of those who struggled for years to resist Hitler in Germany itself.

This inspiring biography raises important questions that still haunt the moral imagination today: When should the word of protest be spoken? When should nations go to war, and how should they fight? What are our obligations to the victims of dictators and international conflict?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467444682
Publisher:	Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Publication date:	04/05/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	583 KB

About the Author

Andrew Chandler is Reader in Modern History at the University of Chichester.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Prelude: The Little Blue Notebook 3

1 Beginnings, 1883-1914 6

2 To Lambeth Palace, 1914-1924 13

3 The Canterbury Deanery, 1924-1929 22

4 Chichester, 1929-1932 31

5 The German Vortex, 1933-1937 42

6 A Disintegrating Peace, 1937-1939 62

7 The War of Faiths, 1939-1942 74

8 Resistance in Germany and the Politics of War, 1942-1945 92

9 The New World Disorder, 1945-1948 129

10 Ecumenical High Tide, 1948-1954 143

11 Toward the End… 1958 158

12 The Place of George Bell 165

Appendix 1 Piety 186

Appendix 2 Provocation 189

Appendix 3 History and Allegation 195

Bibliography 200

Index 207

Editorial Reviews

The Spectator
"[A] learned and thoughtful book."
Journal of Church and State
“Chandler distills the essentials to provide a fast-paced narrative and evocative portrait. It will now become the standard introduction to Bell’s impressive career.”

Ferdinand Schlingensiepen
— author of Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906-1945: Martyr, Thinker, Man of Resistance
"This is a masterly biography. Andrew Chandler has performed a great service in showing the profoundly significant part that George Bell played in the histories of the Church of England and of the ecumenical movements in the twentieth century. But it is also a study that integrates British and German history and looks toward the future of Europe and of world Christianity."

Ian Kershaw
— University of Sheffield
"Andrew Chandler has unrivalled knowledge of the work of George Bell, including his involvement with leading figures in the German resistance against Hitler. Drawing upon extensive archival research, Chandler has written what is surely the authoritative biography of the impressive and extraordinary bishop of Chichester, possibly the most distinctive English clergyman of the twentieth century."

Diarmaid MacCulloch
— University of Oxford
"No one is more qualified than Andrew Chandler to write a biography of George Bell. His elegant, concise, and sympathetic portrayal will be a huge help to those trying to form their own judgment on the life of one of the most prominent names in twentieth-century Anglicanism."

David Hein
— Hood College
"In this new biography of an influential — and controversial — figure, Chandler demonstrates once again that no historian has a surer grasp of the history of the Church of England in the twentieth century. . . . Provides a remarkably comprehensive, judicious, and vigorous account of one of the great prophetic bishops of twentieth-century Europe and of the worldwide Anglican Communion."

John S. Conway
— University of British Columbia
"Andrew Chandler's perceptive study of Bishop George Bell makes extensive and insightful use of Bell's vast archive and shows his courageous contribution in defending the cause of Christian unity during the war-torn years of the last century. He praises Bell as a lone prophetic figure in the Church of England. This book is a valuable contribution to the cause of ecumenical church history."

Jeremy Morris
— University of Cambridge
"George Bell was one of the most outstanding leaders of the Church of England in the twentieth century, with an unrivalled breadth of vision and a courageous willingness to speak out against injustice. In this outstanding biography Andrew Chandler paints a brilliant portrait of a many-sided figure who helped to define the Church of England's ecumenical policy and who was in turn defined by his very public, and frequently unpopular, commitment to defend the victims of Nazi oppression."

From the Publisher