Living North magazine:
Moving the Bishop
Living North’s Robert Beaumont talks to the Rt Revd Nick Baines, the new Bishop of Leeds, about his controversial new diocese and being at the heart of national debate
The late playwright Alun Owen said that Liverpool marks all its children and I’m sure that’s true. There is no city in the world which has such a clearly defined sense of community and identity – and this is best expressed in the passion generated by its two football teams, Liverpool and Everton, and by the pride in its popular cultural heritage, especially the incomparable Beatles. It is not surprising to discover, therefore, that the Rt Rev Nick Baines, who was born and brought up in the city, is a passionate Liverpool fan and devoted to the music of the Beatles. There is also a faintly discernible Scouse lilt in his kindly but confident voice.
But that does not mean that Bishop Nick, as he is known to his many friends across the globe, isn’t equally passionate about his new mission in Yorkshire. His character may have been forged on the banks of the Mersey and on the terraces of Anfield, but, as a Christian, his outlook is universal. A former Bishop of Bradford, he is now fully focused on the challenges provided by his new diocese of West Yorkshire and the Dales, a diocese which, it must be said, hasn’t been greeted with universal approval.
As we talk in his busy office in the heart in Headingley in north Leeds, 56-year-old Bishop Nick explains why the Church of England felt it necessary to create a new Yorkshire diocese which, at first glance, seems to be a marriage of convenience, if not opposites. A born communicator, he soon provides the answers that many Christians in the region have been seeking.
‘First of all, I accept that I have a challenge ahead in selling the new diocese. People don’t like change and dissolving three dioceses is certainly change. And it’s a large diocese, stretching from Barnsley to Bradford, to Ripon and the Dales. It also includes small parts of County Durham. But I am supported by four area bishops for Ripon, Wakefield, Bradford and Huddersfield, who will ensure that the size of the diocese does not mean that it is impersonal or remote,’ he explains.
‘A single diocese with five areas enables us to be closer to the ground and to drive the church’s mission for the common good across West Yorkshire and the Dales. We still have three cathedrals in Wakefield, Bradford and Ripon, which will provide focal points for worship, and we will ensure that the 656 churches in the diocese will be supported at all times,’ he adds.
Bishop Nick is too modest to say, but much of the success of the new diocese, which will save the Church of England about £800,000, will depend on him. Significantly, North Yorkshire County Council Chairman Bernard Bateman said that when he and Ripon businessman Paul Sykes were interviewed by the Prime Minister’s office over who should oversee the new diocese, they recommended Bishop Baines, partly due to his communication skills. These skills, by anyone’s standards, are formidable. They were honed as a linguist at Bradford University and as a Government spy base analyst at GCHQ in Cheltenham during the Cold War, and they have blossomed through his role as a regular contributor to the Chris Evans show on Radio Two and via his blog Musings of a Restless Bishop, which he uses to comment on a whole range of issues. As a Russian linguist at GCHQ, he had to ‘explore and understand the politics of a complicated world and know what was going on in that world’. He has continued to do so ever since.
That is why, rather to his surprise, he found himself on the front page of the Observer a couple of months ago. He had openly questioned whether David Cameron’s foreign policy in the Middle East had any ‘over-arching theme or strategy’ or whether he just responded and reacted to the ‘loudest voice in the media’. Bishop Nick is swift to point out he was not trying to score any political points – he believes that Mr Cameron has been dealt the most difficult hand of cards of any recent Prime Minister – but he was simply worried about the plight of persecuted minorities in troubled areas and, more generally, about where a scatter-gun approach to foreign policy might lead.
‘Understandably, Mr Cameron was not pleased. But he did, at least, give me a detailed reply. Events, however, have moved on swiftly, as they do in politics, and Parliament has now voted to support air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq. This led me back to my original theme: is the planned use of violence part of a coherent long-term plan, or a short-term pragmatic response to an immediate stimulus, which might cause problems down the line which haven’t been thought through properly? Killing terrorists is the easy bit.’
He added: ‘So, what have I learned from recent correspondence? I suppose, in a nutshell, if the overarching vision and strategy are clear and coherent, then I still can’t see it. Perhaps that says more about my limited mind than it does about policy.’
Anyone who has heard Bishop Nick speak or preach, or listened to him with Chris Evans on Radio Two, knows he does not have a limited mind. Within the first 20 minutes of our conversation, he name-checks John Lennon, Steven Gerrard, Roger McGough, Bob Dylan, Simon Rattle, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Hegel and Dostoevsky, all within a seamless and coherent narrative. This wide cultural perspective is underpinned by a tremendous Christian faith.
‘I’m passionate about Christian engagement in the big wide world,’ he explains, ‘Not on our own terms, but on the basis that we get stuck in wherever we can; committed to the world in all its pain and glory. And it’s something about which I think we need to be a bit bolder — and thicker skinned.’
At the centre of Bishop Nick’s life, apart from God, is his family. He has been happily married to Linda, a health visitor and artist, for 34 years, and they have three adult children: Richard, Melanie and Andrew. His eldest, Richard, studied Philosophy at Liverpool University and now lives in the city, much to Bishop Nick’s delight. It gives him another reason to visit the beloved city so deeply embedded in his soul. But his focus remains firmly across the Pennines, on Yorkshire.
‘I’m here for the long haul. I’m not an especially ambitious man, just heeding God’s call when it comes. I’m 56 now, nearly 57, and there is a tremendous amount of work to do in the new diocese. I won’t be leaving anytime soon,’ he says. ‘Anyway, having been Bishop of Bradford, I feel a great affinity with the county. I love it here.’
With his compassion, his faith, his vision and his intelligence, Bishop Nick is already proving to be a great asset to his new diocese. We are lucky – and blessed – to have him here.