Dr Williams prompts new PEV to quit Freemasons

[link to www.churchtimes.co.uk]

THE Principal of Pusey House, Oxford, the Revd Jonathan Baker, is to resign as a Freemason after being encouraged by the Archbishop of Canterbury to reconsider his membership before his consecration as the next Bishop of Ebbsfleet.


It was announced earlier this month (News, 13 May) that Mr Baker would be one of the two new Provincial Episcopal Visitors, to replace Mgr Andrew Burnham, a leader of the RC Ordinariate, who seceded in January.


Mr Baker, who recently served as an Assistant Grand Chaplain to the Freemasons, posted a statement on the Ebbsfleet website last Friday, the day when he was contacted by a Sunday newspaper. He said that he had joined as a lay undergraduate in Oxford, and had found it to be “an organisation admirably committed to community life and involvement with a record of charitable giving second to none, especially among, for example, unfashionable areas of medical research”.


He said: “Had I ever encountered anything in Freemasonry in­compatible with my Christian faith, I would, of course, have resigned at once. On the contrary, Free­masonry is a secular organisation, wholly supportive of faith, and not an alternative to, or substitute for, it. In terms of the Church of England, its support, for example, for cathedral fabric is well docu­mented.”