Gavin Ashenden

Ashenden left the Christian Episcopal Church in December 2019.

On 22 December 2019 Ashenden was received into the Catholic Church by the Bishop of Shrewsbury, Mark Davies, at Shrewsbury Cathedral. Bishop Davies commented that it was "very humbling to be able to receive a bishop of the Anglican tradition into full communion in the year of the canonization of Saint John Henry Newman." Ashenden may become a priest of the Catholic Church or stay a lay theologian, depending upon the determination of the Holy See.

On 24 August 2018, Ashenden was transferred from the authority and jurisdiction of Bishop Redmile to that of Archbishop Casimes.

He has been interviewed frequently since in the mainstream media. Following the Royal Wedding in 2018, Rod Liddle interviewed him in the Sunday Times over the controversy surrounding Bishop Curry's sermon. BBC 2's Newsnight took up the issue when the Archbishop of Canterbury raised questions about God and gender. John Anderson, formerly deputy prime minister of Australia, conducted an interview on the dangers to freedom of speech in his series "conversations". Ashenden has contributed Op Ed pieces in both the Times and the Daily Telegraph. . He is a regular contributor to the Spectator's religious affairs podcast 'Holy Smoke.' He maintains a website for the publication of homilies, articles and commentary at ashenden.org.

In early 2017, Ashenden resigned from his position as Chaplain to the Queen after speaking out against a service at St Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow, at which a Muslim law student read (in Arabic) a passage from the Koran that explicitly declared that Jesus is not the Son of God and because of his views on Islam and orthodox Christianity. Ashenden concluded that being a member of the Ecclesiastical Household meant he could not speak out on matters he felt strongly about and that it was his duty and calling to speak on issues relating to the integrity of the Christian faith.

On 17 March 2017, Ashenden lodged a deed in the High Court of London under the Clerical Disabilities Act 1870, to relinquish his orders within the Church of England.

In 2016, Ashenden was appointed to the board of reference for the Global Anglican Future Conference He also joined Anglican TV Ministries as their UK correspondent.

In September 2017 Archbishop Theodore Casimes of the Christian Episcopal Church announced that Ashenden had been consecrated as a missionary bishop for the United Kingdom and Europe. In fact, Ashenden's episcopal consecration had taken place over four years earlier on 17 October 2013 in the Pro-Cathedral Church of Saint Saviour in Richmond, British Columbia. The ordaining prelates were Robert David Redmile, Bishop of Richmond, Theodore Casimes, Primate of the Christian Episcopal Churches of North America, Timothy Klerekoper, Bishop of Seattle, Washington, and John Geoffrey Sykes, Bishop in George Town, Grand Cayman Island, and Suffragan Bishop of Richmond. At the time of his consecration, Ashenden was appointed to be suffragan to Bishop Redmile in Normandy for the Channel Islands and France.

In 2013, he began a weekly column in the Jersey Evening Post, where his defence of orthodox Christianity and its critique of modern culture caused both strong support and opposition.

In 2012 he took early retirement and moved to a house for duty post as vicar of St Martin de Gouray in Gorey, Jersey.

In 2008, Ashenden was appointed to be the presenter of the Faith and Ethics programme for BBC Sussex and BBC Surrey, until 2012. From 2009 to 2012 he also presented the BBC podcast Faith in England.

He was appointed as a canon of Chichester Cathedral in 2003, and then to a further theological canonry (Bursalis Prebendary) in 2006. He was an examining chaplain to the Bishop of Chichester and Diocesan Adviser on New Age Religions.

Ashenden did postgraduate work at Heythrop College at the University of London with a Master of Theology degree on the psychology of religion. Whilst a chaplain and member of faculty at the University of Sussex, he completed a doctorate on the life and work of Charles Williams (1999). He published Alchemy and Integration, a study of Williams' work in 2007, which was reviewed by the Archbishop Rowan Williams in the Times Literary Supplement.

In 1998 he was a Church of England delegate to the 8th Council of the World Council of Churches held in Harare, Zimbabwe. He was a member of the General Synod of the Church of England for from 1995 to 2012. He has lectured in the United States, most recently as a visiting theologian for the Lutheran Church in Oregon.

In 1989 he was appointed to the post of university chaplain and senior lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Sussex where he lectured in literature and the psychology of religion. He was appointed a senior officer of the university in 1994. He convened and taught the MA programme "Monotheism and Mysticism in Critical Theology". From 1995 to 2003 he also lectured in systematic theology at the University of Brighton.

Ashenden was ordained at Southwark Cathedral in 1980 and served as a parish priest for 10 years in the Diocese of Southwark, firstly at St James's Bermondsey and then as vicar of Hamsey Green in Sanderstead. In Sanderstead he worked alongside Thomas Smail who had been director of the Fountain Trust.

He was vice-chairman of the Keston Institute during the 1980s, and a director of Aid to Russian Christians, in which role he engaged in smuggling Bibles and medicine to the "Underground Church" in the Soviet Union during that decade.

Gavin Roy Pelham Ashenden (born 3 June 1954) is a British Catholic layman, a former priest of the Church of England, and a former continuing Anglican bishop. He was an Honorary Chaplain to the Queen from 2008 until his resignation in 2017.

Ashenden was born on 3 June 1954 in London, England, the son of Michael Roy Edward Ashenden and Carol Ashenden (née Simpson, now Salmon). He was educated at Rokeby Preparatory School and as a music scholar at The King's School, Canterbury. He graduated from the University of Bristol, with a degree in law. He trained for the Anglican priesthood at Oak Hill Theological College, where he read for a Bachelor of Arts degree in theology. Whilst at Oak Hill he was also sent as part of his training to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist in Tolleshunt Knights, Essex, where he came under the influence of Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov).