The Revd Dr Andrew Atherstone writes:
COLIN BUCHANAN was one of the Church of England’s pre-eminent liturgists. He was a theological educator, publisher, bishop, organiser, reformer, campaigner, and whirlwind.
Born in 1934, Buchanan was educated at Whitgift School, in Croydon, before National Service with the Royal Artillery, and Literae Humaniores (“Greats”) at Lincoln College, Oxford. As an undergraduate, he was a competitive athlete (440 yards), and president of the Bishop Jewel Society, which drilled students in Anglican Evangelical doctrines. After theological studies at Tyndale Hall, Bristol, where he famously achieved full marks in the worship paper for the General Ordination Examination, he served his title curacy from 1961 at St Mary’s, Cheadle, in Chester diocese.
In 1964, Buchanan joined the staff of the London College of Divinity, in Northwood, and quickly came to the attention of Archbishop Michael Ramsey, who wanted to find an Evangelical for the Church of England’s Liturgical Commission. The Commission was then dominated by post-war Anglo-Catholic scholars, leading Buchanan to dissent publicly from some of its proposals, but he won respect for the clarity and conviction of his arguments, and for his generosity of spirit towards his theological opponents. He began to produce a steady stream of publications on apostolic succession, ecumenism, the sacraments, and Prayer Book revision. His first major book was Modern Anglican Liturgies 1958-1968 (1968), from Oxford University Press.
The year 1970 proved to be a significant turning point in Buchanan’s career. He was thrust into the national limelight with the publication of Growing Into Union, a surprising cross-party collaboration between two conservative Evangelicals, Buchanan and J. I. Packer, and two conservative Anglo-Catholics, Graham Leonard and Eric Mascall. They all agreed that the Anglican-Methodist Unity Scheme was theologically inept, and, instead, laid out alternative ecumenical proposals to satisfy both Evangelical and Catholic consciences.
Also in 1970, Buchanan was elected to the inaugural General Synod, having twice run unsuccessfully for the Church Assembly in 1964 and 1967. He loved the cut and thrust of the debating chamber, with an enviable ability to argue on his feet and a mischievous delight in exploding woolly thinking. He was responsible for steering the new Rite A eucharistic liturgy through Synod in 1979, a foundational text for the Alternative Service Book, during a mammoth debate which Buchanan reckoned deserved a place in The Guinness Book of Records. He was repeatedly re-elected to the Synod for three decades, with only brief periods away.
A third significant development in 1970 was the migration of the London College of Divinity, rebranded as St John’s College, to Bramcote, Nottingham. Buchanan loved the teaching and the college community. He was promoted to Vice-Principal in 1975 and Principal in 1979.
At the heart of the college was a Georgian house, The Grove, which lent its name to Buchanan’s publishing enterprise, Grove Books, initially focused on liturgy but soon branching out into ethics, pastoralia, spirituality, and other subjects. New products were added, such as Grove Liturgical Studies and News of Liturgy, and Buchanan himself contributed many booklets, including early bestsellers such as A Case for Infant Baptism (1973) and What Did Cranmer Think He Was Doing? (1976).
But the expansion was too rapid, leaving him responsible for large quantities of stock, indebted to the printers, and in a financially precarious position. In response, in 1985, friends put the venture on a secure financial footing through the creation of Grove Books Ltd. Buchanan continued to chair the Group for the Renewal of Worship until 2003, and the Liturgical Studies editorial board until 2019. News of Liturgy evolved into Praxis News of Worship (now Transforming Worship News), and he contributed a column to every issue until his death.
In 1985, Buchanan was invited by Hugh Montefiore (Bishop of Birmingham) to become suffragan Bishop of Aston. He was consecrated in St Paul’s Cathedral alongside Wilfred Wood, Bishop of Croydon, the first black bishop in the Church of England. In Birmingham, racial tensions and soaring rates of unemployment sparked the Handsworth riots in September 1985; so Buchanan was thrown straight into episcopal ministry in a context of fractured communities.
In 1989, as a contribution to the Birmingham city-wide centenary celebrations, he chaired the committee that invited Desmond Tutu to speak at an interdenominational series of events. But the project lost £200,000, a cost borne by the diocesan board of finance, and Buchanan took personal responsibility, resigning his bishopric. Unsolicited, more than £96,000 was swiftly and spontaneously donated from all over the country to help mitigate the financial loss.
Buchanan was suddenly an unemployed bishop. He spent a year in itinerant ministry, often lecturing in theological colleges, before being instituted as Vicar of St Mark’s, Gillingham, in 1991. Archbishop George Carey awarded Buchanan a Lambeth DD degree in 1993 in recognition of both the character and quantity of his theological output.
Buchanan continued to campaign and write on many different fronts, including Cut the Connection (1994), which argued vigorously for the disestablishment of the Church of England. He was also a vice-president of the Electoral Reform Society and a passionate advocate of the single transferable vote.
In 1996, he was invited by the Bishop of Southwark, Roy Williamson, to become Area Bishop of Woolwich. It was a happy return to full-time episcopal ministry and witnessed the publication of his major study of Anglican ecclesiology, Is the Church of England Biblical? (1998). He suffered from angina and in 2001 underwent quadruple heart-bypass surgery. The operation gave him bonus years of life which he fully embraced.
Of the many strong relationships that Buchanan made with Anglicans around the globe, his New Zealand connections were particularly important to him, as the place of his father’s birth.
After his retirement from Woolwich in 2004, aged 70, he continued to agitate, speak, minister, and publish, with characteristic energy. His later books included Taking the Long View (2006), a memoir of his many synodical campaigns, Historical Dictionary of Anglicanism (2006), An Evangelical Among the Anglican Liturgists (2009), and histories of St John’s College, Nottingham (2013) and Trinity College, Bristol (2022). At the time of his death, several other projects were at an advanced stage, including a booklet, The Seal of the Confessional, and a historical monograph, The Quest for Anglican-Methodist Unity. In retirement, he also served as an honorary assistant bishop in the dioceses of Bradford, and Ripon and Leeds, and then in the new diocese of Leeds.
Dr Buchanan died on 29 November, aged 89. He is survived by his wife, his two daughters, and two grandchildren. A memorial service is planned at Bradford Cathedral for Saturday 27 January.