Michael Doe (bishop)
Michael David Doe is the Preacher of Gray's Inn and a former Bishop of Swindon.
Doe grew up on the Highfield Council Estate in Pennington, Hants, and attended Brockenhurst Grammar School. He went on to Durham University. After studying at Ripon Hall, Oxford, he was ordained priest in 1973. He was a curate on the St Helier Estate in South London, after which he was Youth Secretary of the British Council of Churches. He moved to Oxford in 1981 to be Priest Missioner in the Blackbird Leys Ecumenical Partnership, and also served as Rural Dean of Cowley from 1987-1989. During this time he co-presented the weekly religious affairs programme on BBC Radio Oxford: "Spirit Level". He was then Social Responsibility Advisor to the Diocese of Portsmouth and a canon residentiary at Portsmouth Cathedral, before his ordination to the episcopate as suffragan bishop of Swindon in the Diocese of Bristol in 1994. After ten years in this post when he was appointed, in 2004, the General Secretary of the mission agency United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel On retirement in 2011 he became Preacher to Gray's Inn, one of the four Inns of Court in London. He is an Assistant Bishop in the Diocese of Southwark, and chaired the Ecumenical Council for Corporate Responsibility from 2012 to 2015. In 2002 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Bath. His publications include "Seeking the Truth in Love - the Church and Homosexuality", "Today!", and "Saving Power - the Mission of God and the Anglican Communion".
On 11 February 2017, Doe was one of 14 retired bishops to sign an open letter to the then-serving bishops of the Church of England. They expressed their opposition to the House of Bishops' report to General Synod on sexuality, which recommended no change to the Church's canons or practises around sexuality. By 13 February, a serving bishop and nine further retired bishops had added their signatures; on 15 February, the report was rejected by synod.
