Patrick Rodger
Patrick Campbell Rodger was an Anglican bishop and ecumenist. He was the Bishop of Manchester and Bishop of Oxford.
He came from the Scottish Episcopal Church, having served ministries in Edinburgh. He came from a prosperous middle-class family in Helensburgh, Argyll and Bute, Scotland.
Towards the end of the Second World War he served in the Royal Corps of Signals. After a brilliant undergraduate career at Christ Church, Oxford he studied for ordination at Westcott House, Cambridge. After his first curacy in Edinburgh, he worked for the Student Christian Movement. From 1961 to 1966 he was a member of staff of the World Council of Churches. He returned from Geneva after being nominated as General Secretary of the WCC. In the event the post went to the Revd Eugene Carson Blake. During his service as an Anglican Bishop he was also chair of the Churches' Unity Commission and president of the Conference of European Churches. As Bishop of Oxford he presided over the beginning of an Area scheme which delegated functions from the diocesan to his suffragan or "Area" bishops, in order to decentralise the work of the diocese. In retirement he served as an assistant bishop in the Diocese of Edinburgh. In 1989, he published Songs in a Strange Land, a devotional book on praying with the Psalms.
He was an early advocate of the ordination of women as deacons and priests.
