B ell, G eorge K ennedy A llen (1883–1958), Bishop of C hichester, 1929–1958

Abstract

Abstract George Bell, the son of an Anglican priest, was born within sight of the spire of Chichester Cathedral. Educated at Westminster School in London, he studied at Christ Church, Oxford before he was ordained in 1907. A further spell as a Student at Christ Church preceded his appointment as chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, in 1914. He would work closely with Davidson through World War I, the 1920 Lambeth Conference and into the 1920s. In 1924 he became Dean of Canterbury. Here he began a quiet revolution in the commissioning of new drama. John Masefield's play, The Coming of Christ , was performed in the cathedral in 1928 and was widely saluted as the first drama to appear in an English cathedral since the medieval period. For this Gustav Holst wrote music. By the time that Bell was consecrated bishop of Chichester, in 1929, he had also established a powerful reputation as an ecumenist, both national and international. The Anglo‐German discussions which he led between 1927 and 1930 presaged a personal commitment to the life of the German church which would deepen during the National Socialist era. He met the young theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1934 and was soon a friend and ally. Bell sought to use his position in the Life and Work movement and in the British church to influence the crisis in the German Protestant church, but he was also deeply involved in supporting Jewish and “non‐Aryan” refugees from Germany. He encouraged T. S. Eliot to write what became Murder in the Cathedral in 1935 and fostered the work of the exiled German Jewish painter, Hans Feibusch. During World War II Bell still managed to connect circles resisting Hitler inside Germany with friends abroad, but the British government was disinclined to favor such enterprises. His condemnation of obliteration bombing in Parliament in February 1944 may well have isolated him further from those in authority. When he was not invited to follow William Temple as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1944 many thought it because of his controversial reputation. In the post‐war era, Bell's international standing was unique. He became a president of the new World Council of Churches and supported the emerging Church of South India. He also protested against nuclear weapons, broadcast his sympathy to the people of Hungary after the 1956 uprising, and spoke against capital punishment. Bell announced his retirement in 1957 and died, only a few months later, in Canterbury.