Richard Harries, Baron Harries of Pentregarth

Richard Douglas Harries, Baron Harries of Pentregarth (born 2 June 1936) is a retired bishop of the Church of England. He was the 41st Bishop of Oxford from 1987 to 2006. Since 2008 he has been the Gresham Professor of Divinity.

Education and army career
Harries was educated at Wellington College and Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Corps of Signals on 16 December 1955 and was promoted to lieutenant two years later. He left the active Regular Army on 12 September 1958 (transferring to the reserve of officers), and went up to Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he read theology (BA 1961, MA 1965), before going on to Cuddesdon College (1961–63) to study for ordination. He formally resigned his original army commission on 18 March 1965, but was immediately recommissioned as Chaplain to the Forces 4th Class in the Territorial Army, on 29 October 1969 he once more transferred to the reserve.

Church ministry
Harries was made deacon in 1963, becoming assistant curate of Hampstead St John in the Diocese of London (1963–69). He was ordained priest the following year and later combined his ministry at St John's with the chaplaincy of the former Westfield College (now part of Queen Mary, University of London) (1967–69). He became a Tutor at Wells Theological College (1969–71) and was then Warden of the new Salisbury and Wells Theological College (1971–72).

He returned to parish ministry as Vicar of All Saints', Fulham (1972–81) and reverted to academia as Dean of King's College London (1981–1987). He was appointed Bishop of Oxford in 1987, taking a seat as a Lord Spiritual in the House of Lords in 1993. In 1999 he was appointed to the Royal Commission investigating a possible reorganisation of the House of Lords. He retired on 2 June 2006, his 70th birthday. In the previous week, on 26 May 2006, Downing Street announced that he was to be made a life peer, and he was gazetted as Baron Harries of Pentregarth, of Ceinewydd in the County of Dyfed on 30 June 2006. He sits as a cross-bencher. On 4 August 2006, he was appointed to the Court of Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved for a period of five years.

Other activities
In 1986 Harries took up a subsidiary appointment as Consultant to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York on Inter-Faith Relations. As Bishop of Oxford he became a founder member of the Oxford Abrahamic Group, bringing together Christian, Muslim, and Jewish scholars. He chaired the Council of Christians and Jews from 1992 until 2001. In 1988 he was president of the Johnson Society, delivering a Presidential Address on Johnson – A Church of England Saint. He has been a member of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (including serving as Chair of the HFEA Ethics and Law Committee) and a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, as well as chairing the House of Lords Select Committee (Westminster System) on Stem Cell Research. He was Chairman of the Church of England Board for Social Responsibility (1996–2001) and Chairman of the House of Bishops' Working Party on Issues in Human Sexuality and has served on the Board of Christian Aid. He was also a member of the Royal Commission on the Reform of the House of Lords (the Wakeham Commission). A regular contributor to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, including many appearances on Thought for the Day, he has published three books of radio talks. He is a patron of POWER International (www.powerinternational.org) a charity working with disabled people in poor countries.

Harries was appointed a Fellow of King's College London (FKC) in 1983, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1996, and an Honorary Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2004. In 1994 he became a Doctor of Divinity honoris causa of the University of London and in 2001 he was honoured with the degree of Doctor of the University (DUniv) by Oxford Brookes University. He was a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics 2002–2008. In 2002 he was Visiting Professor at Liverpool Hope University College. In 2008 he replaced Keith Ward as the Gresham Professor of Divinity.

Harries is the author of 26 books on the interface of Christian faith and wider culture, including ethics, politics and the arts, especially the visual arts. These include The Passion in Art (Ashgate 2004) and Art and the Beauty of God (Continuum 2000), which was chosen as a book of the year by the late Anthony Burgess in The Observer, when it was originally published in 1993. The Re-Enchantment of Morality (SPCK 2008) was shortlisted for the 2011 Michael Ramsey prize for theological writing. The Image of Christ in Modern Art was published by Ashgate in October 2013.

Legacy and reputation
His passion for social justice informed his liberal views. At the start of his episcopacy, he brought legal proceedings challenging the Church Commissioners' policy on investment. He and his co-plaintiffs argued that the Church Commissioners placed too much emphasis on purely financial considerations and insufficient emphasis upon the promotion of the Christian faith. Although this challenge failed – the Commissioners already had an ethical investment policy, albeit one which excluded a smaller part of the UK share market than the plaintiffs had wanted to exclude – the Court recognised that it was proper for charities to consider whether their investment strategies would alienate the charity's financial supporters. In 2002 Harries joined the biologist Richard Dawkins in denouncing the Emmanuel Schools Foundation for teaching creationism.