Stephen Verney


Stephen Edmund Verney was the second Bishop of Repton from 1977 to 1985; and from then on an honorary assistant bishop within the Diocese of Oxford.
The son of Sir Harry Verney, 4th Baronet, he was born on 17 April 1919 and educated at Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1947 he married Priscilla Schwerdt; he was made deacon at Michaelmas 1950, by Russell Barry, Bishop of Southwell, at Southwell Minster, and ordained priest. He began his career with a curacy at Gedling after which he was: Priest in charge of St Francis Clifton, Nottingham; Vicar of Leamington Hastings; Diocesan Missioner for the Diocese of Coventry then finally, before his appointment to the Episcopate, a Canon Residentiary at Windsor. His first wife died in 1974 and seven years later became the first Bishop to marry a divorced woman. He was consecrated a bishop on 31 March 1977, by Donald Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury at Westminster Abbey. After 8 years as the suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Derby, he retired to Blewbury in 1985.
Verney was active in an organisation called The New Era Centre, which was founded by Dr Fred Blum in 1967. In 1969, Blum met Verney at a conference in Coventry where Verney was doing reconciliation work. They became friends, “like brothers”, and Verney became a trustee and significant supporter and contributor to the creation and work of The New Era Centre, which became a registered charity on 20 December 1979. Verney was a well-connected individual, and frequently communicated with the politician Roy Jenkins. The residential community of The New Era Centre in The Abbey, Sutton Courtenay, which was purchased in 1980, was dedicated on 4 October 1981 as a space to explore and work towards the synthesis of Christianity and more contemporary understandings of societal transformation. In 1984, after The Abbey was improved to a habitable state, the first two resident community members moved in. Stephen Verney extensively discussed, and believed in, the role Buddhist practice and philosophy could play in increasing connectivity with a Christian deity, and it was this belief which led many of The New Era Centre’s early pursuits.

Works