Biography of John Morris

The Present

Photo of John Morris at
the launch of his book

John is 69, and retired this year, and has been married to Mary (a teacher) for 46 years and they have two children Jeremy (44, a software engineer and 3 children) and Amanda (a lawyer and 3 children - one of them is Daniel aged 7, who cannot yet crawl or speak, and comes to Mary and John on alternate weekends and for holidays). John spends his time helping run an orphanage in India, exercising Daniel, continuing to be an unpaid clergyman, travelling, playing squash, and in a quiet way protesting about the war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. Recently, John was briefly on the BBC through his slight connection with Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York. For more, see below!

Education: M.A. (Corpus, Cambridge), M.Ed (East Africa), PhD (Exeter), PGCE (London post-graduate certificate in education).

Work: A teacher, teacher-trainer and lecturer for 35 years in the UK, East Africa, and the USA, before ordination as an Anglican clergyman (non-stipendiary ministry) in 1995.

Chaplain at Twyford School, near Winchester, UK

John retired after 11 years as chaplain at Twyford School but continues to help the school raise funds for children in wheelchairs at Rose Road Association, Southampton. He carries on taking services and preaching elsewhere, having assisted in three rural parishes for six years. He is a member of the congregation at Winchester Cathedral and a Cathedral Friend, and his CC is on sale at the Winchester Cathedral Gift Shop.

East Africa

The Archbishop of York,
Dr John Sentamu

Mary and John lived in Uganda 1963-71, teaching, then teacher-training. One of his pupils was John Sentamu pictured above as the Archbishop of York, who starred in two stage plays, one of them televised, that John Morris directed. In a BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs programme on 22 June 2003, Sentamu named two teachers, one of them John. On the day of Sentamu’s enthronement as Archbishop on 30 November 2005, John was interviewed on BBC1 Breakfast TV, and showed photos of Sentamu acting and in a dugout canoe on the lake where John took a dozen pupils on holiday for a week.

Interviewing Sentamu for The Times (London), Ruth Gledhill wrote: “John Morris, working as a young English teacher in Uganda, took pity on the scrawny kid who walked 12 miles barefoot to and from secondary school in Kampala each day. He never dreamed that the confident, laughing child destined to fulfil his dream of being a barrister in Uganda would end up as Archbishop of York in the Church of England.

Dr John Sentamu remembers Mr Morris for buying him a bicycle and keeping him supplied with inner tubes when the tyres gave way on rough tracks that passed for roads.

Mr Morris went on to become ordained himself, at the age of 58, and now, back in England, works as chaplain at Twyford School in the Winchester diocese. “His qualities are leadership and straight talking,” Mr Morris says. “The Church of England is in great need of straight talkers. John does not mince words. He gets straight to the point. He’s a very alive person.”

Mr Morris took him and other children to the local Anglican church each Sunday. Dr Sentamu’s vocation came after his friend, Archbishop Janani Luwum, was murdered, making him vow: “You kill my friend, I take his place.”

Dr Sentamu remembers Mr Morris as one of the teachers and missionaries in Uganda who educated him in what it means to be English. “As I was being raised as one of 13 children in a four bedroom house I learnt that you are totally dependent on one another and not a single individualistic sort of person. The missionaries I saw and the teachers I saw in my country were not bringing an individualistic thing. It was always a communal thing.”

Without the English, Dr Sentamu says, his life would have been of a different order… (from “Multiculturalism has betrayed the English, Archbishop says”, Times, Tuesday 22 November 2005, pages 6,7).

When John and Mary returned to Uganda in 2004, they found that books were dear and scarce. So they intend to return with 1500 copies of CC to sell at a fraction of its cost to university, theological college students, and clergy, in East Africa. For more on Sentamu, click on the home page Articles to find Dr Morris’s article in The Church of England Newspaper, “The Genesis of a Contemporary Creed”, 17 March 2006, pages 9,10.

Orphanage: Albella Boys’ Home

For several years, John has been the unpaid Administrator/Chairman of Albella UK, which funds Albella Boys’ Home, in Darjeeling District, India. This Christian home for 108 boys (many of them orphans) aged 5-18, also has a primary school for 205 pupils, and a vocational training centre. The 2005 audit showed that Albella UK’s administrative expenses were 0.39% of income, made possible because it is run by volunteers. John intends to trek to Kanchenjunga, the world’s third highest mountain and visible from Albella, where he last stayed after trekking in Nepal around the Annapurnas in 1994. Later he trekked to Everest Base Camp and he climbed Kilimanjaro in 1965.

Brainwave: www.brainwave.org.uk

This charity with no government funding offers therapy for children with special needs. Daniel goes there every six months, to obtain a revised one-hour exercise regime to use each day with Daniel.

Equipment for Disabled Children: www.e4dc.org.uk

Daniel is good looking, with a photo of him on the brochure of EDC, riding their specially adapted three-wheeled bicycle that straps him in, while grandad pushes. EDC will receive all the royalties for CC.

Hobbies

Gardening, weekly squash, some tennis, and worse skiing; weekly theatre visits as a volunteer usher/ice cream seller. John reads mostly science and theology, and writes poetry, often expressing his sense impressions while travelling overseas – unlike the conceptual verses he composed for CC. John is not interested in party politics but he did march with over one million people in Hyde Park, London, on 15 February 2003, opposed to the imminent Bush/Blair invasion of Iraq. He has written to MPs opposing Israel’s disproportionate force in Lebanon and Gaza; its legitimate right of self-defence does not justify the overkill, in civilian casualties and destruction of Lebanon’s infra-structure, which Bush and Blair did so little to stop for three weeks.

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