User:Phillip Medhurst

Phillip Medhurst was born in Leicester, England in 1948. Educated at Alderman Newton’s, a state-funded grammar school, he won an open scholarship to read English at Wadham College, Oxford. After graduation he went on to read Theology as part of his training for the Anglican ministry. On ordination he served in the South London parish of Abbey Wood while qualifying as a schoolteacher at Goldsmiths’ College. For ten years Medhurst pursued a career as a teacher in holy orders in both state-funded and private schools. After a brief stint as a chaplain at Malvern College, Medhurst spent another ten years supervising the religious life of schools in the West Midlands before retiring from schoolteaching to devote his time to writing and fine art. Having become convinced by his experience in secondary schools of the futility and indeed undesirability of purveying religion to minors as part of their general education – an activity which Medhurst has since characterised as “organised hypocrisy” – he has now established himself as an apologist for a Christian Gnosis which cannot be inculcated by so-called Religious Education. Medhurst delivered the Essex Hall Lecture for the UK Unitarian Church in 1992. For Medhurst’s Gnostic writings, see https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=Phillip+Medhurst&crid=OJG0TTWPQDIK&sprefix=phillip+medhurst%2Caps%2C307&ref=nb_sb_noss_2 For Medhurst’s own fine art, see http://www.flickr.com/groups/the_art_of_phillip_medhurst Phillip Medhurst currently resides in the city of Wakefield U.K.