Bishop Arthur Cayley Headlam was Bishop of Gloucester from 1923-1945.
Why he is included in this work
Bishop Arthur Cayley Headlam was Bishop of Gloucester from 1923-1945. We have previously received enquiries about his public statements about the Jews in Germany before and during the Second World War. There is a memorial to him in the North Ambulatory.
What we know
Bishop Headlam championed education and was involved in the raising of a fund that continues to support Church schools in the Diocese today. He advocated for ecumenical working between churches across the world. He also published articles and made statements that contain significant antisemitic themes.
During the Nazi rise to power in 1933 Headlam blamed German Jews for causing their own persecution, writing that they caused "the violence of the Russian Communists" and "Socialist communities" and were "not altogether a pleasant element in German, and in particular Berlin life.” He defended his views against criticism in the press by fellow Bishops and others. Writing to The Times in 1933, Headlam praised the Nazis for their ‘self-discipline and self-sacrifice’. He opposed the anti-Nazi Confessing Church in Germany, even arguing, in 1938, that the prominent Confessing Church pastor Martin Niemöller had brought imprisonment upon himself by preaching politics and provoking the Nazi regime. Such comments incurred the wrath of his fellow bishops, including Bishop Henson of Durham, who dubbed him ‘the pertinacious apologist of the Nazi government’.
Headlam was Bishop of Gloucester throughout the Second World War until he retired late in 1945. He died in 1947 and is not buried in the Cathedral. The plaque was installed in 1949.
What we would still like to find out
We have not yet discovered who funded the memorial plaque in the Cathedral to Bishop Headlam, so searches of newspapers and the Cathedral accounts will be undertaken.
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