34 Facts About Charles Gore

Charles Gore was a Church of England bishop, first of Worcester, then Birmingham, and finally of Oxford.

Charles Gore was one of the most influential Anglican theologians of the 19th century, helping reconcile the church to some aspects of biblical criticism and scientific discovery, while remaining Catholic in his interpretation of the faith and sacraments.

Also known for his social action, Gore became an Anglican bishop and founded the monastic Community of the Resurrection as well as co-founded the Christian Social Union.

Charles Gore was the chaplain to Queen Victoria and King Edward VII.

Charles Gore was born on 22 January 1853 into an Anglo-Irish aristocratic family as the third son of Hon.

Charles Gore was raised in a low-church Anglican family and was confirmed by the church at the age of eight years.

Charles Gore's parents sent him to Harrow School, London, in 1866, where he excelled academically.

Charles Gore then went to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1871, where he supported the trade-union movement.

Charles Gore graduated from Oxford in 1875 with a first-class degree in literae humaniores.

In 1875, Charles Gore was elected a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and he lectured there from 1876 to 1880.

Charles Gore was ordained to the Anglican diaconate in December 1876 and to the priesthood in December 1878.

Charles Gore received Honorary Doctor of Divinity degrees from various universities, including University of Athens, University of Birmingham, University of Oxford, Durham University, and University of Edinburgh.

When, in 1884, Pusey House was founded at Oxford, in part as a memorial to Edward Bouverie Pusey, and as a home for Pusey's library, Charles Gore was appointed as principal, a position he held until 1893.

Charles Gore, starting from the same basis of faith and authority, found from experience in dealing with the doubts and difficulties of the younger generation that this uncompromising attitude was untenable and set himself the task of reconciling the principle of authority in religion with that of scientific authority, by attempting to define the boundaries of their respective spheres of influence.

Charles Gore himself contributed an essay on "The Holy Spirit and Inspiration" and, from the tenth edition, one of Charles Gore's sermons, "On the Christian Doctrine of Sin", was included as an appendix.

In 1891 Charles Gore was chosen to deliver the Bampton Lectures, and he took for his subject the "Incarnation of Christ".

Charles Gore addressed this through revisiting the Kenotic Theory of the Incarnation.

The Bampton Lectures led to a tense situation, which Charles Gore relieved in 1893 by resigning his principalship of Pusey House and accepting the position of vicar of Radley parish near Oxford.

In 1892, while Principal of Pusey House, Charles Gore founded a clerical fraternity, known as the Society of the Resurrection.

In November 1901 Gore was nominated to succeed JJ S Perowne as Bishop of Worcester.

Charles Gore received the degree Doctor of Divinity from the University of Oxford in December 1901, and was elected an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, in May 1902.

In 1905 Charles Gore was installed as the first Bishop of Birmingham, a new see, which he had helped to create by dividing his see of Worcester.

In social questions Charles Gore became a leader of the group of high Anglicans known loosely as Christian socialists.

Charles Gore worked actively against the sweating system, pleaded for European intervention in Macedonia, and was a keen supporter of the Licensing Bill.

In September 1909, Charles Gore spoke in support of the Housing and Town Planning Act 1909.

Charles Gore believed that Britain had a duty to join the War against Germany.

Charles Gore commented on the German treatment of civilians in land they had overrun in Belgium 'One of the outstanding features of the present war, and the one that, perhaps, will most strike future historians, is the moral decline of Germany'.

Charles Gore had no doubt about the role of the Church of England in the War.

On 28 September 1917 Charles Gore licensed 21 women as lay readers called the "Diocesan Band of Women Messengers".

Charles Gore resigned in 1919 and retired to London, where he lived at 6 Margaret Street as a tenant of the parochial authorities of All Saints, Margaret Street.

Charles Gore was a bundle of contradictions, an Anglo-Catholic in the Church of England whose questioning of the Old Testament produced in the 1890s a crisis for many believers.

Charles Gore chose to be buried at Mirfield, in the church of the Community of the Resurrection, though he had never managed to be more than a visitor there.

Charles Gore left instructions for his body to be cremated, a practice seen by some at the time as unacceptable for a Christian.

Charles Gore's cope and mitre remain at the Grosvenor Chapel.