13 Facts About Lesslie Newbigin

James Edward Lesslie Newbigin was a British theologian, missiologist, missionary and author.

Lesslie Newbigin is known for his involvement in both the dialogue regarding ecumenism and the Gospel and Our Culture movement.

Lesslie Newbigin was born in 1909 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.

Lesslie Newbigin was educated at Leighton Park School, the Quaker boarding school in Reading, Berkshire.

Lesslie Newbigin went to Queens' College, Cambridge in 1928, during which time he converted to Christianity.

Lesslie Newbigin returned to Cambridge in 1933 to train for the ministry at Westminster College, and in July 1936 he was ordained by the Presbytery of Edinburgh to work as a Church of Scotland missionary at the Madras Mission.

Lesslie Newbigin had a sister, Frances, who was a regular worshipper at Jesmond URC, Newcastle upon Tyne, in the late 1970s and into the 1980s.

Lesslie Newbigin remained in Geneva until 1965, when he returned to India as Bishop of Madras, where he stayed until he retired in 1974.

Lesslie Newbigin is especially remembered for the time after he returned to England from his long missionary service and travel, when he tried to communicate the serious need for the church to take the Gospel to post-Christian Western culture, which he viewed not as a secular society without gods but as a pagan society with false gods.

Lesslie Newbigin challenged these ideas of neutrality and the closely related discussion concerning the distinction between facts and values, both of which emerged from the Enlightenment.

Lesslie Newbigin returned to these themes in his small volume Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt and Certainty in Christian Discipleship, published in 1995, in the closing years of his life.

Lesslie Newbigin died in West Dulwich, London, England on 30 January 1998 and was cremated at West Norwood Cemetery.

Papers of Lesslie Newbigin are held at the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.