Reverend Mark Santer’s obituary: Birmingham’s controversial Anglican bishop – The Times

When Margaret Thatcher sanctioned the appointment of Mark Santer as Bishop of Birmingham in 1987, she was advised that the former Oxbridge scholar was quiet, reserved, apolitical and unlikely to cause a stir.

The Prime Minister could not have been more wrong. Santer’s first major sermon as bishop was a lament for the “selfishness of Thatcherism”. He said: “We live in a time when the principle of looking after number 1 is widely proclaimed as a respected principle of personal and public morality. This is new, and I find it particularly troubling in self-proclaimed Christian circles.”

A close friend and confidant of the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, Santer was already being tipped as a possible successor, but