Wilson, John Leonard

JOHN LEONARD WILSON

'Mind your own business', was the reply Bishop John Leonard Wilson gave to Geoffrey Fisher, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, when he enquired as to why he was not wearing gaiters and a frock coat at a meeting of bishops.

His biographer suggests that he was in essence an autocrat and hopeless as a chairman at meetings where ideas diametrically opposed to his were raised.

Yet his name is incised on the floor of the chancel in Birmingham Cathedral bearing beneath it the legend, 'Confessor for the Faith’.

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This no nonsense Bishop was appointed Bishop of Singapore in 1943. He arrived four months before the Japanese invasion of the island. Thanks to the good offices of the Japanese Director of Religion and Education, Lt. Ogawa, who was also an Anglican, Wilson was permitted to visit the prisoner-of-war camps without an escort for the purposes of taking Confirmation Services.

Later in the year, when Ogawa was transferred to Sumatra, Wilson was interned at the infamous Changi prison. There he joined about 3000 other prisoners of war in squalid conditions with an inadequate diet.

On the 17th October, he was removed for the purpose of interrogation concerning an alleged spy ring, which was thought to be responsible for receiving and transmitting messages to encourage sabotage and anti-Japanese propaganda in the community.

For three whole days he was questioned before being returned to Changi prison in a semi-conscious state.

In a sermon preached some three years later on the BBC he said: “I remember Archbishop William Temple in one of his books writing that if you pray for any particular virtue, whether it be patience or courage or love, one of the answers God gives you is an opportunity for exercising that virtue.

After my first beating, I was almost afraid to pray for courage, lest I should have another opportunity of exercising it, but my unspoken prayer was there, and without God's help I doubt whether I could have come through. Long hours of pain were a severe test. In the middle of that torture they asked me if I still believed in God. When, by God's help, I said, ‘I do', they asked me why he did not save me, and by the help of his Holy Spirit, I said: 'God does save me. He does not save me by freeing me from the pain or punishment, but he saves me by giving me the spirit to bear it’.

And when they asked me why I did not curse them, I told them it was because I was a follower of Jesus Christ, who taught us that we were all brethren. I did not like to use the words, 'Father forgive them’. It seemed too blasphemous to use our Lord's words, but I felt them, and I said, 'Father, I know these men are doing their duty. Help them to see that I am innocent’.

And when I muttered, 'Father forgive them', I wondered how far I was being dramatic and if I really meant it, because I looked at their faces as they stood around and took it in turns to flog, and their faces were hard and cruel and some of them were evidently enjoying their cruelty. But by the grace of God I saw those men not as they were, but as they had been. Once they were little children playing with their brothers and sisters and happy in their parents’ love, in those far off days before they had been conditioned by their false nationalist ideals, and it is hard to hate little children; but even that was not enough. There came into my mind, as I lay on the table, the words of that communion hymn,

Look, Father, look on his anointed face,

And only look on us as found in him;

Look not on our misusings of thy grace,

Our prayers so languid, and our faith so dim,

For lo! between our sins and their reward

We set the passion of thy Son our Lord.

And so I saw them, not as they were, not as they had been, but as they were capable of becoming, redeemed by the power of Christ, and I knew it was only common sense to say, 'Forgive'.”

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When Leonard Wilson returned to England, he was appointed Dean of Manchester Cathedral and then Bishop of Birmingham. He retired at the end of September 1969 and died a year later.

I recently came across a published letter from the pen of Bishop Wilson's daughter, the Revd Dr. Susan King-Cole. She writes, 'After the war, my father returned to Singapore and he had the joy of baptizing and confirming one of the men who had tortured him’.