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Francis xxxxx Weston (commonly known as Frank Weston), born London, September 13, 1871, died November 2, 1924, Tanganyika, was Anglican Bishop of Zanzibar and a leader of the Anglo-Catholic movement in the early 20th Century.
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[edit] Early life
Weston was born the son of the head of tea broking firm and devout Evangelical Anglican who died when he was aged 11. He was brought up in the South London districts of Streatham and Dulwich. He attended Dulwich College and his family intended him to seek a commission as an officer in the British Army. However, he was rejected due to having poor eyesight, and instead proceeded to Trinity College, Oxford in 1890 where he gained a first class honours degree in theology.
While at Oxford, he developed his Anglo-Catholic faith, participating in life and worship at such Anglo-Catholic shrines as Pusey House and St. Barnabas' Church in Jericho. At St. Barnabas, he heard Bishop Smythies of Zanzibar preach. The next day he went to St. Stephen's House to volunteer as a missionary in Africa, but was rejected due to poor health.
At Oxford too he was convinced by his Anglo-Catholic contemporaries to abandon the political conservatism of his upbrining and that socialism was the only political doctrine compatible with Christianity. He became active in the Christian Social Union and agitated for better employment conditions for the poor in Oxford.
After graduating in 1893 he instead went to the Trinity College Mission at Stratford, a deprived area in the East End of London, he was ordained deacon after the unanimous approval of the congregation at the mission in 1894, and then priest in 1895 .
There Weston developed the style of preaching and ministry which he would retain for the rest of his life - a devoutly, narrowly, Catholic Anglican with deeply rooted and staunchly socialist views of a rather puritanical sort.
His socialism tied in with the thinking of much of the then developing Anglo-Catholic movement. Among his friends at the time was Stewart Headlam of the left wing Guild of St. Matthew, who famously had his licence to preach suspended by the Bishop of London for declaring that "those who celebrate Holy Communion must be holy communists".
Eventually, his preaching at Stratford came to the attention of influential conservative and Protestant elements at Trinity College who complained to Weston's incumbent with the result that Weston moved to St. Matthew's, Westminster in June 1896, where he became one of four priests on the staff. St. Matthew's, although within five minutes walk of the seats of ecclesiastical and political power at Westminster Abbey and the Palace of Westminster was then, as it remains today, a parish of considerable social deprivation, with crowded tenement blocks. As he had at Stratford, he took a particular interest in the welfare, both material and spiritual, of the poorest of the local boys. Unlike Stratford, however, St. Matthew's was a securely Anglo-Catholic and solidly working-class parish where his views, spiritual and political alike, were in sympathy with his colleagues and his parishioners.
While Weston was happy at St. Matthew's, Africa still beckoned, and the parish had strong links with the Universities' Mission to Central Africa. His health having improved, he was accepted as a UMCA missionary and arrived in Zanzibar in 1898.
[edit] Zanzibar
At Zanzibar, Weston initially taught at the boys' boarding school at Kinugani. He had expected to train men for the priesthood, but when he arrived at Kinugani found only two ordinands waiting, so instead spent more time teaching the boys. He found training priests in the middle of a boys school unsatisfactory, however, so rented a site at nearby Mazizini for a purpose built theological college.
Fired with missionary zeal, within four months he had become disillusioned with the more prosaic lifestyles of many of his colleagues and wrote a very critical open letter to Bishop Robinson, his diocesan Bishop, causing some degree of scandal. This would be a hallmark of his ministry, along with other traits that became evident in his first year in Zanzibar - a tendency to be a workaholic despite often poor health, a belief in the necessity of a simple life of poverty, and a firm belief in the necessity for African Christianity to be truly African. Despite some patronising attitudes towards native people on arrival, Weston soon noted the danger of confusing Christianity with Europeanisation, and in particular noted that the missions set up to help those rescued from slave ships, who had naturally come from many parts of Africa, tended to leave the children without a native culture, stranded between the European and African worlds. Weston learned to speak Swahili fluently very rapidly, and indeed to converse in a number of Swahili sociolects.
In 1899, Weston was appointed chaplain to the boys' home at Kilimani, and there also displayed hallmarks which would remain throughout his career - a great enjoyment of the company of boys together with the capacity to be very severe towards them. Weston was a great beater, and in particular beat severely in cases of homosexuality, although also greatly popular among his pupils throughout his paedagogic career.
In 1901 he was made principal of the boys school at Kinugani, where he had first arrived, and at the same time was undertaking a number of other significant pieces of work, such as the completion of a book on dogmatic theology in Swahili as well as giving retreats and lectures around Zanzibar. When he returned to England for his first home leave in August 1901, he was found to be emotionally and physically overwrought, and his doctors insisted on him smoking again, which he had given up in an attempt to set up a monastic order.
In 1903, while remaining headmaster at Kinugani, he became Chancellor of the Diocese of Zanzibar, which resulted in him travelling much more widely about the diocese. As his sympathy with the African lifestyle increased, he became more and more convinced of the need for Africa's Church to be authentically African and that much that the Church had done with sincere intentions had in fact undermined African culture and society. Weston also had to contend with the great shortage of priests, both European and African, in the Diocese at the time. In 1905, staff shortages and the loss of the land at Mazizini meant that the theological college returned to Kinugani, although on separate land. For two years, Weston was principal of both the school and the theological college.
In 1907, he published a well received piece of incarnational theology called The One Christ.
[edit] Episcopacy
On October 18, 1908, Weston was consecrated Bishop of Zanzibar in Southwark Cathedral in London. He returned to Zanzibar on November 6 when he was enthroned in the Cathedral.
1913 Kikuyu Conference
[edit] Lambeth Conference and Anglo-Catholic Congresses
Weston's opposition to the Kikuyu Accord had already earned him prestige among Anglo-Catholics. His performance at the 1923 Anglo-Catholic Congress would turn him into an Anglo-Catholic legend.
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It says much for the political and religious complexion of the time that Weston's radical socialism merited hardly a moment's comment in the secular press - instead it was his call on the congress to "fight for their tabarnacles" that caused most excitement.
[edit] References
Weston
