Tom Frame (bishop)

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For the British comic book illustrator, see Tom Frame.

Bishop Professor Dr Tom Frame (b. 1962, Sydney, New South Wales) is an Australian Christian Minister of religion, historian, academic, author, and social commentator.

Frame was raised in Wollongong by his adoptive parents.

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[edit] Career

He joined the Royal Australian Naval College, HMAS Creswell, as a 16 year-old Cadet Midshipman in January 1979. He studied Asian history at the University of New South Wales graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (honours), and was awarded the W.J. Liu Memorial Prize for Excellence in Chinese Studies in 1984.

Frame was the Inaugural Summer Vacation Scholar at the Australian War Memorial in 1985, then completed his training in HMA Ships Jervis Bay and Supply before serving in the shore establishment HMAS Cerberus as an instructor. He took on the additional duties as director of the base's museum and was a consultant to the Australian National Maritime Museum, meanwhile studying for a Diploma in Education from the University of Melbourne.

Lieutenant Frame was appointed Research Officer to the Chief of Naval Staff at Navy Office in Canberra during 1988. Two years later he undertook study in military history at the Australian Defence Force Academy leading to the award of a PhD in October 1991, taking as his thesis topic the HMAS Voyager disaster. He served as a staff officer at the Headquarters, Australian Defence Force, then resigned from the RAN in 1992.

[edit] Ministry

Frame then completed a Master of Theology degree with a thesis entitled The Delphic Sword: Reconciling Christianity and Military Service in Australia, and trained for the priesthood in the Anglian Church in Australia in the Diocese of Canberra & Goulburn.

He was ordained in 1993 and appointed curate of St John’s Church in Wagga Wagga and a Visiting Scholar at Charles Sturt University. In 1995, he was inducted as Rector of St James’ church, Binda.

In 1996-97, he took leave in England and completed an Master of Arts (Honours) in Applied Theology at the University of Kent at Canterbury as the Lucas Tooth Scholar, and ministered in the United Benefice of Hever, Four Elms and Markbeech in the Diocese of Rochester.

He became Rector of St Philip’s Bungendore in January 1999 and was appointed Lecturer (half-time) in Public Theology in St Mark’s National Theological Centre at Canberra in 2000.

On 28 June 2001, he was consecrated bishop, and appointed as the fifth Anglican Bishop to the Australian Defence Force.

[edit] Academic career

In January 2007 he commenced as Director (Professor) of St Mark's National Theological Centre at Barton in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, a college of Charles Sturt University.

[edit] Social comment

Tom Frame is a regular commentator on radio, notably the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, on military history, church history, and social matters.

Bishop Frame was the only Anglican bishop to support the Government of Australia in its support for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. On 18 June 2004 he recanted that support in a newspaper article titled Forgive me, I was wrong on Iraq in which he said in part, "... in the absence of any clear mitigation, there is no alternative to concluding that the March 2003 invasion was neither just nor necessary." going on to say, "I continue to seek God's forgiveness for my complicity in creating a world in which this sort of action was ever considered to be necessary." [1]

[edit] Family

He married Helen in 1993. They have two daughters, and live in Canberra.

Frame met his birth mother in the late 1990s, but remains much closer to his adoptive parents, which he discussed in his autobiography, Binding Ties: an experience of adoption and reunion in Australia (1999).

[edit] Publications

Dr Frame is the author of some 20 books, incuding:

  • First In, Last Out! The Navy at Gallipoli (1990)
  • The Garden Island (1990)
  • He was convenor of the first Australian Naval History Seminar and co-edited its proceedings, Reflections on the RAN (1991)
  • Where Fate Calls: The HMAS Voyager Tragedy (on which the 1992 Australian Broadcasting Corporation's 4 Corners television documentary The Cruel Legacy was based)
  • Pacific Partners: A History of Australian-American Naval Relations (1992)
  • HMAS Sydney: Loss and Controversy (on which the 1993 Channel 9 television documentary No Survivor was based)
  • Mutiny! Naval Insurrections in Australia and New Zealand.
  • Binding Ties: an experience of adoption and reunion in Australia (1999), his autobiography
  • The Shores of Gallipoli: Naval Aspects of the Anzac Campaign (2000)
  • Living by the Sword? The Ethics of Armed Intervention (2004) (second prize, 2005 Australian Christian Literature Society's Australian Christian Book of the Year awards)

He co-authored:

  • Where the Rivers Run: A History of the Anglican Parish of Wagga Wagga (1995)
  • Labouring in Vain: A History of Bishopthorpe (1996)
  • The Seven Churches of Binda: the history of an Anglican rural parish (1998)
  • A Church for a Nation (2000), a commissioned history of the Anglican Diocese of Canberra & Goulburn,

[edit] External links

[edit] References

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