Michael Ball (clergyman)

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For other persons named Michael Ball, see Michael Ball (disambiguation).

Michael Thomas Ball (born 14 February 1932) is an Anglican clergyman and co-founder of the Community of the Glorious Ascension. He was Bishop of Truro^[1] from 1990 to 1997.

Ball was educated at Lancing College and Queens' College, Cambridge. He was a teacher of Biology and Chemistry at Marling School in Stroud, Gloucestershire ^[2] and was latterly Head of the Lower School, until 1975. He was Chaplain of Sussex University 1976 to 1980, suffragan Bishop of Jarrow from 1980 to 1990 and then 13th Bishop of Truro. He was the first Bishop there to ordain women^[3].

In 1960 Ball also founded a monastic community at Stratford Park in Stroud, along with his identical twin brother Peter Ball, who later became suffragan Bishop of Lewes (1977 - 1992) and then Bishop of Gloucester (1992–1993), until he resigned after admitting to gross indecency with a 17 year-old trainee monk,^[4]^[5] although no charges were ever brought, and the circumstances remain unclear.

Michael Ball is the author of Foolish Risks of God, a Lenten study course on the parables of the New Testament (Mowbray Lent Book, ISBN 0-8264-6395-9) published in 2002. In the book's introduction he writes of the parables,

"The deepest problems of the universe are hidden in their simplicity, whether it be free will and choice, reward and punishment, or justice and mercy, power and powerlessness, and in most cases Jesus has complete confidence in our ability to understand their significance for ourselves, despite what the Gospel writers and preachers ever since have tried to do with them. They are not commandments for behaviour, though they may gently persuade; neither are they black and white morsels of theology. They are signposts to God and guides to living and loving."