The Tenth Bishop of St Albans

The Rt Revd Dr Alan Gregory Clayton Smith was named as the tenth Bishop of St Albans on 13th January 2009.
His ministry in the diocese began on 19th September 2009 with a Service of Welcome and Inauguration in St Albans Cathedral.

Biography

Alan Gregory Clayton Smith (born 14 February 1957) is the tenth Bishop of St Albans. He studied at the universities of Birmingham and Bangor and trained for the priesthood at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.

After ordination in 1981 in Bradford Cathedral he began his career as assistant curate at St Lawrence and St Paul Pudsey. In 1984 he took up the post as Chaplain of the Lee Abbey Community, near Lynton in North Devon. In 1989 he was appointed as the Diocesan Missioner and Executive Secretary of the Board for Mission and Unity in the Diocese of Lichfield and team vicar in the Walsall Team Ministry. In 1997 he became the Archdeacon of Stoke-upon-Trent. While Archdeacon he was chaired the North Staffordshire Faiths in Friendship. He served on the General Synod of the Church of England from 1999 until he was consecrated the Bishop of Shrewsbury (one of the suffragan sees in the Diocese of Lichfield) in 2001. He was chair of the Shropshire Strategic Partnership from 2006-2009 and was a member of the Rural Bishops’ Panel from 2006-2009. For Lent 2006 he committed himself to living on the minimum wage.

His election as Bishop of St Albans by the College of Canons of the Cathedral took place on 13 February 2009, and the Confirmation of Election with the Archbishop of Canterbury followed on 31 March. His inauguration took place on 19 September 2009. In 2010 he was made an Honorary Doctor of Divinity by the University of Birmingham.

He has contributed chapters to Changing Rural Life (2004) and Celebrating Community: God’s Gift for Today’s World (2006). He has written Growing up in Multi-faith Britain: Explorations in Youth, Ethnicity and Religion (2007) and God-Shaped Mission: A Perspective from the Rural Church (2008), and co-authored The Reflective Leader (2011). He was joint editor of Faith and the Future of the Countryside (2012). From 2009 to 2011 he was joint chairman of the Anglican Methodist Working Party on the Ecclesiology of the Emerging Expression of Church which produced the report Fresh Expressions in the Mission of the Church (2012). For the centenary of the incorporation of Bedfordshire into the Diocese of St Albans he wrote Saints & Pilgrims in the Diocese of St Albans (2013).

Among his hobbies are theatre, gardening, walking and skiing.