The Rev’d Jonathan Aitken – being ordained is like ‘a new life’
by Archishop Cranmer:
Former Tory Cabinet minister, convicted perjurer and bankrupt the Rt Hon Jonathan Aitken MP is now the Rev’d Jonathan Aitken, deacon at St Matthews, Westminster, and chaplain to the Prison Service. The Privy Council status is gone. The political power of Chief Secretary to the Treasury has dissipated. The scars of perjury and bankruptcy remain, but the soul is healed. At the age of 75, after finding God in the depths and theological study at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, Jonathan Aitken has been ordained a deacon in the Church of England; his vocation to bring comfort and hope to those in prison. It’s like “a new life”, he said, standing outside St Paul’s Cathedral. “I’m honoured, humbled and delighted and still slightly surprised.”
Amazing, isn’t it, how God can still surprise us with his miracles of rebirth, redemption and restoration. He can even renew the heart of a disgraced Tory who lied on oath after swearing on the Bible to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The perjurer has become a pastor. The prisoner has become a comforter to the depressed, lonely, self-harming, assaulted and bereaved. He has been where they are, and now prays alongside them. “Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell,” said the missionary CT Studd.
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