George West

George Algernon West, MM (17 December 1893 – 25 May 1980) was a British Anglican missionary who spent many years in Burma, first as a missionary for the Society for Propagation of the Gospel and then as the Lord Bishop of Rangoon. In the latter position he served for nineteen years, and gradually became active involved with the Moral Re-Armament movement. After retiring from Burma in 1954 he became Assistant Bishop of Durham.

Early life and career George Algernon West was born on 17 December 1893, the son of the Reverend George West and Marion West. His father, also named George Algernon, despite being a staunch supporter of Keir Hardie and of his Labour Party, sent the young George to St. Bees Grammar School in Cumberland, the only public school in Cumberland and Westmorland. There from 1907 to 1913, West "gained high repute" Also in that team was John L.I. Hawkesworth, who later became a corps commander in Eighth Army during the Second World War. Out of the twelve men who comprised the 1908 Cricket XI, seven would later give their lives in World War I.

In 1921 West went to Burma, then part of the British Empire, to join the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) at its St. Peter's Mission at Toungoo in the south. He was elected Bishop of Rangoon after the Church of England in India had been given autonomy, and was now the Church of India, Burma and Ceylon, and was therefore answerable to the Metropolitan Bishop of Calcutta who was technically the head of the Church of Burma. While Bishop he travelled all over his diocese, as he had while a missionary, and continued to pay especial attention to the affairs of the Karenni.

Upon reaching Rangoon to assume the bishopric, he wrote;

He continued to voyage back and forth to England, being particularly involved with the Rangoon Diocesan Association. Seemingly unaffected by the outbreak of the Second World War, while travelling on 9 June 1941 West was involved in a serious motor car accident which left him unconscious for three weeks. Having recovered, he left for India to recuperate and was therefore absent when the Japanese declared war and invaded Burma.

With his Diocese overrun by the Imperial Japanese Army, West went to the United States. There, he became a leading member of the Oxford Group, a movement devoted to an "ideology of democracy", which later became the Moral Re-Armament (MRA) movement. For a two-month period in 1942 West became the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta. While in America he wrote a book called The World that Works (1944) devoted to the MRA ideals. While in the United States, he married Grace Hay in Tryon, North Carolina in April 1943. Soon after, fully recovered from his injuries, he returned to India to do what he could. With the eventual defeat of the Japanese in Burma, West was one of the first British civilian allowed back into the country, flying into Rangoon on 9 July 1945 to find the city in a parlous state and discovered that his Cathedral, St. Paul's, had been fitted out as a distillery by the Japanese occupiers. West resigned the bishopric of Rangoon in 1949 but later withdrew his resignation, and returned to Britain in time for that year's annual meeting of the Rangoon Diocesan Association.

He continued in his position as Bishop of Rangoon for another five years, commuting between England and Burma, attending to the needs of the Burmese under his care and also tended to the many services of remembrance to remember the men of XIV Army in the Burma campaign. In 1954 he resigned as Bishop, and had no active rôle with the church until 1965, when he became for three years the Assistant Bishop of Durham.

Published works