Richard Kidd – Co-Principal
Richard.Kidd@Northern.org.uk
+44 (0)161 249 2522
Revd Dr Richard Kidd has been Principal of Northern Baptist College since 1994. He came to Manchester in 1986 as part-time Tutor and local Baptist minister, and has steadily gained firsthand experience of almost every aspect of the College’s life and work. Growing up in Nottingham, he trained as a scientist and completed a first degree at Cambridge in Mathematical Physics. It was in Cambridge that he made a commitment to Christian discipleship and first sensed a call to ordained ministry. He studied at Spurgeon’s College, London and Regent’s Park College, Oxford before coming to teach in Manchester. His experience includes ten years as a local pastor, mainly in the London area. He has given special attention to ministry amongst people with disabilities and is national convenor of BUild, the Baptist Union Initiative with people with Learning Disabilities.
Richard is married to Revd Dr Rosemary Kidd, also a Baptist minister, and they have four grown-up children. Richard’s wider interests include drawing and oil painting, literature, poetry, cycling and most things which connect him with computers.
Richard teaches a range of subjects under the broad heading of ‘modern theology’, including historical theology, systematics, philosophy of religion, theologies of liberation and Christian apologetics. His special interests all begin with the phrase “Theology and …”; to which can be added “… art”, “… science”, “… disability” and “… Christian education”.
Until recently Richard and Rosemary lived on the College site at Brighton Grove. The family now dispersed and the needs of the College very different from times past, they have moved to live in Whaley Bridge, south east of Manchester on the edge of Derbyshire. The move has opened exciting new opportunities for ministry and, from January 2004, both Richard and Rosemary have been part of a Ministry Team serving the Whaley Bridge Uniting Partnership. This is a creative venture bringing together three congregations, four denominations and an ecumenical religious community in close collaboration for mission. The congregation in Whaley Bridge, known as The Uniting Church, has recently been received into the North Western Baptist Association and into membership of the Baptist Union, enlarging the existing local partnership already in place between the Methodist and the United Reformed Churches.
EXPLORING THE BOUNDARY …
Focused around a sabbatical in 2001, Richard Kidd worked with Graham Sparkes, Mission Adviser in the Baptist Union of Great Britain, on the text of a new book, God and the Art of Seeing, exploring the boundary between art and spirituality. It was published earlier this year. The commendation on the back cover reads:
“The authors of this book invite us to accompany them in walking around an imaginary gallery which exhibits the work of six artists – Edvard Munch, Marc Chagall, Stanley Spencer, Georgia O’Keefe, Jacob Lawrence and Vincent van Gogh. Along the way the authors draw widely on their own experience, essentially one of joy in the presence of visual forms – pictures, sculptures, landscapes, seascapes and city-scapes, and other memorable art-objects. Their conviction is that too much Western Christianity, with its strong emphasis on words, creeds and doctrines, has forgotten just how important the visual can be for human development; we ‘look and see’ long before we ‘speak and hear with understanding’. The authors urge that the same seeing-skills used on a tour of a gallery are those also needed for the ‘spiritual’ journey, as we seek to discover God’s elusive presence in the world around us. Their hope is that, through looking carefully at the work of these six artists, readers will find fresh resources to enhance their own experience, both as viewers in an art gallery and as voyagers on a journey of faith.”
Richard Kidd & Graham Sparkes,
God and the Art of Seeing: Visual Resources for the Journey of Faith,
published by Regent’s Park College, Oxford and Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Macon, 2003 (ISBN 0-9518104-9-9).
Copies are priced £10 (payable to ‘Northern Baptist College’) and can be ordered from
Northern Baptist College,
Brighton Grove,
Rusholme,
Manchester,
M14 5JP,
