Giles Fraser

Giles Fraser   (Clerk in Holy Orders, Priest)
Born	27 November 1964
Alma mater	Newcastle University
Religion	Anglican
Parents	Anthony and Gillian Fraser
Children	• daughters • one son
Spouse	• Sally Aagaard • Lynn Tandler
Canon chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral.

Giles Anthony Fraser is an English Anglican priest, journalist and broadcaster who has been Vicar of St Anne's Church, Kew, since 2022. He is a regular contributor to Thought for the Day and The Guardian and a panellist on The Moral Maze, as well as an assistant editor of UnHerd

Early life and education

Fraser was born to a Jewish father and a Christian mother and was circumcised according to Jewish tradition.

He was educated at Hollingbury Court preparatory school in Sussex, where he was beaten several times a week by the headmaster for minor misdemeanours, and at Uppingham School, a fee-paying Christian school, where he became a Christian. He studied at Newcastle University before training for ordained ministry at Ripon College Cuddesdon, near Oxford. He continued his studies at the University of Lancaster, where he was awarded a PhD in 1999 with a thesis entitled Holy Nietzsche experiments in redemption.

Career

Fraser was ordained as a deacon in 1993 and as a priest in 1994, serving as curate of All Saints' Church in Streetly, Birmingham, from 1993 to 1997. From 1997 to 2006 he was a chaplain and then a lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford.

In 2000 he became Team Rector of St. Mary's Church, Putney, where he campaigned to raise the profile of the Putney Debates of 1647 and founded Inclusive Church, which campaigns for lesbian and gay inclusion within the church.

From 2009 to 2011 he was canon chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral in London, with special responsibility for contemporary ethics and engagement with the City of London as a financial centre. In October 2011 Occupy London based its protest outside the cathedral, where Fraser said that he was happy for people to "exercise their right to protest peacefully". However, he resigned as he could not sanction any policy of the cathedral chapter that involved using force to remove the protesters. He has said that it was "a huge matter of regret to leave" St Paul's, "but not for one moment have I thought that I did the wrong thing".

He was also a visiting professor in the anthropology department at the London School of Economics and Director of the St Paul's Institute from 2009 to 2011.

In 2012 Fraser was appointed Priest-in-charge of St Mary's, Newington, in south London, and in the spring of 2022 he became Vicar of St Anne's Church, Kew, in south-west London.

Since 2009 he has been an honorary canon of the Diocese of Sefwi-Wiawso in Ghana.

Quilliam Advisor

Dr Fraser was an early advisor to the Quilliam Foundation and stuck with it from 2008-2010, despite criticism and a significant number of advisors ceasing involvement. Fraser writes of his involvement:

Some have accused the new organisation of being a front for an anti-Islamic neo-conservative agenda. I have been attacked for being one of its official advisers — as if that makes me a “useful idiot” to some extreme right-wing agenda. Of course, a number of conservative voices have been among its most active supporters, and some of its members have been harshly critical of multiculturalism. But what this organisation stands for is too important to hitch itself to any one political philosophy. And the leaders of the Quilliam Foundation agree.

Views and writing

Fraser has been involved in social and political advocacy and, according to The Daily Telegraph, "would be the first to admit that he is fond of the sound of his own voice". In 2019 he claimed that "all my political energy has been a reaction to Margaret Thatcher. I hated and continue to hate Thatcherism with a passion that remains undimmed".

In the 2016 referendum Fraser supported leaving the European Union, commenting that he found it "amazing that progressives are so keen to offer support to a remote and undemocratic bureaucracy that locks in a commitment to neoliberal economics". In 2019 he said he was "longing for a full-on Brexit – No Deal, please". In the 2019 general election he voted for the Conservative Party, even though he had just joined the Social Democratic Party.

From 2004 to 2013 Fraser had a weekly column in the Church Times and is also a regular contributor to The Guardian.

Fraser is the author or co-author of several books and is a specialist on the writings of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. He has lectured on moral leadership for the British Army at the Defence Academy at Shrivenham.

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References

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