The Reverend Doctor Stephen Pix - Permission to Officiate (PtO)

I was born and brought up in Surrey, went to school in Wimbledon and was awarded a scholarship in Classics at Exeter College Oxford in 1961.  I took a degree in Oriental Studies (Hebrew with Arabic) in 1964, and stayed on for a fourth year for the Diploma in Theology.

In 1965 I went to Haifa, Israel for a year, teaching in a Christian Arab primary school, St John’s, and acting as Lay Reader in the English church, St Luke’s.  In Israel I met my future wife, Isobel, who was a missionary teacher with the Church of Scotland in Jaffa.

Back in England, I spent two years at Clifton Theological College in Bristol before being made deacon in the Diocese of Liverpool, to serve as Curate in St Helens Parish Church from 1968.  In 1969 I was ordained priest in Liverpool Cathedral.

In 1971 I became a solicitor’s articled clerk in London, then back in Surrey, in a Christian firm, and was made a partner in 1976.  During that time Isobel and I adopted four children, Jonathan, Katharine (Kate), Christopher and Rosamund.  I now have two granddaughters, Annabella and Ariana, both daughters of my younger son Christopher and his wife Sarah, also a priest.

In 1984 we both felt called to go back into full-time Christian ministry, and moved to North Yorkshire, near Northallerton, where I was instituted Vicar of Osmotherley with East Harlsey and Ingleby Arncliffe.  After five years I was appointed Vicar of St Michael at the Northgate and City Rector of Oxford in 1989, where we remained until retirement in 2001.

While in Oxford I studied at Cardiff University for a degree in Canon Law, and graduated as Master of Laws in 1997.  I revised all the articles in the third edition of the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church on Canon Law, for which I was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters by the Oxford Graduate School, an American University in Dayton, Tennessee with which the Oxford church had a connection.

We moved to Long Melford, in Suffolk, where Isobel died of cancer in 2005.  In 2007 I married Barbara, a widow living in Woodstock, north of Oxford, until she died in 2022.  It was on 21st July 2025 that Renée and I were married in St Mary’s, Hampstead Norreys, to our great joy.