The Revd Professor Andrew Atherstone writes:

PHILIP HACKING was a prominent Evangelical voice in the Church of England, from the Northern Province, with a passionate and unashamed commitment to parish ministry.

Born in Blackburn in 1931, the son of a General Post Office worker, Hacking was a proud Lancastrian. His Christian faith was nurtured at the Church of the Saviour, Blackburn, home to an Evangelical congregation, where he first experienced “the joy of seeing the treasures of the Bible unfolded”. After grammar school in Blackburn, he read history at St Peter’s Hall, Oxford, and was on track for a career in the civil service; but his great love was cricket, and he dreamed of becoming a sports commentator for the BBC.

As an undergraduate, in the summer of 1952, Hacking attended the Keswick Convention in the Lake District, where, as he later described it, he “encountered the living, speaking God in a new way”. At the Keswick missionary meeting, he stood with his fiancée to signify their willingness to go wherever and whenever God called them. A few months later, listening to an address in Oxford on Isaiah 6 (“Here I am; send me!”), that sense of call focused upon ordained ministry in the Church of England.

After training at Oak Hill Theological College, Hacking returned to Lancashire. He was ordained deacon in Liverpool Cathedral in 1955 to serve his title at St Helens Parish Church, Merseyside. In 1959, aged just 28, he became Rector of St Thomas’s, Edinburgh, an independent Anglican chapel, separate from the Scottish Episcopal Church. He returned south in 1968, exchanging the red rose of Lancashire for the white rose of Yorkshire, as Vicar of Christ Church, Fulwood, in Sheffield. Here, Hacking established a long and consistent ministry, serving for almost three decades until his retirement in 1997.

Hacking lamented in the 1960s at the “apathy, ecclesiastical smugness, and institutional respectability” of the C of E. He believed that the renewal of Anglicanism would begin with a renewal of the parishes. In Sheffield, his parochial model was a classic Evangelical combination of expository preaching and pastoral visiting, and the congregation grew to 1000 people. His first book, The Spirit is among Us (1987), argued that the true centre of revival and spiritual growth should be the local church.

Sheffield is a footballing city; so Hacking adopted Sheffield Wednesday as his club, and with his son became an avid fan. They were in the crowd in April 1989 for the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest during the Hillsborough disaster.

Hacking wrote: “I rejoice in being an Evangelical beyond my Anglicanism.” He delighted in ecumenical relationships and reckoned that he had preached in almost every denomination. In Sheffield, he chaired the organising committee for an eight-day Billy Graham mission in June 1985, involving 1200 churches. More than 250,000 people heard the American evangelist at Bramall Lane football stadium, home of Wednesday’s local rivals Sheffield United. The coal-mining districts of South Yorkshire had suffered devastating hardships during the strikes of 1984-85, and Graham met Arthur Scargill.

Beyond Sheffield, Hacking was widely in demand as a leader of parish missions and as a speaker at Bible conventions — from the Caribbean to India and Australia. He preached regularly at the Keswick Convention, rejoicing in its motto “All One in Christ Jesus”, and was its chairman for a decade. In 1993, he helped to launch Word Alive — an annual Bible convention first held at a Butlin’s holiday camp in Skegness — a joint initiative between Keswick, the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship, and Spring Harvest.

During the late 1990s, Hacking was thrown into the maelstrom of Anglican controversy as the first national chairman of Reform, an Evangelical campaign group, though he disliked church politics. Reform was frequently caricatured as a network of public-school Evangelicals from the Home Counties, but Hacking enjoyed pointing out that he was a northerner raised in a Blackburn terrace. A Festschrift in honour of his 80th birthday, The Renewed Pastor (2011), was edited by another leading Reform member, Melvin Tinker, a coal miner’s son.

The Revd Philip Henry Hacking died on 6 December 2024, aged 93. He is survived by his wife of 69 years, Margaret, and their two children, five grandchildren, and ten great-grandchildren.

A thanksgiving service will be held at Christ Church, Fulwood, on 20 February at 2 p.m.